weeksy
Yesterday was the day the Superduke has been waiting for... all the winter prep, the mods, the upgrades and the worrying about it being ready on time.
The day before i was running round collecting vans, loading bikes and picking up Giantpygmy. Then it was off up to Rockingham to meet up with RSVMAN from TRC along with a buddy of his.
An evening of beers, dead animal and banoffee pie was had with a great bit of banter, tattoo discussions and some weird childbirth chat !!!
Next day was Rocki.... Giantpygmy had never been there at all, Mrs Weeksy has been to Rocki but never on the international layout, i'd only done it once, but that was a decade ago on my old Fireblade.
We met up with Couchie who was in fine chatty form with his new CBR600FS
The briefing, preparation and getting ready all went smoothly....
The Superduke was then fired up and ready to play. Couple of laps to work out where we were going and then they unleashed us.... well... they unleashed some people... i was having enough issues just keeping up on the warm up laps LOL. I really am pretty slow these days, without actually knowing why. Even Giantpygmy overtaking me didn't give me a kick into life. But i was loving the bike, the handling and the brakes now are bloody astounding !!!
Mrs Weeksy was out next and we had some girlie out on a 400 Honda... Without being too harsh, she didn't get over 40 poassible 45mph for the whole session... Now, all people have paid their money and deserve tracktime accordingly.. but i'm a little bemused why you'd do a trackday if that was your limit. So Mrs Weeksys speed was somewhat hampered as there's no overtaking at first for the Novice group.
Out again for another session on the Superduke, trying to brake a little later and throttle a little earlier... i felt i was getting somewhere and holding onto other groups of riders a bit better.. Although still on the slow side. Happily though Giantpygmy didn't overtake me in session 2. I was trying 1 gear higher in 4th on the long long lefthander, which gave me better feel and meant i was at 7000rpm instead of 8500rpm though the long sweeper.
Throughout the rest of the day i had epic battles with Pygmy who stuffed me into the first hairpin with a VERY late braking overtake, only for me to catch him up and hang onto him for the next few corners.. then onto the straight and WHAM, his ZX9R destroyed the Superduke down the main start finish straight... admittedly it's a tuned ZX9R, but DAMN it killed me... i then had to spend the next 5 corners catching up again... lap after lap of this... Really good fun. Pygmy then made a bit of a mess of the last chicane due to a rider throwing himself on the floor, so i grabbed the oppertunity to nip back past him, although possibly i'd have got a ride through penalty for ovetaking under yellows if we were racing... but in my defence, the yellows were not out as it happend right in front of us
Couple more sessions then i called it a day early... my brain was fried and i started making silly mistakes, overruning, underpowering and just making a balls of all the corners... so decided that would do me.
All in all, i can't fault the Superduke at all... at my level of ability it's a complete weapon of a bike, controlled, poised and stable.... great on the brakes and easy to manouver, goes anywhere and everywhere you want, every single time.
For the life of me i still can't work out why some people don't like Rockingham, it's a great place to ride IMO
The day before i was running round collecting vans, loading bikes and picking up Giantpygmy. Then it was off up to Rockingham to meet up with RSVMAN from TRC along with a buddy of his.
An evening of beers, dead animal and banoffee pie was had with a great bit of banter, tattoo discussions and some weird childbirth chat !!!
Next day was Rocki.... Giantpygmy had never been there at all, Mrs Weeksy has been to Rocki but never on the international layout, i'd only done it once, but that was a decade ago on my old Fireblade.
We met up with Couchie who was in fine chatty form with his new CBR600FS
The briefing, preparation and getting ready all went smoothly....
The Superduke was then fired up and ready to play. Couple of laps to work out where we were going and then they unleashed us.... well... they unleashed some people... i was having enough issues just keeping up on the warm up laps LOL. I really am pretty slow these days, without actually knowing why. Even Giantpygmy overtaking me didn't give me a kick into life. But i was loving the bike, the handling and the brakes now are bloody astounding !!!
Mrs Weeksy was out next and we had some girlie out on a 400 Honda... Without being too harsh, she didn't get over 40 poassible 45mph for the whole session... Now, all people have paid their money and deserve tracktime accordingly.. but i'm a little bemused why you'd do a trackday if that was your limit. So Mrs Weeksys speed was somewhat hampered as there's no overtaking at first for the Novice group.
Out again for another session on the Superduke, trying to brake a little later and throttle a little earlier... i felt i was getting somewhere and holding onto other groups of riders a bit better.. Although still on the slow side. Happily though Giantpygmy didn't overtake me in session 2. I was trying 1 gear higher in 4th on the long long lefthander, which gave me better feel and meant i was at 7000rpm instead of 8500rpm though the long sweeper.
Throughout the rest of the day i had epic battles with Pygmy who stuffed me into the first hairpin with a VERY late braking overtake, only for me to catch him up and hang onto him for the next few corners.. then onto the straight and WHAM, his ZX9R destroyed the Superduke down the main start finish straight... admittedly it's a tuned ZX9R, but DAMN it killed me... i then had to spend the next 5 corners catching up again... lap after lap of this... Really good fun. Pygmy then made a bit of a mess of the last chicane due to a rider throwing himself on the floor, so i grabbed the oppertunity to nip back past him, although possibly i'd have got a ride through penalty for ovetaking under yellows if we were racing... but in my defence, the yellows were not out as it happend right in front of us
Couple more sessions then i called it a day early... my brain was fried and i started making silly mistakes, overruning, underpowering and just making a balls of all the corners... so decided that would do me.
All in all, i can't fault the Superduke at all... at my level of ability it's a complete weapon of a bike, controlled, poised and stable.... great on the brakes and easy to manouver, goes anywhere and everywhere you want, every single time.
For the life of me i still can't work out why some people don't like Rockingham, it's a great place to ride IMO