The Tao of Khan

Damnit Pirelli, Get Your Shit Together!

2010-06-20T12:01:00.016-04:00

Forward: This is a rant. This is also my page so if you don't like my rant, you can go straight to hell. A rant doesn't always need to be justified, it's not a thesis paper.

Recently I had to choose a new set of tires to replace the 5 year old dryed out Dunlop Sportmax's that came on my Aprilia. Since I'm still learning to get a bike around a circuit without making love to the concrete, I opted for what you car guys might refer to as an R-compound:

- Sticky enough for the track, but with wearlife longer than a weekend
- No need for tyre warmers, since I don't even have a trailer, the last thing I want to do is carry more things around.
- Slicks don't break away as progressivly, and when you get in to trouble, it's usually at a higher pace.

With these things in mind, I began to look at Pirelli and Michelin's offerings, they're both companies with good reps, though in the past I've had better luck with Michelin in terms of quality control.

Now here's where it got annoying, and frankly a little stupid. Michelin's website, like all things french, is a friggin' masterpiece of userfriendlyness. It's dead as nuts simple to navigate, and when you get to the bike tyres you want, they give you a nifty color coded chart telling you IN DETAIL, what they recommend the tyre for, what kind of compounds are in it, and whether or not it can mow your lawn.

See below for exemplar:

Using this nifty little thing known as an IMAGE, I can clearly see that what I want is the Michelin Power Pure. Dual compound tyre, suitable for the street, suitable for trackdays, not too price. Boom, done.

Now lets look at what the Italians have up on their page (first thing you should know is that Pirelli Canada's site doesn't list bike tyres, you have to goto their global site to get them):

Look at that shit! There's no order to this whatso-ever! And all their tires sound the same! It's like Mario and Luigi picked up a thesaurus of the most awsome sounding words they could think of, picked 4 and applied them at random to their product line!

Lets review quickly the Pirelli options:

- Diablo Rosso Corsa
- Dragon Supercorsa Pro
- Dragon Supercorsa Pro Special Compound
- Diablo Rosso Corsa 3
- Diablo Rosso
- Diablo

What the hell? So are the tires ranked by order of length of name, by more badass sounding name? or is there an actual science behind it all? Are diablo's grippier than dragon's? Are the supercorsa's shorter lasting than the rosso corsa? Doesn't rosso corsa just mean "race race" and if so, is that better than "super race"? Just how special is the special compound?

Clicking on the tire for a more detailed description isn't much better because all you get is marketing jargon =(

"Optimized Contours" - Arn't they all optimized?

"Specialized Homologation Tyre for public road use" - Gee, thanks, everthing on this page is road legal.

Comeon guys, I don't want to have to guestimate this by trial and error, call a distributor that never answers their phone, or speak to a dealer whose never actually been on the track before, I just want to buy some damn tires and have some fun!

Take a lesson from Michelin: THAT IS HOW YOU SHOULD DESIGN YOUR PROMO MEDIA!

Oh, and at the end of the day, I went with Michelin Power Pures with a 190/55 rear but didn't have time to mount them before the Ducato Owners Club of Canada Mosport Rally so no review yet. Next set of trackdays is mid-july, again with DOCC so I'll post up a review then!

FAST Riding School - Phase 1 - May 11, 2010

2010-06-02T19:00:00.023-04:00

This post is a little past due but I just got really bogged down with work. May 11th came and went and fortunatly the weather held. I ended up taking the course with my buddy Luis, an R6 rider. For those of you unfamiliar with my current situation, my bike is in Toronto and I'm working out of Montreal, which put me roughly 3.5 hrs away from Shannonville by car. I loaded the 911 up with all my gear and left straight after work. The drive was uneventful, with the minor inconvenience of nearly running out of gas in Iroquois. According to the delightfully antiquated gas pump, I only had 2 liters left.

Now normally I'm a cheap bastard but even I knew there's no way to do 7 hours round trip of driving and spend a day hanging off a bike at 180km/h. I ended up spending a night at the Salmon Run Inn just down the street from the track. It cost 75$ for the night and lets just say it's not exactly the Waldorff. No A/C, no cable, no fridge, no frills, but no roaches so no complaints.

The day started nice and early, sunny but cool, making the 1-piece rental romper suits pretty comfortable to wear without sweating. We started off by filling out paperwork absolving FAST of any liability if we happen to highside to the moon.

Thruout the day you break down into 20 minute rungroups working on a different skill per session and then adding it all together during the open runs at the end. There are instructors (all of which who are blindingly fast) who give you pointers on how to improve after each run. As you apply their sage wisdom you can feel yourself going faster and faster thruout the day.

