29th May 2003 - Mallory Park

For the first time in ages I wasn't instructing for the Motorcycle Folly - I had agreed to alternate days with Darren Moggridge so I would get the opportunity to have a play and not worry about letting the side down. The downside was that I could only go out in the Advanced group rather than whenever I wanted to. A fellow Mini Twins competitor, David Daws, was there and we both seemed to be suffering from the same problem - A lack of confidence on the way in to the faster corners. This has always been my weakness as I almost always overtake people in the latter part of the corner even if I lose 15 yards on the way in!

It was the first time any of us had ridden the circuit since they introduced a new corner to slow down the right hand part of the Esses. There is now a very slow left followed by a right that leads in to the Esses. There still seems to be the same number of incidents as before but they are now much slower and tend to be less severe as a result. I think it is a shame as I thought that the old corner was one of the great 'bottle' corners but if it improves safety then you can't really complain too much.

Tim had a ride on my SV650 and reckoned that although my suspension was quite hard said that it handled better than his and accelerated faster. The acceleration was down to the combination of sprockets I was using but the handling was still making the bike a challenge over the bumps through Gerrards. I asked him to show me how fast you could do Gerrards and even though I improved a little I couldn't stick with him on the way in. I did manage to get alongside him on the way out a few times for a little wave :-)

In one session Tim thought he could get away from me and we had a great few laps running quite close together. We were soon joined by Darren Moggridge on his race prepared R1 - As you can see from the photos we were making him work for it despite him having twice our horsepower :-) I also found that I would catch a guy on a very rapid GSXR750 in almost every session and then had great fun getting by - Usually around the outside at Gerrards!

All in all it was a top day but I am starting to find that I am enjoying track days less and less. The instructing side is good but there doesn't seem to be any point giving more than 75% and with such a low powered bike that makes it very hard work running against the GSXR1000s, etc. Maybe I ought to get a road bike again and use that - Am torn between the new CBR600RR and another KTM. Either way, I won't be able to afford one for a while so I guess will have to keep plugging away on the old SV!