Pukie 13 December Track Day

[dpex]

As usual, a great day was had by most, although the dude who got jumped on by his own Triumph (sneaky bikes, those Triumphs) and managed to bust his collar-bone in several places.

Thanks AMCC girls and boys, as usual and excellent day.

Had a bit of a chat with Pete about a couple of things. Apparently they're (AMCC officials) having a big hui early next year to explore improving on the training aspects of ART days.

I suggested they toss in some start training. He took that on board and said he will suggest it to the committee.

Start-training at suburban traffic lights leaves a lot to be desired, not least of which is the angst it creates in cagers.

Back down there again, tomorrow. Another race-meet.,

You doing that meet, J?

Another thing I mentioned, only because I'd seen a few get sucked in, was the issue of brake-lights.

Some ran with them, others' didn't. On numerous occasions, especially braking into the hairpin I noticed other riders going a bit unstable, till it clicked that they were buying into the lead-bikes brake-lights then freaking a bit when the lead had no brake-lights.

Personally, I think that for slow novice and fast novice, there should be a rule. Either all have brake lights or none have them.

Remember, many of the riders in those groups are infrequent visitors to track days, and have a very strong autonomic brain-programme attached to brake-lights.

Thus making the perceptual transition between normal street riding and following a bike with no brake-lights can, I believe, add an unnecessary dimension of danger.

Just my two bits on the subject. Feel free to howl me down.

Apart from that. Another grand day.

The Scorpion exhaust was a good buy. Finally got past the 240K mark prior to the hair-pin; and that with rather weary valve-stem seals. So I'm pretty happy about that.

The next test will be to see how the extra three-tooth cog helps me to power out of corners faster.

We shall see.

[PeteJ]

Yeah, we've been grappling with this brake lights issue for some considerable time - in my case, since the first advanced day I ran at Baypark in 1978. If it were as easy as might first seem, we'd have had a rule years ago.

You cannot have "everyone has to have brake lights", because very new people with race machines are often best suited to one of the novice classes.

I have tried "everyone without" and have withstood the storm of protest from people without the gumption to take off a lens and extract a bulb. (Or, nowadays, to disconnect an LED set-up). I even had someone phone me to complain that they'd been failed a wof later becuse they'd not reconnected for street use.

John, one thing we did not discuss was the question of a whole lot of the training being to re-orient autonomic responses. This brake light one is an area where to date we have tried to do that, by trying to emphasise that riders need to keep looking in front of themselves. But we are re-considering, again.