Well I spent a very nice afternoon yesterday abusing poor defenseless CBR600s at Donington Park.

Arrived there at 2.30 for my 3pm sign in after getting rained on on the M42.  There was a slight lack of organisation apparent but nothing too bad. Met up with Christofire there.

Waited around till 4 when they finally told us what to do. Went and got changed into some leather of theirs because they don't allow two-piece kit on the track.  Good quality stuff they had and very new.

Straight into the first briefing after this.  Was talked through the track, the ideal lines, braking point etc.  They had a map with the braking areas, turn in points and apexes marked on and these points are marked out by colour cones on the track.  Very good for seeing where you're supposed to be going.

After the initial briefing we were introduced to out instructor for the day. A short chat with him so he could find out what sort of level we were at and then out onto the track for the first session.

First session was quite slow, just following the instructor round the track and learning the lines. The 2001 CBR is absolutely diddy compared with my GSX-R but it handled very well, went nicely and is a very easy bike to ride.

Came in after the first session feeling a bit frustrated about the speed and mention this to the instructor and he promised to go a bit faster next time out.

So we went out for the second session.  Much quicker this time and started to get the lines sorted. Felt a lot more comfortable on the bike and was consistently getting my knee down on nearly every corner without a conscious effort.  Had a bit of a moment at Macleans because I took the corner too tight and hit a rough piece of tarmac on the apex.  Front wheel bounced a bit and it took me a while to settle back into a rhythm. Was still no quite with it when we came round to Goddards and again took that too tight hitting the very rough surface on the inside and causing a front wheel slide.  In trying to correct that the back decided to step out on me and I ended up going very wobbly up the pit straight.

Settled down for the next couple of laps of that session and gradually got up to speed again and caught back up with Christofire and the instructor.

Came back in again for and advanced briefing.  This time they ran us through their ideal gear changes for the circuit which at Donington is fairly simple.  You drop two gear for every corner apart from the Old Hairpin which you drop one, Coppice you don't change at all, and Melbourne where you drop one. Another tip was to shortshift into 5th
going down the Craner Curves to steady the bike a bit.

Gave this all a try in the final session and it made a noticeable improvement.  Using 5th down the Craners made it a lot smoother where previously I'd been carrying 4th quite high into the revs.  It also meant that the Old Hairpin could be taken quicker in 4th where previously I'd been dropping to third. Coppice requires a lot of confidence to go into it carrying 4th gear. You feel like braking hard and going into 3rd because the entrance is completely blind.  If you do this then you find you're going into the corner too slow and need to change up whilst banked right over going round the long sweeping curve onto Starkeys.

For those who want to know, yes it is possible to get a CBR600 airborne under the Dunlop bridge.

Bollocksed up the Esses everytime.  The instructor kept going into the really slowly and I kept almost running into him.  Because you weren't allowed to overtake him without his waving you past this annoyed me a bit.

Likewise the Melbourne Hairpin could have been taken a lot faster than he was letting us.

So:

Goodpoints:

- Someone elses bike for you to drop :-)
- The bikes are well prepared and well looked after.  BT56 tires on the back and 010s on the front so loads of grip.
- Good briefing sessions and the cones on the track to help you learn the perfect lines.
- Good kit available to use it you don't want to / can't use your own.

Bad points:

- Instruction is very varied.  Mine pretty much just led us round the track. He didn't particularly take note of the areas where I said I wanted to go faster particularly the Esses and Melbourne where I kept almost running into the back of him.
- Organisation is a bit ropey.  You get there and nobody tells you what to do or where to go for ages, plus the signing to get to it is crap.

I'll put the photos up on the web when I get them in the post.

Also can someone with a CBR600 Sport tell me:

a) how quick they go at the redline in third because that's how quick we went round Redgate
b) how quick the go at the redline in 5th because that's as quick as we got on the pit straight.  Got about halfway into 6th on Starkeys hence the airborne bit under the Dunlop bridge.