It was great to get the new 1098S out on the track yesterday, at an Apex Trackday on the west track at Miller. I’m planning on racing next weekend, so my plan was to use the trackday to get the suspension and controls all sorted, and get a feel for the bike. Unfortunately, my track bodywork doesn’t arrive until midweek, so I haven’t yet mounted the frame sliders, and had to ride with the beautiful stock plastics – carefully! A few friends saw me in the paddock beforehand, and said “You’re going out on the track with the stock plastics? Are you nuts?” I told them not to worry, as I’d be taking it easy (unless they passed me, of course).
Before even going out on the track, I knew from the few street rides I’d done that the suspension needed some sorting. The rear was incredibly stiff, and the front fairly soft and springy, with too much rebound. So, the first thing I did was go see a suspension pro – Jason from Corporate Suspension, who is at all of the Apex trackdays as a vendor. I’d heard good things about his work, so I decided rather than just “trial and error” it myself, I’d get some help from a pro.
We set the proper sag, and made quite a few adjustments to the front and rear, to make sure they’d work together properly, and be set up for my weight (190). He said that it was probably good that I didn’t take it out with the settings that were on there, as they were really off. Then, it was time to take it out on the track to give it a try. Finally I’d get to ride the bike at speed!
The west track at Miller is a lot of fun, and has some very good variety. Turns one through four are VERY high speed, flowing turns. Five is a very tight double-apex hairpin that requires braking from 140 or so down to practically nothing. Ten is also a very slow turn that’s quite tricky.
The power and smoothness of the bike was really impressive. I’ve gotten so used to slipper clutches on my other bikes, that the engine braking I was getting was a little startling at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly, and adapted my clutch and blipping to accommodate. I found that I definitely needed to keep my weight forward going into the turns, as the way the tail section wraps around your butt meant that if I didn’t, my butt would be bumping into it when shifting my weight off to the side of the bike.
The rearsets I put on (Motowheels) worked well, although I don’t know why they didn’t make the teeth on the footpegs a little more coarse. I don’t like my feet slipping around on them, which I noticed especially under hard braking. Gonna have to swap those out for sure.
The gearbox was really nice. Never missed a shift, false neutrals, anything like that. There’s a pretty long throw on the shift lever, which is different than on my 600, but it was always buttery smooth.
Still too much free play in the throttle, which led to some abrupt acceleration in slow corners (not good). I’ll fix that this week.
Brakes are the best ever. Amazing! For some reason I found that when you pull the lever, you get nothing for the first 3/8 inch or so. Then, they work unbelievably well. I’m really used to my brakes being right out at the first part of the lever pull, not like this. I thought maybe they just needed to be bled, but they’re not mushy at all, they just have that gap for some reason. We bled them at the first service last week just to be sure, but they’re exactly the same. Once you get used to it, they’re unbelievably good. I took my 600 (which has very good brakes) out on the track later in the day, and couldn’t believe how much more of a pull it took to slow down by comparison.
Power was really awesome. The front end got light a lot under acceleration, and even though I was being somewhat cautious, my speeds at various points around the track were really good compared to pushing hard on my 600 or RC51. Gearing seemed to be pretty good for that track, although there were a couple of spots I tried going to first, as second might have been a bit boggy, but first was way too low!
Cornering was excellent on the high speed stuff, but on the slower, tighter turns, the bike just wasn’t turning well at all. It kept wanting to drift wide. I wasn’t sure how much of it was the setup, versus me not wanting to risk lowsiding my new baby, but I decided to talk to my suspension guru about it to see what we could do.
The tire wear looked excellent, so we knew we were getting close on the suspension setup. The fork tubes were already up a fair amount in the clamps, so I asked him about possibly raising the ride height in the rear to improve the tighter corners. He raised it by 5 mm, which is apparently a pretty fair amount, and said we could adjust from there if we needed to. Back out to the track.
