Meet other members locally, make friends throughout the UK and overseas and find the freedom to be yourself with like-minded bikers. To join GBMCC, complete the application form. Rockingham Reviewed Deluge my arse, more like heaven's floodgates opened on the day the dam broke and Noah's ark drifted by on the way to a Turkish mountain top. Do try and remain positive and as Niall MacKenzie would say "Looks like a good day to go sliding". Bloody English weather. Left Thursday evening in damp and soggy conditions arriving at damp and soggy Rockingham which swiftly turned into flooded deluged and sodden 14 degrees Rockingham including, thunder, lightening, hail; well this is flaming June isn't it? Met Wendy and Wendy for drinks and hamburger in the Rockingham Forest Hotel accompanied by soggy chips. Is anything in this place not damp? The European Superbike School is not the organised outfit I have been used to. It started with an apology by the organiser, Tony Scott saying that Frankie Chili could not make it, but Niall MacKenzie would try and show up for one day. Damn, let's cut to the chase - who cares what he rides like? This looked like money wasted on old rope and my premonition was not far off the mark. Rockingham track will be an amazing place when it's finished. Presently it's due to be opened by the Queen this Friday and I hope they clear all the debris and mud from the place or she might lose a corgi or two. The inner track encircled by the oval is quite relentless in that there are hardly any straight bits, you are off your arse all the time and knees of my mature years were not quite up to it. Note: Robert steer clear of this one. Unlike the CSS, each lesson covers three subjects and your instructors are looking to see what can be improved. The first session of Level Two was nothing that hadn't already been covered by the CSS, however the second session was all about braking, something the CSS neglects even to mention. I was evaluated as having good body position, good mid corner and exit, lousy entry due to not braking. So off we went to learn how to slam on the front brake without locking it up to the entry point, and Bob's your auntie! By getting all the load off of the rear, it sets you up to slide the rear wheel round - nice to try this on a wet track but I could genuinely see that Niall MacKenzie had no trouble grasping this particular concept. Apparently Level Three teaches you how to brake to the apex. The instructors did not make much effort to teach you, the responsibility was down to us to bother them to get their comments. Once you did that they were very helpful, but they would be just as happy to ignore you. The second session was also similar to CSS but as I mentioned, everything is compressed and they assume you know quite a lot already. One nice element is the seminars. The first day covered tyre set-up, the second day covered suspension. There was a particularly enlightening moment when one of the race mechanics had a look at my SPS' rear suspension which I had never adjusted from factory settings being the wus that I am. He concluded. "what suspension, you don't have any". Apparently some git (Steve, are you reading this?) had turned my rear shock adjustment to setting 41 out of a possible 42; so going over bumps would feel, well, like bumps. And I thought Ducatis just gave me a stiffy. The evening was particularly welcome and that was the time to grab your instructors over a beer and meal to discuss the day. The second day was merely a track day and some of the instructors were there to help you on a particular point that you wanted to work on. That would have been nice if it were not for Noah's Ark that drifted across the track leaving so much mud the day was abandoned before noon. Credit to Tony Scott, he is trying to get compensation from Rockingham for us to return on another 'second' day. In conclusion, I think the ESS is not great value at £435 for two days. However, if you have done a few levels of CSS or you have a few track days behind you, I think you can get a lot out of it because unlike CSS it is not a school for cornering, it is a race school. Wouldn't mind Wendy's adding comment to this, having re-read the e-mail I sound a bit negative especially after the amazing three days immediately following at the Nurburgring! I'm signed up for Level Three in a month's time and the experience has not dissuaded me, but guyz and girlz I would stick to CSS. Mark Roche but here's another view: learning fast with CSS Up to a dozen GBMCC members have attended California Superbike School courses this year, as reported in the previous issue of the magazine. The focus is on what CSS founder Keith Code calls "the art of cornering", with four levels of instruction. Each level takes in a day of classroom sessions and on-track training. Having done levels one and two at the Pembrey track in South Wales in June while some of my mates were doing levels two and three, and some level four (which is pretty hot - race standard), I opted to do level three at Rockingham in early August. This time I was on my own - but, although it's great to do these training days with friends, I found it was no problem. It's very easy to get chatting to the other men and women on the course - there's a shared interest which gives common ground. Furthermore, CSS has a friendly atmosphere where the emphasis is on training, not competition. Arriving at Rockingham, the fabulous new track near Corby, at the required ungodly hour of 7am, I soon realised in conversation with others that I wasn't the only one feeling just a little nervous. That boosted confidence and I was soon concentrating on the lessons with no worries at all. Keith Code himself had been due to attend the August sessions but unfortunately had had a bad crash when he high-sided a ZX-9 on a track in the US. Our chief instructor, Andy Ibbott, said Keith felt like he had been "hugged by a big green bear" after the bike landed on top of him. He was bruised but OK, although not fit enough to make the trip. Of course there have been a lot of cruel jokes about how the man who has had so much to tell us about the art of cornering could crash himself, but as Andy said it just went to show that even the wisest and most experienced professional riders can get it wrong sometimes. Although we were without Keith, we did have another key CSS member over from the US - Colby, whose main job was to monitor and advise our instructors, but who did provide my level three group with our first lesson of the day, on riding position and hook turns. He had us get the position right on our bikes while stationary in the pit area, pushing and prodding us into shape, and checked over the rider set-up too. Then it was on to the track to practise what we'd just been told - and right away I knew it was going to be a brilliant day. It's a great track, with interesting turns, and so wide that first time out I was quite lost and did not have a clue where the best lines were. But the more I went round, the better I got to know it, the more confident I became and the better the lines I was picking up. And so the day went on: I was learning all the time, getting faster and better through the corners - and loving it! Sure, there were other bikes that passed me, but I wasn't bothered about them - I was riding against the track, not against the other riders, some of whom were racers on race bikes. Initially we were not supposed to be using the brakes at all and some of the guys that got past me were cheating by doing so, but so what? I was learning to be smooth! The idea of staying off the brakes is I suppose to teach you that even if you feel you're going to fast into the corner you can turn hard and clear it without having touched the brakes on the way in. Initially I was tending to roll off the throttle too soon - overcompensating for the lack of brakes, and would then arrive in the corner too slowly. But as the day wore on I got better - and that bit quicker. Three guys crashed during the day, which was a shame, because you really aren't supposed to. Fortunately there were no serious injuries. I felt particularly sorry for one of the fellows who came off in the afternoon who was a really nice guy that I had been chatting to over lunch. He ran wide and lost it after the sharp right-hander at the end of the main straight. The reason seems odd - but it's very real out there on the track: the blue and white banding on the concrete edging on the outside of the course really jumps up at you at high speeds and draws you wide. It's part of the phenomenon known as target-fixing. The bike will always go where you look. That can be useful if you stick to looking where you want to go. But because we humans have "hunting" vision which tends to fix on particular "targets" in our field of view, there is also the danger that you can look where you don't want to go - and end up going there. The key thing is not to become fixed on things that grab your attention - acknowledge them but look past them, take a wider view. I was having problems with target-fixing on the track despite trying to apply some of the CSS drills, so getting it right isn't always as easy as one might think. But all in all I had a hugely enjoyable day. I came back into the pits at the end of it with a huge smile on my face. I had learned a lot and I still have to do a lot of practise practise, practise - but I had a lot of fun too. It wasn't cheap at round £300 for the day, but it was well worth every penny. If you're interested, contact our Track Events Coordinator, Mark, for more information. Roger, PR Back to magazine                         Back to top