The briefing was hilarious and sobering at the same time, and achieved its intention of calming us down for the riding to come. The format of 10 laps following instructors and ten laps racing amongst ourselves was pretty good, although the school's VF400Fs were in poor state - and they weren't that great to begin with!
However, I loved the freedom of track riding and came away hooked!
I was surprised by the speed with which the back came around and dumped me on my arse, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to learn from my mistake as there was a "crash and you're off" rule. I never went back to the school ...
I was on my FJ1200, which isn't exactly a wicked race tool, but I've seen them hustled round tracks respectably quickly. Nobber that I was, however, I was unable to post faster lap times than a Triumph Dolomite Sprint :-(
More embarrassing still, I had the shame of having the knackered old car hassling me through bends, only staying ahead because I could scorch off down the straights.
The shame.
What a waste of time. For £110 we got "1 hour of track time", which curiously isn't 1 hour on the track but includes standing around next to the track while the bod demonstrates to the group how to sit on the bike and duck your head below the fairing. In total we got about 25 minutes on the track, and learned nothing but Mallory's 5 bends.
There are good race schools around - Keith Code & Ron Haslam's schools are supposed to be great, and I've heard good things about the Yamaha school at Cadwell. However, I wouldn't recommend the Mallory school.
It's not too difficult to see how it could all go horribly wrong, with over a hundred bikes sharing the circuit, including everything from AR50s, to VN1500s, GTR1000s and the very fastest Ninjas. KRC manager Paul Farmer was extremely nervous about the whole thing, and walked around the assembly area pleading with people not to crash.
In the end, it was a fun few minutes, but there were a few idiots who were treating it as the world's shortest trackday, going full speed and weaving in and out of the other riders.
Wednesday morning we got up at the normal trackday time of exactly much too early, and headed off down the superb back roads of Derbyshire, where we got fantastically lost in the early-morning fog, before finding Matlock, Derby and then Donington itself.
Donington's a superb circuit, as you'd expect from the home of the British GP, and after the familiarisation laps I was very excited, but quite apprehensive too. The track is wide and smooth but the bends are very challenging at speed, and I've seen so many top riders crash in Craner that it seemed almost inevitable :-)
The organisation of KRC trackdays is excellent, and everything went very smoothly during the day. The group changes in particular were very slick. Quite a few people didn't seem to have listened to Roger Burnett's briefing though, and were caught out by the turn's decreasing radius.
The KRC day really emphasised how difficult it is to get in the correct group. At the Ixion trackday I was in the middle group and lapped virtually everybody; In the middle group here I was about the average, and certainly didn't do any lapping. You never know until you get there, but it doesn't matter and you can always change if you're unhappy.