Let’s all rejoice in how shit we are. Remember when Guintoli did that 1:37 at Donington on a totally stock Gsxr and we where all shocked?! I spoke to Mr Bridgestone today, who informs me that Haslam did a 1:35 at Donington on a totally stock Ron Haslam race school fireblade... on sports touring rubber!! what the hell! 6-7 seconds off of a wsbk laptime for Christ sake on a showroom stock bike with road trip rubber on ! Unreal. I tried to spin a few laps on my gsxr at pace (my pace whatever that is). The best I managed was 1:44 on road tyres chasing Graeme. It was sketchy !!
But are they having any more fun than us?? I'm resigned to shitness on a bike. Fortunately I don't have to do it for a living.... But hey, roll on sunny days at Donington again this year!!
Fast lap times are a bit like my sex life. Slow, generally disappointing, doesn’t last long and generally have friends videoing it, with their GoPro helmet cam but it’s a bloody riot! Some people are just naturally awesome on bikes.
Just the thought of that laptime on road tyres makes my bum hole twitch tbh luckily for Haslam he weighs about as much as my ball bag and has much more talent
The Dunlop guy at the Ron Haslam school who talks to you about their tyres after your session, told that story when I did my last RH day back in 2019.
Well that’s the story he told. The point he was making was that sports touring rubber was more than enough for snobbish mere mortals who won’t entertain anything other than the latest and greatest sports rubber on their sports bikes.
That I agree with to the point of knowing what’s going on below. And these guys know what going on, unlike most average Joe (me included)
TBH within my "performance envelope" give me Road 5 or Diablo Rosso III over Supercorsa please. I had SCs on my HP4 and never seemed to click with them, sport touring FTW.
I use Road 5s, Scorpions, sport touring stuff. What I can safely say is I will never find the absolute limits of those tyres , they are plenty good enough for me.
There's quite a difference (in any sport) between what 'normal' people feel is 'comfortable for performance' and what is actually required for performance. To give an example, I used to do archery and was in Glos. County team for many years. You'd be astounded at the number of basic archers who buy olympic level equipment that they don't need (90%+) when they could easily get to county level with equipment costing literally 10 times less if only they'd work on their technique. Money spent on coaching is much better than money spent on equipment for most sports (providing you have decent basic equipment). i2i Knee Down school shows you how easy it it to go knee down (safely) on very average, even near worn out, rubber when you fully understand the physics behind how to ride properly.
I think the sport touring rubber would have given nearly as much grip as a supercorsa sp (not SC's etc), the difference though is that after 2 laps it would have literally overheated and fallen apart, there is no way guinters or haslam can go do a session at pace on touring rubber, it's literally designed to work at 50% the temprature of even something like a supercorsa. I had an old Dunlop that he had used and signed, it was totally destroyed, as in the rubber was 'torn'. I was told it was because he went out to do a demonstration session, and did 3 laps. The are animals though, but I spend 40 hours a week advising on Information Security in a Telco, I bet I'm much better at it than the average pro racer. The interesting thing for me is looking at how people like Baron Von Grumble go from road VLOG's to the sort of pace he has, and tbh the answer apart from a decent amount of talent is repetition and time. most people average a few trackdays a year, Baron pre-Covid was doing 2 a month... and Guinters seems to ALWAYS be out.
Nah, he is just trying to sell road rubber, I need slicks to try and win inters, without I'm just never on the first back to the NL biscuit tin ....
I agree. But the majority of people who did the RH day were predominantly road riders and not regular track day riders.
So not sure what tyres he would have been riding with but I was in the next door garage to Josh Brookes and Brock Parkes for the first outing of the new R1M at Almeria in February 2015. It was said that the bikes were straight from a UK dealer. Out of the box, Josh was putting in 1’33s and well over 10 seconds quicker than any of the FE track day warriors there, despite what they thought Andy
