I Love Track Days.........by John Cloonan

Four years ago, I figured something out. I love track days, but there are way too many people at them. So I figured out a way around it. I decided to find a racetrack where I could host a 10-person track day. I'd split the cost 10 ways, and invite nine friends.

Talladega Gran Prix Raceway fit the bill perfectly. Now, four years later, I just completed the fourth 10-person invitational track day. This year, however, was a little different.

I usually book the track and announce the date around December 1, and it fills within a week. Last year, I actually filled 9 of the 10 spots in the first 6 hours. This year, on February 23rd, with only a month left, I still had 7 spots left. Since I already had paid the track deposit, I was a little nervous.

Actually, I was a lot nervous. I lost my job shortly after announcing the date, and decided to host the track day anyway, figuring I'd never have trouble filling it. So I had a big chunk of cash riding on filling this day, and another big chunk due on the day of the track day. If I canceled, I lost the substantial deposit, but if I didn't fill it, I was stuck with writing a huge check for the difference. So I removed the "invitational" part of the track day, and went public. I advertised it on about 30 different sportbike forums, and said "first come, first serve." Even then, I only sold the last spot about 14 days prior to the event. One hurdle gone over.

The downside: I only knew two of the other guys showing up this year. Then, wouldn't you know, one of those guys got sick with a week to go, and had to sell his spot, so now I was hosting a private track day where I knew only ONE of the riders who was scheduled to be there.

Got there Sunday afternoon and hung out at Elite Sportbike's track day, saw a few friends, and got ready to walk the track. As their day finished up, I talked to the track owner, asked him if we were cool to walk the track, and he agreed. Just as my girlfriend and I were finishing up the track walk, one of the riders called to let me know they were about a half-hour out. I told him we were gonna bail and meet them at the hotel, but they were cool to come drop their gear. 

On the road back to the hotel, we saw his truck coming the other way, and I got a wild hair and decided to turn around and follow them back to the track, so we could meet the guys we were gonna be riding with the next day. Well, this guy had brought about half of our track day attendees with him, so we met them all, helped them get their gear dropped at the track, and went for dinner.

Monday was warm, sunny, and beautiful. Everyone got there early, got the pits set up, and we hit the track. I hadn't been there since the prior year, and the new pit set-up out there is great. Lots of places to get power! Other than one guy (who should have known better, to be honest) running out of gas a couple times, we had nothing but sunshine, clear track, and no incidents. Strangely, even though we had 10 registrations, only 8 guys showed up, so everyone had as much track time as they could want. I led a couple parade laps around for people new to the track to show some suggested lines.

Lunch from Big Daddy's Barbecue was fantastic. These ladies went out of their way for us. They're normally not even open on Mondays, but decided to make an exception because, in their words "We're big fans of the guys there at Talladega." 5 pounds of pulled pork, two sauces, baked beans, cole slaw, peach cobbler, and iced tea. The South knows how to eat, folks.

The crew at TGPR was excellent, as usual, and ran pit out for us all day! (We've had to do it ourselves in the past.) We had a couple relative newbies who did very well, and were really picking up speed by the end of the day. In my final session of the day, by some weird mutual non-verbal agreement, I got into an out-and-out race with one of the other guys for the last three or four laps. We had a blast dicing it up out there!

By 4pm, I was spent. I just physically couldn't do it anymore, so I sat out my last session. A successful track day - I was uninjured, and we can use the motorcycle again!