I've got to ask...festival curves

[Tonner12r]

I went down to the track today to find a good place to plug in my new tire warmers when the season starts. And I got my place picked out now. I asked if I could go out and look at the track a little and got a big "NO, man...." :D I guess its some big secret, very hush hush. gotta wait for the big unveiling... I was thinking about last year's good times, and how much I liked running the festival curves (back in July pssr ran the curves for the whole day). How come you guys don't use it? I had the best time that day. Driving out of 9 as hard as I could, get past the start/finish then hard on the brakes, big s turns through the "festival" then out to turn 1. That was a riot. You can still come into turn 1 hot enough to blow it, so I'm not understanding why it's not used. That front straight intimidates the hell out of me Out of turn 9, I can't even SEE turn 1! Ok...spin it up, and hang on tight!.:6: Now the back straight is fun. I did nearly all of my passing there. I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Ripping through turn 6 all leaned over, looking over to my right and seeing that concrete wall whizzing past, I was laughing hysterically in my helmet..."this is INSANE!...." God, I love it! I was passing pretty good in the curves pretty well, too. Hard on the brakes lifting the rear wheel a little, I felt like Valentino Rossi passing all the c groupers there:42: (I said I FELT like rossi, not that I was RIDING like rossi.....besides this year its B group). To me, using the festival curves seems like a no-brainer, but it isn't, so it begs the question, what's the inside story on that? And, oh yea, I'm lookin' forward to this season.:mdr:

[Barry Wressell]

What bike were you riding when using the festival curve?

[Tonner12r]

My 06 R6. Yamaha! Eric built it last year. Sebimoto plastics, ss brakelines, vesrah pads. Had mushelin Pilot Powers (did I say mushelins? I meant Mish... Don't ever use PP's at the track! They are EVIL, very evil, not even fun at all!) This year Eric put on Graves exhaust, pc 3, GPS steering damper, and some real tires this year, D 208 GP's, thank you very much, Barry. And I got some tire warmers just to keep them warm. And he gave me about 115.9 horsepower, and 45 ft lbs of torque. The master! I bow to his brilliance!

[flyingbutterknife]

Theres nothing like your bike in 6th gear at full speed coming into a corner and seeing who is going to brake first.....big straights kick ass,why waste it when you got it?

[Justin Watkins]

Its fun, but dangerous in a racing scenario!! They made it safer a few years ago but it still not good enough for bikes.

Imagine 40 600s coming into the curves on the 1st lap, someone crashes or blows the corner and takes out all the guys coming back out onto the track. The walls are VERY close on the left hander and VERY, VERY close on the right handed coming back onto the track. If nothing goes wrong, its not too bad but if you get bumped or two guys come together or someone runs wide etc, someone will get into the walls.

Just my .01 cent

[Tonner12r]

Yea, I did notice that. It was easy to start the turn-in to the curve a little early. All I could think about was if I hit that wall on the way in its gonna look like a bad day at the Isle of Man TT. BANG! Hit on the right side. Bikes spins out into traffic, me right behind it spinning around like a top, with a busted arm."ouch,ouch,ouch..." bikes coming in full tilt, they can't see you until they've made the turn anyway. NOT GOOD! Yea, I get it. Take my chances down the straight. At least you got some runoff at turn 1.

[sanfret]

Walls break bones, turn people grumpy and end lives.