I attended my very first class at Keith Code's California Superbike School last Thursday and Friday, May 18th and 19th, 2000. It was at Virginia International Raceway (VIR), which is about 10 minutes from Danville, Virginia.
VIR is an awesome race course. At the school, we used the South Course. Apparently, there is also a North Course and then the full circuit. The South Course was 1.64 miles long. Depending on how you count them, you could say there are 6 turns or 10 turns. And it has some nice elevation changes that don't really add any technical difficulty but they do make for a blind crested entrance to a 3-turn S, and a couple of nice humps for catching air with the front wheel, if your bike is 'ard enough.
The whole facility appeared to be brand new. The asphalt was certainly of unquestionable newness. And it felt really different on the old knee sliders, too. It felt like my sliders were sliding on carpeting instead of asphalt. Whatever, it was certainly sticky enough.
I was there for two days. The CSS has four classes that you can take. Level I thru Level IV are each a one day course. You can take any of them as many times as you want, but you have to take all the preceeding levels before you can take a higher level. I used the traditional approach and took Level I on my first day and Level II on my second.
When you go through the CSS, you have a choice of using one of their ZX-6Rs, or bringing your own bike. I signed up for the class before I bought my R6, so I had signed up to use their bike. It never occured to me that it would be a problem to change from using their bike to using my own - until it was too late. The CSS has a limited number of slots in each class for people who are using their own bike and by the time I tried to change, all those slots were full. So, I rode a track-prepped 2000 ZX6 shod with Dunlop D207ZR tires (i.e street compound) for both days.
The Level I course consisted of 5 classroom sessions, each followed by an on-track session. Each classroom session covered a new riding topic and provided a drill that we were supposed to work on during the following session. Unfortunately, we got shorted out of our last track session because we were shut down for about an hour during the day while the ambulance tranported one unlucky sod to the hospital because of a nasty cut he received during a short stint of asphalt surfing. But they made that up to us the next day.
I suppose I should say right now that I was very surprised by one thing that was not discussed during the school at any time: Speed. The classroom sessions never talked about going faster. The topics were never set into a frame of reference of trying to go faster. It was all about 2 things - how to make the bike more stable while cornering, and how to be more comfortable on the bike while cornering. And if you think about it, those 2 things, combined with a desire to go faster are all it takes to realize that desire.
The five classroom topics of Level I were:
The five corresponding drills were:
By the end of the first day, I had had a lot of fun riding the ZX6 around the track (I was getting knee down by the second lap of the first track session and knee and footpegs together during the 2nd session), but I wasn't really sure it had all been worth it. I wasn't sure I was any better of a rider or that I was going any faster than I would have been if I had just had the day to myself to ride the track, practice on it, and build up speed without any coaching. The stuff in the class was pretty much all stuff I'd read before in Keith's books or read and/or learned from experience other places in the past. It was good to have it all refreshed in my mind, but I still wasn't totally sold.
The second day was the Level II class. Again, as on the first day, I was in a class of approximately 20 people. Also like the first day, there were two other classes of 20 people each. On this day there was my class of 20 Level II students, another class of 20 Level I students and a third class of 20 that was a mix of Level III and Level IV students.
The curriculum for the 2nd day was primarily vision skills. Once again we had 5 classroom sessions each with a drill to practice during the following track session. Honestly, I don't remember the individual drills from this class as well as I do the ones from the first day, but here's a stab at what they were:
Also, during the Level II class, if it's an option at the track you're at (which it was at VIR), you get to ride the Lean Machine. I got to do that after the "last" track session. The Lean Machine is a ZX6 with outriggers on it. They stick out on either side of the bike and have rollers on the ends of them. They stay flat on the ground no matter how you lean the bike and they have hydraulic dampers on them to catch the bike if it falls over (or slides out). The Lean Machine allows you to lean over to your and/or the bike's limits without having to worry about crashing. Unfortunately, it's only use is on a skidpad where you can just ride around in circles going faster and faster and leaning more and more. Since some tracks don't have a skid pad, you can't ride the Lean Machine at every track that the school goes to. I'm *very* happy I got to ride it. The Man himself, Keith Code, was my coach when I got to ride it. Within two or three circuits around Keith, I had the Lean Machine leaned as far over as it would go. I was literally sliding the front tire continuously in a circle, going a steady speed in 2nd gear. It was an unbelievable awesome feeling! And Keith put the cherry on top when he called me in and told me, "that was great! I wouldn't change a thing." Man, was I on Cloud 9!
