There’s at least two of the LB gang who are thinking of trying to raise their game by going racing next year. We love trackdays with a passion, but always hold back because we’re on road bikes that we don’t want to crash, we also feel we’re not getting enough track time as we could do. It’s been briefly dicussed between us that perhaps we should try and become better riders by going racing. Racing is traditionally very expensive and there’s a number of logistical obstacles to overcome before being able to, namely:
- Getting an ACU race license
- Getting/building a race bike
- The ability to transport it, and yourself around the country
- Having a huge pot of cash
We’re looking at keeping it simple, establish a team and have the individual goal of trying to beat one-another, with anyone else we beat beign a bonus. This means that we can set personal rules on bike development, limiting things to keep the cost down to something managable and not let it run away from us, whilst still having a load of laughs. Obviously though we’d be looking to win the championship, but perhaps that’s a bit ambitious for a debut season 
We’re looking at the SuperSport 400 classes.
As riders, the two who have shown interest, Westy#11 and myself, are quite aware of our abilities and don’t claim to be the fastest guys out there, we probably do between 6-12 trackdays a year and ride in the fast group on 750cc and 1000cc inline-fours. We enjoy learning about becoming better track riders and try to get as many tips as possible off fellow riders who are at a higher level than ourselves, in an attempt to become faster. We hope racing will allow us to ‘pull the pin’ and become faster riders, whilst trying to achieve something we’ve both lusted after for a while, to be racers, whether we succeed or not.
Has anybody got any experience with this, that they’d like to share? Bike-wise, the Kawsaki ZXR 400’s seem to be the bike to race, and is the one we’re interested in. It seems to be the favoured bike because it’s an inline four engine layout, track proven and has a wealth of tuning knowledge available, not to mention being easier to work on and cheaper to repair than the other options, like VFR/RVF 400’s. Series wise, the MRO SuperSport 400 class has some great circuits in it, though there’s also the Bemsee one to look at, time for research!
Doing this means that we’d like to do it under the LondonBikers name, sporting a Team LondonBikers, with the intention of gaining sponsorship to help us sustain the effort and get better results.
