AFM 103 – Greg McCullough

Friday – Regularly scheduled day with ZoomZoom down at Buttonwillow.  Saturday – stuck around for a day with Keigwins.

Lesson of the weekend: Set out very specific tactical objectives for tracktime.

I went into the weekend with the goal of hitting 1:54’s and the plan to break down the track into a detailed, written analysis of braking markers, line variations into good passing corners, etc.  The laptime goal is working backwards from the KFG requirement of 3 seconds short of last year’s winner’s best lap to be gridded in the 3rd or 4th row.  I’d rather not spend Round 1 running from 60th to 20th position in every race I enter.

In hindsight, that laptime goal is pointless, egotistical and distracting.  I will be as fast as I will be… the only thing that matters is working specifically on areas I can improve as effectively as possible.

The problem with my over-ambitious strategy of breaking the whole track down corner by corner is two-fold.  A)  I’m still trying to adjust to the new bike geometry and pace, so I’m still distracted by unexpected things the bike tells me.  B)  I didn’t approach it one corner at a time.  I effectively ended up just running laps, and making a cursory mental analysis of the whole track at lunchtime, when I had a convenient segment of time to walk the track in my head.  Not very effective for much of anything.

My 1:57’s for the weekend were definitely not what I wanted, but I did learn a few things… I think.  I can’t run a rear Pirelli anywhere near as long as I did the Michelins on the SV.  It’s rather obvious, but not having enough grip for 120hp is a much bigger deal than not having grip for 80hp.  My tire budget for the year just went up.  Second, and this is only in hindsight, since I didn’t have a gameplan for suspension testing this weekend…  I’m 90% sure I need firmer fork springs.  Basic sag puts me at the end of the sag adjustment.  I was having a very hard time keeping the rear end down under relatively light braking, and the zip tie was always down at the fork bottom when I checked.  I assumed that was due to the wheelie hill at the track, but thinking more about that braking behavior (worse than the SV), I suspect the front end is just bottoming out.  Hence, I need firmer springs.

Next up – 1) Tracking down some springs asap.  2)  Get signed up for the open trackday at T-hill on the 18th.  3) Get new tires.

Gameplan for that trackday:  Focus on corners 2 and 14.  Just those two all day.  Figure out just how deep I can get on the brakes.  Adjust fork settings until the front allows me to get on the brakes as hard as possible and still allows good feel trailbraking and mid-corner.  If there’s time, work on the rear end too, while the tire’s pretty fresh.  Try different preload settings, adjusting rebound accordingly.  No laptimer.  Maybe get someone to time me at the end of the day and measure cumulative improvement.