CLASS at Infineon Raceway

My friends Martin and Steve and I took one of Reg Pridmore's CLASSes at Infineon Raceway, at the end of April. Steve and I have done this a number of times before, mostly at Seattle International Raceway (or whatever it's called now) and at Laguna Seca, but this was our first experience at the formerly named Sears Point track.

Martin (from Auburn, CA) and Steve (from Seattle) had rendezvoused at my house in Santa Cruz a couple days earlier, and then we rode up to Novato to motel rooms we had reserved. Then we went over to KBasa and Tina's house in Marinwood. After a house tour and some pleasant chat in the garage, we all bundled into their truck and went out for dinner.

In the case of Infineon Raceway, besides the name change, some very significant physical changes have come along. There are now four different track layouts depending on who and what is racing. Also, the dragstrip is not a part of the road course. This is excellent, since a dragstrip is invariably covered with melted rubber and even the slightest bit of moisture makes it slippery as snot. Here's what the motorcycle course looks like:

In fact, the course we rode isn't even this same AMA motorcycle course. In our case, we didn't use the bus stop section surrounding turn 9a, and we used the full length of the track out beyond the foreshortened turn 11. Here's a quick tour around the track:

• Grandstand and Turn 1: The exit to the pits is from the straight before turn 11, before the grandstands, and the entrance back to the track is just after turn 1. The start/finish line is right in front of the grandstands. Turn 1 is another bus stop type of turn, so named because a rider pretty much has to slow down enough to pick up passengers while going through it. The turn is marked off with cones and is flat, but exits into an uphill section under a bridge.
• Turn 2: After passing under the bridge, there's a nicely banked, shallow, uphill left which can be driven pretty hard. Except that the road then makes a big sweeping right that apexes right at the crest of the hill. You can't see the actual apex until you've committed for the turn. Because the apex is at the crest—the piont of maximum lean occurs just when the suspension on the bike is unloading and therefore it's also the time of minimum available traction! Yipes! I never did figure this turn out. If I had, I'd have probably used the straight afterwards to pass people. Instead I was always out of the power band and struggling to bring up my Rs.
• Turns 3 and 3a: These are nice turns that are reminiscent of a good backroad.
• Turns 4 and 5: Although 4 is downhill, it's not so sharp or steep that you have to hold up on the throttle, and as 5 is gentle, this can be a good place to pass. However, 5 leads up to another crest and hides...
• Turn 6, the Carousel: Here you can really lean over. It's well banked and strongly downhill, so a lot of speed is picked up. The apex is under a bridge and the shadow and the hill on the inside hide the exit, but it's big and sweeping, so this is another good place to pass.
• Turn 7: The run up to 7 is slightly uphill. Although the drawing shows two sharp 90° rights, in fact it's possible to make them into one big, flat, sweeping 180° turn.
• Turns 8-10: This section, the whole of which used to be known as the chicane, is very fast. Just focus on setting up for the next turn as a part of executing the one in front of you.
• Turn 11: This flat 180 is pretty tight and I had to downshift into 2nd for it.

A lot of this track requires you to know ahead of time what you're going to do, without being able to see it first. And the carousel in particular is a pretty wild ride. OTOH, many of the turns are like those you meet in real life.

The school was pretty typical: A class goes out for a turn around the track while B class looks at different points with comments from Reg about how they're doing. Particulars about where to be on the track for turns 2 and 5, the blind ones. Then A comes in and gets some classroom time while B gets to warm up on the track. That's the way goes, with A and B alternating track and class time through the day.

Speaking of which, it had rained most of the week preceding our class, and we were warned that even though it looked like it had dried up, there were still a few damp spots. Apparently the day before several people had gone down when they had exceeded the traction of their tires in the cold rain.

We all had a great time, though I think Martin was pretty pooped out at the end. Not to say I wasn't tired either—the level of focus necessary is quite draining. Steve was the hot rider, though, and he passed me a couple times.

For the last year or so there's been a photographer, Ian Donald, shooting digital pictures at Reg's bay area schools. So, we have some shots of ourselves:

Turn 3a:

Turn 4:

Turn 7:

There are lots more photos available.