I finally did my first track day on Sep 24th, which also happened to be my birthday. I fitted a set of crash bungs the night before and 3 of us set off at 7am for the 2 hour ride to QLD Raceway. The Daytona 675 is mostly my wife`s, I don`t ride it that much but I knew it`d be a much better track weapon than my S3.
I started off in the slow group and the first problem I experienced was that I was continually locking up the back wheel under heavy braking. The guy in the pits next to me said "I saw you 'backing it in' on the corners, it looked great!"
I told him,"Errr actually that was nothing more than a series of uncontrolled skids!
I`m used to using the back brake a lot more whilst cornering on the S3 and I found it better to just forget about it altogether on the 675.
The next problem occurred when they stopped our first session prematurely. Myself and a few others had got a bit carried away and were overtaking up the inside of corners (a no-no in the slow group) we got severely bollocked and moved into the next group.
We were using the short clubman circuit, which is 2.11 km`s and has an appprox 550m straight. I was hitting 210kph at the end of the straight in 4th gear, which is when the rev limiter kicks in, and the only gears I used on the track were 2nd 3rd and 4th. I was outbraking all the larger bikes, Gixxers and blades etc which is testimony to how good the 675 is, especially on a short track like this.
I did 5 20 min sessions in the morning and managed 3 of the 5 afternoon sessions before leaving. I had managed to progress to the fast group for my last session and I was pretty pleased with that, as I was the only road bike in the group, all the others were race bikes. It was the first time that day that I got overtaken by another bike but I have to be honest and admit that I was overtaken by several people including a young girl on a pink race prepped 250.
When she went round the outside of me on turn 4 it brought my ego back down to earth!!
It was a hot day, 34 degrees and I was just too tired to do the last two sessions with a two hour ride home in front of me. It was a fantastic day and I could easily become an addict, however I obliterated an expensive set of Pirelli`s and plenty of people fell off. I saw some expensive bikes get trashed that day, including a brand new GSXR 1100 so it`ll be the last time I do it on the 675. I can`t afford to replace it. They hire brand new race prepped CBR 600`s at the track but there`s a $4000 Damage excess on them, which I also can`t afford. I think I`ll try a buy and old bomb of a TT600 or Speed four and start turning it into a Track bike.