One of the highlights for me was finally getting to wring out a bike with a slipper clutch. I've heard lots about them, ridden one in traffic and didn't really see the big deal, but on the track it just makes so much sense. Compared to my Aprilia, I felt that with the slipper on the GSX-R, I could brake much later, deeper and concentrate on braking rather than rev matching. Banging down two gears and just dumping the clutch is wikid fun!

The Nelson layout at Shannonville had good flow to it. Turn 1 is nice and fast and if you brake late and hit the double apex at turn 2, it's just sooo satisfying. On the run out of turn 3, there was a pothole, which the instructors decided to circle in green paint. While they undoubtedly had the best of intentions when they did this, they should have remembered their own golden rule: "if you look where you want to go, you will go there"; once I took notice of the circly bastard, I hit the fu*ker almost every damn time! It was unsettling but the GSX-R came with a steering damper stock and I'm sure that helped prevent me from going into a lovely tank slapper. Running out of turn 4 and upto 5 was probably my favorite place to pass, 5 is a really tight corner and in a race I can totally picture myself pulling some kind of totally awsome late brake check a la Rossi vs. Gibernau for the win.

On that delusion of grandeur, I'll end this post with the following comments: the whole FAST experience was wikid fun and at the end of the day, you will be faster and loose bad habits. Oh, and 120 pound kids on 250's are faster than you would think.

Aprilia Livery Design Contest - Win $100!

2010-04-07T19:44:00.005-04:00

What's the 2nd most important thing besides going fast? Looking very, very....very cool whist doing so! Unfortunatly, I don't have the time to dream up funky color combinations, or cheque writing sponsors to dictate the size of the decals that need to go on the side of the bike, so that's where all of you come in.

Here is a link to a wire frame diagram of an Aprilia RSV1000R (thanks to R3dJok3r on Apriliaforum.com for finding it)

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs21/i/2007/238/b/4/The_lines_of_the_paradise_by_ViniciusGuerra.jpg

The rules for the contest are as follows:

1) All entries must use that standard photo size.

2) All entries must have a silver frame, because I'll be damned if I'm going to go thru the effort of painting a frame.

3) The winning submission will get $100 from me by either Paypal or Interac transfer, and their name on the bike itself, because credit should go where it is due. The winning submission and the top 3 or 4 others will also be posted up here.

4) There is no deadline, but once I choose a winner, it's over.

5) Entries should be e-mailed to: khanmotorsport (at) gmail (dot) com with "Aprilia Livery Contest" in the subject line.

6) Extra score will be attributed to Canadian entries who swear to the Holy Ghost of Steve McQueen that they will not vote for Dalton McGuinty in the next Ontario Provincial election.

Repent! The End Is Neigh!

2010-02-09T21:48:00.013-05:00

I'm being melodramatic you say? No, I've not yet begun to express my shock at a scenario so bizzarre my cubicle-dwelling mind can scarely comprehend it. I'm refering of course to the recent announcement that Ferrari, yes THAT Ferrari; F1 crushing, V12 symphony composing, instant panty removing Ferrari, will no longer be offering a manual transmission with their new entry-level sports car.

What's even worse is the rationelle behind it: "Customers no longer ask for them", according to the top dog in charge of Ferrari's street car division (Source: Evo Magazine December 2009). Now I can understand that back when the 355 and 360 first came out, the F1 gearboxes were not as refined as they are now: they were jerky, unreliable and not as fast as today's sub 200 millisecond shifters.

But why do you need all this electronic tranismission tomfoolery when the standard profile of a Ferrari owner indicates that they will most likely keep their Italian Stallion as a weekend toy, put few kilometers on it, and drive it out in the countryside or at times other than rush hour.

With these factors in mind, you can see that one of the prime reasons most people ditch the 3-pedal layout (traffic) is not really an issue. So do people really want to give up the awsome feel, the involvment and the flat out fun of rowing thru a 6-speed box for what might be technically better on paper? (Before I get spammed by Ferrari Owners Clubs everywhere, yes I know that some of you daily drive your cars and track them just as much as anyone else, but even these people must be aware that they are in the minority)

I guess I can't really blame them, after all this is a democracy and people are entitled to their opinions, even if it is the wrong one. I'm not sure I understand the business rationelle for doing this either. If the Big F were to price out cars with the 6-speed as the default transmission, they could charge another 10-15 grand for the F1 and pad their margins.

