Yorick wrote: Mon Jul 14, 2025 7:59 pm
On all the Euro days, you have transponders fitted and then moved to appropriate group at lunch.
Focused Events did this when I was instructing 15 years ago.
And then thr UK wankers fucked it all up.
1. Going flat out on lap 1 session 1 to do a superpole lap and crashing
2. Sandbagging to be the best in Inters.
It was a shit show
As instructors, part of our job was to watch for folk who were trying to be big fish in small pond.
Lol have a word, I've seen every track day full of complete wankers doing shit undertakes and cutting up groups. It's very very rare to see people moved. I've even complained about some and nothing was done.
Silverstone instructors were about the only ones who were proactive.
The rest of them spent their time racing their mates, even in novice
1. Going flat out on lap 1 session 1 to do a superpole lap and crashing
2. Sandbagging to be the best in Inters.
It was a shit show
As instructors, part of our job was to watch for folk who were trying to be big fish in small pond.
Lol have a word, I've seen every track day full of complete wankers doing shit undertakes and cutting up groups. It's very very rare to see people moved. I've even complained about some and nothing was done.
Silverstone instructors were about the only ones who were proactive.
The rest of them spent their time racing their mates, even in novice
On average, I moved about 5 riders per day. Other instructors didn't bother
Most instructors lasted about 2 years as they took the piss.
I did 14 years with F.E. coz i was good
1. Going flat out on lap 1 session 1 to do a superpole lap and crashing
2. Sandbagging to be the best in Inters.
It was a shit show
As instructors, part of our job was to watch for folk who were trying to be big fish in small pond.
Lol have a word, I've seen every track day full of complete wankers doing shit undertakes and cutting up groups. It's very very rare to see people moved. I've even complained about some and nothing was done.
Silverstone instructors were about the only ones who were proactive.
The rest of them spent their time racing their mates, even in novice
I second this, and the one Focused Events track day I did was particularly bad for it, and that was in 2004, never booked with them again, worst organised track day I've ever experienced, all groups were over booked, Les Battersby had to go round the pits asking people if they were willing to do a different date.
1. Going flat out on lap 1 session 1 to do a superpole lap and crashing
2. Sandbagging to be the best in Inters.
It was a shit show
As instructors, part of our job was to watch for folk who were trying to be big fish in small pond.
Lol have a word, I've seen every track day full of complete wankers doing shit undertakes and cutting up groups. It's very very rare to see people moved. I've even complained about some and nothing was done.
Silverstone instructors were about the only ones who were proactive.
The rest of them spent their time racing their mates, even in novice
That sounds like my (admittedly limited) experience of these things. Cliquey as fuck and everyone's out for themselves.
Yorick wrote: Mon Jul 14, 2025 8:13 pm
As instructors, part of our job was to watch for folk who were trying to be big fish in small pond.
Lol have a word, I've seen every track day full of complete wankers doing shit undertakes and cutting up groups. It's very very rare to see people moved. I've even complained about some and nothing was done.
Silverstone instructors were about the only ones who were proactive.
The rest of them spent their time racing their mates, even in novice
I second this, and the one Focused Events track day I did was particularly bad for it, and that was in 2004, never booked with them again, worst organised track day I've ever experienced, all groups were over booked, Les Battersby had to go round the pits asking people if they were willing to do a different date.
Was booked on a FE day with a mate on supermotos in inters only to turn up and we’d put in fast as they’d overbooked inters, that was actually frightening.
Never did go with FE again after that.
Can’t say No Limits move people about either, you always get a few either too fast or too slow for the group.
I can't remember the name of the company running the best track day I ever attended, but it was at Cadwell Park in May 2005. They kept a real grip on proceedings and were rigourous in making sure the various groups (Novice, Inters, Fast) actually had people of similar ability/speed in the same group and wren't shy of moving people between groups (I was moved from Novice to Inters at the lunch interval). The key to this was having transponders on all the bikes so that people could be allocated to the group that best fitted their ability.
I'm guessing that insurance liability precludes the use of transponders these days, otherwise it would be the obvious way of organising the groups.
Worst instructor experience I had was on my first session ever at Silverstone, near the end of the session and it was damp. Tipping into a right hander, suddenly a bike cuts right across my nose, close enough I swore out loud. Closest overtake I've had on a trackday, I was properly pissed off as imo it was unnecessarily close considering it must have been obvious I didn't know my way around and wasn't very fast.
The instructor. Neil Hodgson. No doubt he can ride but that was a wankers move in a damp inters session of a trackday on session 1. To him I'm sure it wasn't 'that close' but it was bloody close and he could easily have given me room and passed when he choose.
The following year I got moved into fast one day cos they had BSB practicing and they changed the groupings up. I was with a load of club/national level riders practicing for that weekend. All of them seeing I was a slow bastard passed with loads of room for an idiot like me.