Suddenly, the bike was transformed. Cornering was way better! The bike seemed to be reading my mind and just leading me into the lines I wanted to take. There didn’t seem to be any straight line or high speed instability as a result, either, so I was very pleased.
I’m definitely looking forward to taking it to the next level next weekend!
No more chicken strips...
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Before even going out on the track, I knew from the few street rides I’d done that the suspension needed some sorting. The rear was incredibly stiff, and the front fairly soft and springy, with too much rebound. So, the first thing I did was go see a suspension pro – Jason from Corporate Suspension, who is at all of the Apex trackdays as a vendor. I’d heard good things about his work, so I decided rather than just “trial and error” it myself, I’d get some help from a pro.
We set the proper sag, and made quite a few adjustments to the front and rear, to make sure they’d work together properly, and be set up for my weight (190). He said that it was probably good that I didn’t take it out with the settings that were on there, as they were really off. Then, it was time to take it out on the track to give it a try. Finally I’d get to ride the bike at speed!
The west track at Miller is a lot of fun, and has some very good variety. Turns one through four are VERY high speed, flowing turns. Five is a very tight double-apex hairpin that requires braking from 140 or so down to practically nothing. Ten is also a very slow turn that’s quite tricky.
The power and smoothness of the bike was really impressive. I’ve gotten so used to slipper clutches on my other bikes, that the engine braking I was getting was a little startling at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly, and adapted my clutch and blipping to accommodate. I found that I definitely needed to keep my weight forward going into the turns, as the way the tail section wraps around your butt meant that if I didn’t, my butt would be bumping into it when shifting my weight off to the side of the bike.
The rearsets I put on (Motowheels) worked well, although I don’t know why they didn’t make the teeth on the footpegs a little more coarse. I don’t like my feet slipping around on them, which I noticed especially under hard braking. Gonna have to swap those out for sure.
The gearbox was really nice. Never missed a shift, false neutrals, anything like that. There’s a pretty long throw on the shift lever, which is different than on my 600, but it was always buttery smooth.
Still too much free play in the throttle, which led to some abrupt acceleration in slow corners (not good). I’ll fix that this week.
Brakes are the best ever. Amazing! For some reason I found that when you pull the lever, you get nothing for the first 3/8 inch or so. Then, they work unbelievably well. I’m really used to my brakes being right out at the first part of the lever pull, not like this. I thought maybe they just needed to be bled, but they’re not mushy at all, they just have that gap for some reason. We bled them at the first service last week just to be sure, but they’re exactly the same. Once you get used to it, they’re unbelievably good. I took my 600 (which has very good brakes) out on the track later in the day, and couldn’t believe how much more of a pull it took to slow down by comparison.
Power was really awesome. The front end got light a lot under acceleration, and even though I was being somewhat cautious, my speeds at various points around the track were really good compared to pushing hard on my 600 or RC51. Gearing seemed to be pretty good for that track, although there were a couple of spots I tried going to first, as second might have been a bit boggy, but first was way too low!
Cornering was excellent on the high speed stuff, but on the slower, tighter turns, the bike just wasn’t turning well at all. It kept wanting to drift wide. I wasn’t sure how much of it was the setup, versus me not wanting to risk lowsiding my new baby, but I decided to talk to my suspension guru about it to see what we could do.
The tire wear looked excellent, so we knew we were getting close on the suspension setup. The fork tubes were already up a fair amount in the clamps, so I asked him about possibly raising the ride height in the rear to improve the tighter corners. He raised it by 5 mm, which is apparently a pretty fair amount, and said we could adjust from there if we needed to. Back out to the track.
Suddenly, the bike was transformed. Cornering was way better! The bike seemed to be reading my mind and just leading me into the lines I wanted to take. There didn’t seem to be any straight line or high speed instability as a result, either, so I was very pleased.
I’m definitely looking forward to taking it to the next level next weekend!
No more chicken strips...
