Snetterton Track Day

Snetterton is a long way from West Yorkshire so it made senses to drive down the day before. The kids were on holiday so Andrea and the kids came along. We stopped for tea at The Angel pub which is very close to the circuit. We got to the circuit at 6:30pm, cars had been using the track all day and me and Jack had a look around at the last few cars that were packing up. We parked the motorhome right next to the garages and I took the bike off the trailer and put it in garage seven. Jack and Finley got their skateboards out and practised on the smooth floor, surprisingly a guy came in and asked us to stop as we were making too much noise!

Got to bed early as I knew it was going to be a long day. Woke early and signed on straight away, got the bike noise tested and sat through the obligatory riders meeting. I've never been to Snetterton before and didn't have a clue about the track layout. Out for the first session and I took it very easy. I worked out very quickly that the track had several bends with wide entrances which would suite cars better than bikes with long straights that suited big bikes, pity I was on the 400.

It didn't take me long to get into my stride and before long I was circulating at speed. As usual I quickly got my head around the slower bends and took my time with the fast stuff. The first bend (Riches) at the end of the straight was the first challenge, although the circuit is flat it is still difficult to see the apex and exits of many bends, at least the first bend had tonnes of runoff, but I didn't want to head of into the field at 70mph plus.

Palmer is a long left hander where the curb always jumped out at me on the exit, I sorted this out by the end of the day but I'm sure there was much more speed here. Hamilton is another left hander, I didn't get this right all day, I wasn't using all the track on the exit, if I'd have been racing I wouldn't have been happy about this, but thankfully I'm only doing this for fun so I'm not beating myself up.

The right hander, Williams was important as this leads onto the back straight, I was okay with this and managed to do okay here. The Bomb hole is the only bend which features any type of height change, the bend does  appear to go through a bomb hole, it dips on the way in and there is a bit of a rise on the way out. 

Coram is a very frustrating bend, you've got to spend a huge amount of time on part throttle and then slow down for the final flick left back onto the straight.

To be fair I didn't push really hard all day, looking back I have thought about the day. The weather has been terrible and cold when I've been riding to work and there hasn't been any grip, I think that I didn't have a great feeling with how much grip there was and how far I could lean the bike over. The big wide open entrances to several of the bends meant that I was a bit lost finding the best lines and speeds, I'd need to spend a couple more days getting my head around all this. Finally the long straights don't suit the little 400 especially when predominantly people are using modern 600 or 1000's.

At the end of the day we set of back home, stopped for tea on the A1 and got home for 9:30pm.

I'd enjoyed the experience of Snetterton but I won't be hurrying back, It's a long way to go and the whole feel of the place is angled towards cars.