Can we have a ride report of the day? 
Well that's where I got those chicken strip photos in the other thread.
There were six of us "students" and three instructors. I was the odd one out with a sports tourer- everyone else had sports bikes- a Ninja, a Bandit, a CB1100 and a bunch of others that I wasn't really interested in, so took no notice.
Full leathers are required by Queensland Raceways, so I hired a suit. A first for me. They're very reassuring with plenty of armour, even had magnesium elbow plates. Expensive at $75 for the day, but I was still way ahead with the $100 fee.
It was all about track technique, which isn't an interest of mine, but I was along for the ride, so to speak. Ya gotta do everything once, eh? I had my GPS on the bike because I was actually hoping to top my best speed, but even the longest straight didn't get me within 10 kph of it.
As you would expect, the instructors each took two of us under their wing and it was "follow me then I'll follow you" style teaching. I'd actually done four courses with HART on the Gold Coast City Council's programme, and had worked with a couple of the instructors on the mountain roads of the hinterland, so a lot of the cornering technique taught there was reinforced. However, being more track oriented, heavy emphasis was placed on maximising cornering speed by optimising rider position, bike gearing and brake timing.
One of the transferable skills was the importance of body position and the sight line. The point was made that one of the Brisbane schools teaches keeping the body towards the vertical and laying the bike over. HART teach laying the butt and shoulder down into the turn to reduce the amount the bike has to lean hence maximising the contact patch of the tyres. They had me drop the tyre pressures from 42/42 to 38/38 to further optimise the grip.
There were four groups operating on the track, based on their level of experience/speed. Being a training group, we had our own slot at number four. Each session was about ten laps, at the end of which one was very happy to take a break for 45 minutes or so. Apparently there's an average of one crash per day, but fortunately it wasn't in our group that day.
Ruby worked very hard for the four sessions. Very high acceleration, high revs, hard braking. I think she will be sulking for a while. I know she was pretty snaky on the way home- maybe it was the Matilda petrol I gave her as a reward. I did 117 km on the track which burned over half a tank of juice.
If I was going to do a track day again it would be on a Blackbird. The track quickly found the ST's limitations in that discipline. It wasn't completely disgraced in the corners, just a bit embarrassed.
Been there, done that.
I did the Mount Cotton track with Stay Upright when I had the ST1100. I'll plan to do HART's Mt Cotton Course for next year's refresher. It's completely road-oriented and Ruby will be able to show her stuff.
