Motorcycle Racing School - The Streets

Given the title of this magazine, you might be wondering why this month's column is illustrated with a photo of me in full leathers trying my damnedest to scuff a knee puck without landing on my head. This is Super Streetbike magazine, not Super Trackbike! Besides, it's not as though there's any shortage of magazines out there devoted to traditional knee-dragging and track riding, as most other sportbike-oriented publications seem to focus inordinately on track riding, even though probably less than 10 percent of all sportbikes sold in this country will ever turn a wheel in a closed-course atmosphere. But pick up the average motorcycle magazine and you'd think it's only in business to print shots of some bendy little motojournalists whipping the latest sporting missiles around a hairpin turn.

Sure, it's easy for us hard-core street riders to hate on all the wannabe-racers clogging up the sportbike world, but check this out: I recently attended a sermon at the Church of the Track Day Gods, and I'm here to testify, brothers and sisters, that spending a day circulating the racetrack ain't all bad. Sure, it's a king-sized hassle to trailer up and drag your butt to a racetrack located way out in the middle of East Ja'Bip. Once there, you have to tape over your lights and turn signals, subject your ride to a full-cavity tech inspection and also shell out a huge chunk of change just for the pleasure of risking serious bodily harm to see how fast you aren't. And hanging around with a group of testosterone-poisoned dudes all dressed in tight leather clothing? Sounds like something I'd only expect to encounter at a Village People reunion concert. But after participating in as many open track days as I could get to over the past three years, I, a dyed-in-the-leather street rider, can state with utter confidence that riding on the track is a great idea for even the most hard-boiled street guy.

Like most street jockeys, I once was convinced that track riding was only useful for folks intending to become racers. Why, I figured, risk trashing my streetbike that I'd invested nearly a college tuition's worth of chrome and custom details into just for the bragging rights that come with a quick lap? But over years of riding on the streets, I encountered too many corners entered too hot and too many panic-braking moments that soon had me thinking that a little structured riding practice, the kind that you can only get in the controlled and predictable environment of the racetrack, would be a good thing for me. A racer friend suggested that I enroll in a track school and promised that if I didn't come out of the experience a better, more confident rider, he'd buy me a set of tires. That was a bet too good to pass up. Before you could say "safety wire," I was blipping the throttle of my Ducati on the start/finish line of a local track circuit.

Now, I'd love to say that first school was a breeze, and I walked away with my skills sharper than a switchblade knife. I didn't, and I certainly didn't get those new skins from my buddy, either! To be honest, I was served so many super-sized helpings of humble pie that day that I'm surprised I ever set foot in a racetrack paddock again. I might have considered myself a reasonably quick street rider at the time, but during that first riding school, after my tricked-out Ducati superbike was passed for about the 11-millionth time by more experienced riders on bikes as small as 250cc, I began to think I could learn a thing or two here. And some of the folks doing the passing, I'm not ashamed to say, were women too! OK, sign me up for lesson number two.

My wife won't hesitate to tell you that I'm too stubborn to give up at something just because I suck at it. Enrolling in several more schools, I stuck at it and spent countless more track days getting passed, dissed and beaten down so many times that I began to wonder if a 280-pound guy like me even had a chance of getting a handle on this sportbike game, or whether I should just hang the leathers up for good and trade the Ducati in for a Hog. But then, as happens with so many sports, things started to click into place, and my constant practice started to pay off. All that time and money I was spending on the track was affecting my street riding in really interesting ways.

Sometime this summer I realized that it had been years since I got into a corner faster than I'd intended to and been forced to panic brake; meanwhile, a few of the guys that I used to think were really fast, guys who had never taken me up on my offer to tag along on my visits to the local track, were lately having a hard time keeping up with me on our weekend street rides. It may be a clich to say that we'll never come close to the real performance potential of our modern sportbikes on the street, but it's true. And let me school you on this-approaching those same limits in the safe and predictable atmosphere of the racetrack, where you can concentrate on the task at hand without the distractions that are part of riding in the real world, will give you skills and experience that will prove invaluable once you return to the mean streets. Not to mention that, unless you look forward to spending a few weeks in the local Crossbar Hotel, the racetrack is the only legitimate place to explore the top speed potential of your tricked-out ride.

Don't get me wrong-there's still nothing more fun than blasting down a deserted back road, cutting through your fave canyon on your own terms, or profiling for the cuties along the block. But I'll be damned if I can't do all those things better, safer and faster after spending a few days at the track, tight leathers and all.