Motorcycle Track Days – Just Like a Car Track Day, Right?

I’m lucky enough to have done a few car track days over the years, in a variety of machinery. This ranged from a three-door Ford Sierra RS Cosworth that was a prize for a magazine giveaway (back when magazines had money to spend), to a little track-prepared Ford Puma and even a Morgan Plus 4 at the launch of a classic track day club. I was even lucky enough to get some tuition from a proper racing driver at one of them, which helped enormously when it came to understanding how to get the best out of the car and the circuit.

So it seemed logical when someone suggested I should go and do a track day on a motorcycle, even though it was only three months after I passed my bike test. After all, how different could it be?

As it transpired, very different. It was still a day, on a track, but that’s where the similarities ended.

The event in question was the inaugural Bikeshed Café Racer Cup at Lydden Hill, the tiny primarily rallycross circuit just inland from Dover. I had raced a car there in the mid/late 1990s so had a very vague idea of where the circuit went (it’s a bit like a mirror image of Brands Hatch Indy circuit) but that’s about it.

The Café Racer Cup is, as the name suggests, aimed at riders on road-legal Café Racers and at the time, I was riding a Suzuki SV650X, the café racer-styled version of Suzuki’s V-twin middleweight. It was a lovely bike for blasting around for fun, but definitely wasn’t one for long distances, so I loaded it into the back of a van for the three-hour slog south. Just getting the 198kg SV out of the van was a task in itself – rolling it up and down the ramp was terrifying…

The day was based on a series of – unusual for a track day – timed ‘qualifying’ sessions for three different groups – novice, intermediate and experienced. I was, of course, well and truly in the Novice category and having dropped the bike pushing it to scrutineering (true fact), I was less than confident, lining up for the first of three sighting laps behind an instructor for the first session.

The introduction to the circuit was a no-overtaking, 50% speed tour and I felt reasonably at home. The circuit came back to me and I started to work out where braking points might be and how to sight the right lines through the corners. Then we finished the third lap, the instructor pulled in to the pits and all hell broke loose…

The orderly line of motorcycles, of which I was near the front, broke ranks and suddenly, there was the sound of engines everywhere. It was like being in the middle of a swarm of angry hornets, all wanting to ride through me. I tried to relax and concentrate on getting my lines right, figuring that the speed would eventually come, as it did in a car. I tried looking at the very exit of the corner as I turned in but this was too far – I wasn’t able to accurately hit an apex. In the end, I broke every corner up into segments, as I’d been taught in a car. At the braking point, look to the turn-in; there, find the apex, at the apex be looking at the exit, look down the track towards the next braking point. After a handful of laps, it started to feel far more natural and flowing, rather than the series of almost-but-not-quite-joined individual movements.

All too soon, that first session was over and it was time for the traditional track day athlete’s post-session refreshment – a bottle of Coke and a Mars bar. I spent my down-time watching other riders to work out their lines and how they tackled the corners.

By the time it was my turn again, I was raring to go. A lap to warm it all up and off I went. And off I went…

I was being cocky and approaching the tight-ish left-hander at the aptly-named Devil’s Elbow before the uphill run to the hairpin, I was carrying a bit too much speed into the corner and I found myself staring at the turn-in when I should have been looking for the apex. As a result, there was absolutely no way I was going to make the corner.

If I were in a car, I simply would have put a huge steering input in, got the rear of the car sliding and used that sideways motion to scrub off speed while steering it through the corner and on to the next one – no biggie. I’ve done it before on track days and it usually works. And even if it doesn’t, then that worse-case scenario is a bent car and dented pride. But had I tried to do that on the bike, the likelihood is the front would have folded, I’d have gone down like a sack of spuds and it would have been more than just my pride taking a knock.

As it was, time slowed and I noticed the narrow strip of grass between the edge of the circuit and the gravel trap. My mind, usually operating at the speed of a sleepy sloth, worked out that if I went straight on and braked hard on the remaining tarmac to scrub off as much speed as possible, I could roll over the grass and try to keep the bike upright as I entered the gravel, which would slow me more. Worst-case scenario, I would be going slow enough that if I fell over in the gravel, I wouldn’t hurt myself too badly…

In a completely unexpected turn of events, I was right. I managed to stay upright as I came to a halt just short of the marshal (who I’m sure was shaking his head), tip-toe out of the gravel and continue.

What surprised me was not that my plan worked – it was that I managed to come up with a plan at all and action it to save my own skin.

After a total of five sessions, there was a ‘race’ for every category but I’d had a blast and decided discretion was the better part of valour that day. I’d shaved my lap times from a best of 1m21.977 in the first session to 1m03.1s by the last and I was very happy with that, as well as the fact I was able to climb into the van and drive home, albeit with a few more Cokes and Mars Bars for company.

While it (and the following track day I did at Rockingham before it closed) was superb fun, just like doing a track day in a car is, it gave me a much better understanding of how a motorcycle works. The grip available, for example, is far, far greater than you would ever experience riding purely on the road. Granted, this was a racetrack and not a diesel-sodden, crisp-packet-littered stretch of the A2 but understanding how much grip the bike can develop when cornering or braking gave me much more confidence when riding on the road. It didn’t encourage fast and potentially dangerous riding – quite the opposite in fact. It made me realise what I should – and more importantly, should not – be doing to improve my safety and my enjoyment.

And just like a car track day, it was superb fun. And I want to do it again…