Trackdays — MadSi Racing FZR400

Cadwell Park's Mountain section

Cadwell Park's Mountain, September 2003

Trackdays - why? Well why the hell not? I've learnt more about my bike's high speed handling and general performance than riding on the road. In fact, until July this year, I didn't have the FZR so my tracktime was spent using my road bike, a Kawasaki ZX6R.

I decided that I didn't want to risk crashing my PAJ & so decided to look for a suitable track bike. The 400 was decided upon as I could learn more about actually riding it & general corner speed than I could with a bigger bike with more power etc.

Ridden properly, a 400cc can outperform a lot of faster machines on the track. That's been proven to me when i've been on track with various bigger bikes. Below is a summary on the days i've done & how things went:

Anglesey - Sat 20th September 2003 - track map

Was looking forward to this one after I did it last month. I went down with my mate woody (on his Aprilia Mille) & arrived early Sat am. Wet isn't the word, it absolutely pissed it down non-stop all day. We got signed on when we were asked if we'd like to join the fast group instead of the intermediates (me) & novice (woody) that was originally planned due to low numbers. Why not we said.

Our group was 1st out on track @ 10am - all five of us & two of them were the instructors from the trackday organisers! There was standing water absolutely everywhere & it was really slippery. My biggest problem was i'd had a brand new Dunlop GPR70 front tyre fitted & this was its 1st time out - not even scrubbed in!!!

Took it relatively easy for the 1st session, well 1st 5 or so laps anyway then started to open it out more. Back end was sliding all over but always fully controllable so didn't sap confidence at all.

During the morning, another guy joined us on a Ducati with full wets. He absolutely annihilated us all, lapped me once but he was just so smooth and consistent. Anyways I didn't feel so bad when even one of the instructors could not keep up with him on his blade with full wets, in fact he binned it in front of me trying to catch him!

Weather got worse, threatened to dry up at one point but then changed its mind again :(. Another two riders joined us after lunch, both on race bikes and both on full wets. One on what looked like a Honda was doing well & managed to lap me towards the end of the session, the other just couldn't get near me for the 1st 5 laps, then took me on the hairpin then didn't lose me after that. I was ready to line up to take him on the next lap round when he pulled into the pits - bah humbug!

Overall it was an ok day, not fully enjoyable cause of the weather but I lapped everyone bar the racers on full wets. Gotta get me a 17" rear & some wet rubber for next time.

Pictures here