Rennie Scaysbrook | November 2, 2016
Rennie on his way to a personal best lap around Chuckwalla. 17 corners is a lot to learn but with Jason Pridmore’s and Joey Lombado’s help, the speed came to our Road Test Editor.
Turns four and five at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway are real bastard corners. Four is a tight left that opens wide mid-corner, and when you’re on the side of the tire you have to pull it tight for five to get the best possible drive and lengthen the little straight on exit.
In all my previous laps of Chuckwalla, I’ve never come close to getting these two corners right on the Kawasaki ZX-10R. Too tight, too wide, too fast, too slow – I never found the correct recipe for turn for tightness.
Then, following a 17-year-old who fancies himself as the next Cameron Beaubier, Andrew Lee, it clicks.
I brake 30ft later than ever before, get off the brakes, trust the front tire and carry more roll speed. The ZX-10R follows the exact line the circuit designers intended, and I can feel I pick up at least one second just in that spot alone. God, it feels awesome.
Sometimes it takes youth to guide experience.
Pridmore hammers home the teachings. It’s 50 lashes for Rennie if he doesn’t get into the ’49s!
Increasing my roll speed is precisely what Jason Pridmore had been trying to teach me for two days last month at Chuckwalla. Sounds simple, but believe me, it takes a leap of faith to keep a 1000cc superbike pinned long past your normal braking point. And get on the throttle earlier on the exit…
All this is happening during practice for round two of the Chuckwalla Valley Motorcycle Association’s Winter Series. In partnership with Kawasaki USA, Dunlop USA and Jason Pridmore’s Star Motorcycle School, we’d taken a stock-standard 2016 Kawasaki ZX-10R, thrown a few kit parts at it from the Kawasaki race catalogue and made it into a club racing-level Open Class weapon (we’ll have a feature on this bike coming up soon). Then, we hatched a plan to do round one of CVMA, Jason’s Star School and finally, round two to see if I could be trained into finding some more consistent speed.
This story is more about rider development than bike performance, although we did have a bit of an issue with the latter over the course of the weekend with an electrical problem on Friday and an issue on Saturday, necessitating a change of motor. By Sunday everything was working as it should and we could crack out some consistent laps.
Prior to the race weekend I spend time going over my previous article from the Star school so I don’t forget what I am trying to accomplish. It’s been a few weeks, a few beers and not much wide open throttle, but I’m pleased to see Jason’s words have left an impression as I immediately get down to a 1:51s lap, about as fast as I’d managed to go during round one, on Friday after three laps. This meant the bike and I are gelling as we should, and the faster lap times feel safer than the slower ones – which is a crucial point.
A slightly heavier spring in the rear made a huge difference for Rennie when he got hard on the gas.
Saturday morning dawns for qualifying and with a new set of Dunlop soft compound N-Tec slicks, I feel the time is right to really see if I can do it. My goal is not the race result but consistency, and an overall fastest lap time in the 1:49s. If the times are faster, the results will come. If they’re not, I’ll finish nowhere.
After six laps of qualifying I come in. My mechanic, former AMA tuner Joey Lombado, and Jason are standing at the pit road entry. Jason asks how I think I did?
“I’d be surprised if they (the times) were faster than a ’51,” was my reply.
Joey gives a wry smile and says I clocked a 1:48.8s lap and I’m third on the Open grid. I can’t believe it! It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in third place.
That time immediately validates Jason’s teachings. And I’m also pretty stoked I was able to process the information and actually put it into practice. The time felt smooth, consistent and without any extra physical exertion. The old adage of slowing down to go faster never felt so true.
The main reason for the extra speed, in my mind, is down to three things: increased corner entry speed/trusting the front tire more, minimizing the time between off/on throttle, and corner exit body positioning to allow for smoother, stronger drive. Have a look at the two pictures below, taken from round one at CVMA, and then the next photo from this weekend – all the same corner, turn 10.
Styling for the camera and doing it wrong. Rennie’s dropping his inside shoulder too much, making it hard to stand the bike up off the exit.
I’m a lanky bloke and I don’t have a lot of room to move on a modern sportbike, so I tend to get my elbows out, a bit like Ben Spies (only he goes stratospherically faster than I ever will). If you look at the shot of me on the R1 above, I’m hanging off too much and dropping my shoulder, tucking in my elbow too much. This makes it hard to move off the bike and stand it up off the corner. The invisible line from my shoulder to elbow to knee is all out of whack, a bit like a crooked arrow.
Um… no. Rennie needs more lean and to get his ass off the seat more. But it’s better than the R1 photo.
The next shot on the Kawasaki from round one (above) is too much the other way. I’m not hanging off enough and not finishing off the corner properly by standing the bike up. My ass is on the seat too much and I’m twisting my upper body a bit, and this in turn means I run a bit wide. The line from shoulder-elbow-knee is better than on the R1 but still not right.
That’s better! More lean, a bit more ass off the seat, and more room to stand the Kawasaki up off the exit.
Now look at the shot above from this weekend. The bike is leaned over a bit more, my ass is off the seat a touch further and the line from the shoulder-elbow-knee is almost straight. This give me more room to pick the bike up off the corner, get on the gas harder and get more drive. The difference between round one and two is probably 0.2 seconds per corner, but times that by 17 corners and that’s a big chunk of time.
Riding this way is also less tiring. At round one I found the bike was pumping in the rear too much, and I attribute that to a rear spring that was too soft (for round two we went from a 600lb spring to 625lb with two clicks more compression damping, as well as changed to a mechanical steering damper over the electrical one the bike comes standard with), but more my body positioning. Fixing this has made the bike calm down on acceleration, reduce suspension squat/pump, made the bike less tiring to ride and yielded faster, safer lap times. Huzzah!
But it couldn’t help me beat a 17-year-old.
Charge! The race to turn one is on – unfortunately, no holeshots this time for Rennie on the #334, but he didn’t finish any lower than fourth all weekend so it was a successful outing at Chuckwalla.
Over the weekend we run into the aforementioned engine troubles that knocks me out of third place with half a lap to go in Saturday’s final race, but with the fresh motor I manage to take two thirds and a second in the 10 lap Shootout behind Lee who positively smoked us all. Oh well, he’s half my age and clearly half my fear level, plus I have to go to work on Monday and don’t fancy throwing myself on the ground.
Seeing the improvement in lap times has, in my mind, confirmed Jason’s teachings. This project was the first time I’d racing a 1000cc machine for a quite some time, so I was quite apprehensive because, well, this bike is an absolute rocket. Learning how to ride it in a competitive fashion has been incredibly satisfying, although I’m now most likely going to go flat broke because the racing bug has well and truly sunk its teeth in and I gotta find a way back on the grid! Oh, I can hear my wallet screaming already…
Thank you very much to both Joey Lombado (left) and Jason Pridmore (right) for all the effort they put into this project.
Thank you to all the sponsors who have made this project a reality. Without these companies involved, an effort like this would remain in the beer talking realm.
Akrapovic exhausts
Maxima Racing Oils
Dunlop USA
GP Suspension
Drippin Wet
Catalyst Racing Composites
Vortex Racing
Racers Edge Performance
Next week, we’ll have a full run down of this amazing Kawasaki ZX-10R at www.cyclenews.com.
Pretty, isn’t it? Stay tuned for more on this bike at www.cyclenews.com.
