Things to do at the track

If you are going to the track, and you are not racing, there are lots of things to do (dont forget your stopwatch!). For starters, show up early, like 8AM early. This will give you a chance to see how everything works, and could give you an opportunity to work a corner should you choose to do so. Working one of the corners allows you to get a really close look at the action, and possibly make some dough, but you really have to pay attention to what is going on as the safety of the riders is in your hands.

If you want to get into racing, you will need to spend time at a track, period. Going to a race before you are ready to ride and just being a part of the scene will help immensely when you are ready to go. You can go check out the tech inspection area, see what people bring, what they don't bring, see what the inspectors are looking for, chat them up while they are not busy and see if they can answer any questions you have about the rules. Tell them you are interested in getting started and they are likely to give you all kinds of information, including a rule book and a fee schedule. After the tech area just walk around and see how things work, it will be invaluable later on when you have your bike there and you are running around frantically looking for the tech area because your practice just made first call while you were unloading your bike.

Watching the bikes whizz by you on the straightaway at over 100 MPH really should be on the bottom of your list though. (even though it is a rush at first) Go around to each and every corner and watch the fast people, see how they enter the corners, listen to when they are getting on the throttle, see how they move on the bike. Basically take one rider at a time and just study their every move, watch them all the way around a lap if you can. See where they start braking, how long they are on the brakes, shift points, where they are looking, etc. There is a lot to riding fast, but by studying what people are doing, you can get the merest glimpse of what it is like. Not all that you see will be something that you can apply to your riding, but it will be informative none-the-less.

In between races, or at the lunch break, stop in and talk to some of the riders you saw. If you see them wrenching madly on their bike, it may not be the best time, move on to the next guy. Most of the people you will meet at the track are really nice people and will be happy to talk to you and answer some questions. These people all have the same addictions you do, speed and motorcycles. Its all part of the natural cycle, when you start out, you ask 80 bajillion questions of everyone you see that is faster than you, and when you get faster, the newbies will be firing their questions at you trying to see how they can go faster. I really can't say enough about the people I met at the track, some of them have become great friends. Most of the time, you will come back from a practice session or race and someone you were riding near or passed will come around to you (or you go around) and want to talk about what happened on the track. You can learn a lot from the other newbies out there, some of them are going to start out MUCH faster than you are. For example, when Ben Spies was 14 he was blowing the doors off some much more experienced experts on the track and he was still really approachable.