Track crash - my fault?

[Red Herring]

I've run a number of "trackdays" for complete beginners, it's not as hard as you might imagine. Basically you need to get together enough people to completely fill a group, usually between twenty five and thirty depending on circuit, and then approach an existing trackday organizer and effectively block book one of their groups. The key to making your session "safe" is ultimately discipline, combined with the fact that everybody should be sort of mates all with a common objective which doesn't include getting their ego out....

You start the first couple of sessions off with effectively a "no overtaking" rule which allows everybody to get tyres and themselves settled in and then just restrict it to the first couple of laps in subsequent session, but retain a no overtaking rule in any braking zone. This prevents the sort of thing that happened to the OP and if it is combined with a certain ammount of mutual co-operation, ie: if someone is up your chuff don't accelerate quite so hard off the next bend so they can easily pass, it prevents the bunching you often get behind a powerful bike that is slow in the bends.

If you do find a particular individual is getting frustrated at the level of control imposed then it's not normally a problem moving them into another session where they can go and prove their manhood. We invariably found there were outsiders from these groups asking if they can join ours!

The trick is finding enough people who will commit up front so you can arrange it. How about putting forward the suggestion that we arrange next years AR at Pembrey circuit.........

Thank you RH, some very sensible suggestions there which I will definitely be incorporating into my plans. Unfortunately, Pembrey (although a decent track) is about the furthest away from me and Cadwell is on my doorstep so I'm looking at going there first.

[BoltonSte]

I do track days with the BMW club ( have mentioned them before on here) they are run similar to RH, although they book the whole day with three groups, beginners/inters and adv.


I know of 1 session which was stopped in 3 years at Snet due to someone overcooking the hairpin at the end of the day as it started to rain.


Oh and you don't need a BMW to do the day, there's plenty of instructors available including ex racers.