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Here I am, after another track day at the Estoril racetrack. This time, it was a DragRacingShow organized track day, which is not my favorite organizer for this type of events. The fact that they had a great price made me go for it - 50 Euros for 1 hour and 30 minutes of open track.

Since their track days are usually a bit less organized than others I have been to (well, it has to do with several factors), at least from my personal experience and point of view, I tried to go for the session where I felt I could ride with an easier state of mind. Nevertheless, they do a great job of promoting track events, reaching a far more wide audience and participants, and being sucessfull at being original and making the best of the track time they get. I am sure that with some more experience and professionalism, they can achieve awesome results.

This means I went for the first group, from 9am till 10:30am, and being the first at such an early hour in the fast group usually means a better experience, with less riders, but usually the more experienced, and the track is still free from oil or debris from possible crashes.

I enjoyed a lot meeting many of my friends there, since the cheaper price meant many were tempted to go as well, and days like this are as good for chatting and having a good time with them as for enjoying some track riding.

This time some top national racers took the time to go there and practice a bit, which made for some interesting overtakes (I got a couple of scares myself, LOL !), and it's amazing the difference in speed from a Stocksport racing machine to my 600 RR (not to mention how much faster those guys are than me). As always, the main and inner straights make it hard for me to overtake any 1000cc bikes, but it is fun to catch up on the twisty bits. I do have to be honest, I don't push as hard or risk any falls as I used to when I raced, and my bike is pretty much all stock except for braided brake lines, pipe and PC3, but I sure need  to up my pace again, to be able to keep up with some of my friends that ride liter bikes (right Goncalo ? ).

This time I felt a bit safer on corner entry, because I had spent some time adjusting my front suspension a couple of days before. I still think that next time I will still need a bit more compression and extention, since I still feel there's too much movement up front. The rear will see a bit more extension too, to reduce the speed of the change in geometry under braking.

Right now, these are my current settings:

Font Pre-load: 3 lines showing (I think I may have still too much static sag int the front, may check this again next time)
Front Rebound: 1.5 turns (from fully closed)
Front Compression: 1.5 turns (from fully closed)

Rear Pre-Load: 4 out of 8
Rear Rebound: 1.5 turns (from fully closed)
Rear Compression: 5 clicks (from fully closed)

Here is a couple of movie clips of me following some friends (many friends ask me to follow them and get them on film, which I gladly do):

Following a black CBR 600 RR
Following Tiago on his Ducati 749 R
Following Goncalo Menezes on his R1
Following briefly an RC 51

*** The full 30 minute video *** (140 Mb !)

You will need to have the XVid codec installed.