Brands Hatch GP nolimits vid 21/7 Had a pretty epic day doing the Brands Hatch GP circuit yesterday. It was a bit mixed emotions through the day as we had a bunch of red flags from crashes and it was getting frustrating but they gave us a double time session at the end to make up for it. It's an incredible circuit; possibly one of the best I've done I think. It's such a shame about all the noise problems with idiot neighbours that they do not run more days on the full circuit. The S1000RR came of age for me I think. I rode it at Spa and Nurburgring last month and got on well but they are very different to the slower and more technical British circuits. I must admit I was missing the lightweight agility of the Panigale but the BMW engine is super impressive. They are both seriously capable machines but the Panigale feels like a racebike whereas the BMW feels like a roadbike. I'm very tempted to go on a weight saving mission but it would be thousands for the full system and race fairings etc so trying not to go down that route. For most of yesterday I was a bit off balance trying to learn how to ride the bike. I was putting way too much weight through the handle bars in braking which was unsettling the bike a lot. By the last session I had played with the suspension a bit to tighten stuff up and moved my rear sets back some more which let me find my balance on the foot pegs and things became a lot more fun. You dont have full control of the front suspension settings on the S1000RR unless you buy a front suspension travel POT sensor which isn't cheap which is a bit poor on such an expensive bike. The setting you have controls both compression and rebound at the same time. The bike is so capable on the road that I guess it's an ok compromise but still it seems unnecessary. I used some special Metzeller Isle of Man slicks that FWR had going cheap. They are not quite as sticky as the normal Pirellis I use and take longer to warm up due to having a harder central strip on the back to last longer at the IOM but they are very good. Every lap was 1'45'' in this last session. This vid is the loosest one as it's more fun to watch but the later ones were much smoother.
