My first track day at Brands Hatch… alive and well

Andy Barnes and I headed down to Brands hatch on Tuesday for our first track day (actually Andy’s second but that’s another story!). We arrived on time and got assigned into our groups. Fortunately we were both give yellow wristbands so we could ride (ahem,… race) together.

The day started out just fine with both of our bikes passing the noise tests. Neither of our bikes have after market cans so there was never any doubt, but as it was the first time the bike was I was slightly nervous. So nervous in fact that I stalled my engine when attempting to head out of the pits. Embarassing to say the least. Nerves aside we started our scouting laps. Three laps in total following an instructor who pointed out the entries to the corners and the right apex. It was great fun but we were all waiting for the go ahead to give it some and warm up our tires properly!

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Andy, myself and the lads in our garage lined up with our pride and joy! Taken moments before the crash :(

The second time out was a different experience entirely. More confident having completed the scouting laps and knowing how to take the corners, I pushed myself to speeds that got my adrenalin pumping.

On my fourth session I could hear myself screaming with joy when I finally got my body in the right position round Druids Bend to get my knee down. It took a while, but the my brand new Dainese pads were scuffed! Woohooo!!!

Annoyingly it didn’t stop there, foolishly I pushed myself further and further thinking I was some wunderkind and had something to prove. On the fith and final session I awoke being lifted from the stretcher onto the bench in the medic’s centre at Brands Hatch. I had lost control and crashed just above Paddock Hill Bend. They found me unconcious so I don’t have any recollection of what happened. Needless to say I spent a night in hospital and the bikes needs a bit of tender loving care before it will race again…. which it will!

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The aftermath… thanks to Dan for helping me fix the bike!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Motor Bikes . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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