The bike

OK, lets start with the obvious. You want to race motorcycles, you have to get a race bike. Now, you could ride that sweet darlin' you've been riding on the street and polishing on your days off, or you could cash in on your investment and pick up a used race bike.

There are a couple of reasons to do this:

• the bike has already been prepped with safety-wire, race body, and possibly suspension work
• you are going to crash your bike, admit it to yourself now, why not start with a bike that you haven't spent hours polishing?
• let someone else take the brunt of the cost associated with putting together a bike. If you are really good and want to stick with it, you can buy a new bike and prep it yourself later. Try to save some money now, because once you get hooked, that concept is gone...
• a wrecked bike can be totally and completely fixed without much hassle, even if it is a new frame, and you get the bike that much cheaper too.
  

So, you are looking for a used race bike, what exactly are you looking for? Well, you don't want last season's championship winning bike for starters. Odds are that bike is built to the letter of the rulebook, and will require a LOT of maintenance which you don't really want to deal with. The perfect bike would be 1-2 year old 600, raced in a mostly stock class, and have as few modifications as necessary. The reason I recommend a 600, you can always race up a class, say a 600 in a 750 class, but you cant race a 750 in a 600 class, and track time is what it takes to get better. Also, they are much lighter, and it wont be as difficult on those muscles you don't know you have yet.

The stock exhaust would also be nice. Why the stock exhaust you say? It sounds like a huge blender you say? True, it does sound like you are making margaritas, but that also opens up a production class for you to race in where it is stock bike against stock bike, a real rider's class. The other reason is that you don't have to shell out $800 + for a new exhaust, and when you crash, you aren't stuck shelling out big $ again. A lot of factory exhaust systems can be bought on eBay for pretty cheap because street riders don't care to keep them around once they have put that shiny new aftermarket pipe on. The idea here is the same one your local crack dealer employs, get them in cheap, get them hooked, and then show them the REAL cost. By the way, it is no coincidence that I compare this to doing crack, you will get hooked and it is REAL expensive.

So, back to the bike, some valving of the factory forks would be good, maybe a new rear shock, but it is not essential. The factory suspension will hussle you around the track plenty fast without even touching the settings. Pretty much any bike on the market today is much more capable than most riders out there, they are just that good. A bike that is 1-2 years old is not going to put you too far behind, most of the novices out there are doing the same thing you are, just testing the waters to see if they like it. Those novices that have the newest machinery and the shiny bodywork, they have been around for at least a year, and have made the commitment to going to the expert level and possibly pro, so don't worry about them for now, you can play with them when you get to expert.

So, in summation, you want a mostly stock 600 that is 1-2 years old that has already been race prepped, but lightly. You can find these all over the internet, its just picking the one that you like the best. When you are starting out, pretty much all bikes are going to perform similarly for you. Each brand has a slight difference you can feel when riding them, but all are equally fast, so just pick one that you like the feel of. Most people tend to love a single brand and will ride that brand forever because it is most comfortable, so you may want to check out the latest 600 from the manufacturer you already ride.

Next time I'll talk about the gear you need for racing.