After riding the Lean Machine, I still had time to get back over to the paddock, hop on my assigned track bike, and ride in the last, "bonus", session of the day. Since my class was about 90% people who had been in Level I the day before and we got shorted one track session on that day, they arranged the schedule for the 2nd day so that we got one extra track session at the end of the day. And it was free reign, no drills to do, just go out and haul ass. It was during that final session, after riding the Lean Machine, that I experienced motorcyle roadracing Nirvana. I went through the left-hander on the back straight at max possible speed and rode a controlled two-wheeled drift all the way from the apex of the turn until I was going straight again. This was at the top of 3rd gear, I think, so probably somewhere a bit over 100mph. And it just felt good!
The 2000 ZX-6R is a damn good track bike. I've never been a Kawasaki fan - even though I have to admit that my '98 ZX9 was the best bike I've ever owned - but I think I'd be just as happy racing one of those ZX6's as I am with my R6. It handled very well and had good power. It never did pull the front end off the ground like my R6 does in 1st gear, so maybe if I got a chance to ride them back-to-back, I'd turn out to have a real preference for the R6. Maybe I'll find out one day soon... Also, at the end of that last track session on the 2nd day, the brake lever was starting to come back pretty close to the bar. But that probably just needs a change of fluid to fix.
I rode the whole two days on the standard tires that the school uses for student bikes - Dunlop D207ZRs. That is, street compound sport tires. I was amazed at how well those tires stick when I ran them for a day on my R6 at Roebling Road. I am even more impressed with them now. I was dragging knee and footpeg simultaneously on the ZX6 - and I'm talking footpeg feelers that were already ground down to 1/4" nubs before I ever even got on the bike - sometimes at speeds that had to be over 100mph and the tires were still sticking. I only slid them twice in the whole two days. Once at the very end, as I already described, and once when I pushed the front coming out of a turn and rolled out of the gas a bit to tighten up my line on the exit. And that was on off-camber pavement. And these tires were not new at the beginning of the two days either. I could probably win Novice races on these "street" compound tires. Well. Assuming I were capable of winning Novice races at all... Amazing!
Keith and Judy Code were there along with 4 riding instructors and several other support staffers. The riding instructors present were the CSS' chief riding instructor, Cobie Fair, my personal friend Greg Gorman, Jason Paden and Mark Horning. Keith taught all the classroom sessions for all 3 groups each day and then each student was assigned to a particular riding instructor for the full day. My first day, Greg was my riding instructor, and on the second day, Jason was my assigned tutor. Because I'm a friend of Greg's, I was lucky enough to get to have breakfast with him and the rest of the staff, including the Codes, both school days and dinner with them all the night between the two days. What a great bunch of people! Every one of them was unfailingly nice, polite and as helpful as possible at all times. It was a real treat to be around them. And as fast as I felt like I was going, I only ever caught up with any of the instructors on the track when they were following or leading some other student. This school is certainly not a case of those who can't do, teach.
It's hard to say whether where I ended up skill/speed-wise was any different than where I would have gotten to if I had taken those same two days to just ride the track and practice on my own bike without any coaching at all. I had never been to VIR before, so I don't have any baseline lap times of my own to compare to or anything like that. But, I've been riding and racing for a long time and I've never gotten to really experience and play with the feeling of pushing the front like I did on the Lean Machine. And I know I learned a few things about how to position my body while turning and how to physically handle the bike in some situations (ala the Pickup Drill) from Keith and his riding instructors. So, my gut feeling is that yes, I learned things by taking this class that I would not have been taught or figured out for myself if I had just come out and spent two days riding the track on my own bike. The two days, using their bike but my own leathers and helmet cost a total of $1150. And it was all worth it to me.
I give it an enthusiastic two thumbs up!