Or they could pull a Porsche and charge the client more for less, make the 6-speed the option. The time of the 6-speed has yet to pass. Look at the new Nissan 370Z which has a manual tranmission that automatically rev matches for you. Brilliant! Best of both worlds.

Anyhow, that's it for this rant.

First Things First: Getting a Competition License

2010-02-06T16:51:00.009-05:00

The first thing you need to do if you want to race competitively is get a competition license. The fastest way to get a license, and often the best, is to take a Race School course. These courses are taught by ex-racers who have competed at the pro or even international level depending on which program you choose.

Initially I was looking at the Turn2 advanced riding school. They run their school out of the new Calabogie Motorsport Park and have a range of programs for everyone from noobs looking to get into wheel-to-wheel racing, right up to experienced racers looking for practice time and data-logging to perfect their skills. Two reasons I decided not to go with Turn2 were:

1) The increased cost for 2010 really put a hurt on my already strained budget. The convenience of being closer to Montreal no longer outweighed the costs.

2) They no longer rent out anything but Kawasaki's. I really had my heart set on putting the little Aprilia RS125 thru its paces. They say you learn best on a small bike and the 125cc 2-stroke Aprilia is practically legendary as a starter race bike.

This is not at all a slight against Turn2. They have an excellent reputation and comprehensive program. I plan on taking some of their more advanced stuff later on, but for now I opted for the a more frugal option.

The program I did end up choosing was the FAST Riding School, based out of Shannonville. For those of you unfamiliar with Shannonville, it's about 2 hrs out of Toronto and seems to be one of the preferred venues for motorcycle racing. It has multiple layouts, good flow and I've been around it in a car so at least I'll have some of the track layout committed to my feeble memory.

FAST is taught by Micheal Mercier and co, a group of instructors with a distinguished racing pedigree including multiple championships at the national level.

The course will set me back the better part of $600 canuck bucks, and for that I will get my choice of a prepped 600cc supersport, an Arai helmet, full leathers and saftey gear. The new GSX-600 is my pick of the litter, I've rid many of the Japanese 4-cyl bikes and the Gixxer has always been the most comfortable for me. When you climb up on a gixxer, right away it feels like an old friend, like you're on familiar turf.

I opted to fork over an extra $110 for the extra insurance and I would recommend that my fellow noobs do the same. It's a small price to pay for piece of mind because people do crash, and fairings and other little bits are pricey. Max out the insurance, minimise your deductibles and focus on learning proper techniques and going fast.

All that's left for me to do now is count off the days till May 11th and pray to God it doesn't rain.

(Pictures courtesy of: FAST Riding School)

First Post - Welcome!

2010-02-01T17:29:00.000-05:00

If you found this blog, then chances are you were reffered here by one of the many racers I've come to call "friend" thruout the course of my breif existence. Whether you race open wheel, bikes, Porsches, Hondas, whatever...Welcome.

This blog will be more than just a chronicle of my attempts to break into motorcycle racing in Canada, but with the help of contributors, will also be a discussion point for the business of motorsport and what you think is important for regional and international championships.

A little about myself at this point is probably in order. I'm 20-some odd years old, born in Canada and have lived in Toronto for just about all my life; except for now, when I find myself living in Montreal, the least car friendly city in Canada, but more on that later.

Going fast is probably one of the only concrete goals in my life, going fast is the end, everything else is just a means. When I was in middleschool, I would doodle sketches of 911's in my maths book. In highschool, I cut out of class the day I turned 16 to get my learners permit and eventually found my way to Cayuga Raceway for the inaugural CSCS event. That was my first experiance with lapping days and I was totally hooked. Brand new series, freshly laid tarmac roadcourse, how could things get any better (stay tuned for the answer in a later post!)

In University, I got so fedup with the politics and grading system at U of T that I just slacked off, coasted to a B.A. in Political Science and barely ever went to lectures because I opened up a performance parts shop catering to Porsche's.

I learned a lot about business, people and the world during the years I ran my small but financially fruitful endeavour but ultimatly that came to an end. I've since moved on to other successful work but for the most part I don't wake up in the morning excited to get to the office. Payday is exciting because it means I can order new tires, fix a busted bodypanel or get another socket set that I don't really need but saw for 60% off at Canadian Tire.

At some point I decided that racing cars would be too expensive and that motorcycles were the way to go. 10 Times the thrills, 1/10th the cost. And that's where I find myself now: in the middle of the frigid canadian winter, waiting for the salt and snow and ice to melt away so I can start on yet another go-fast adventure!

More to follow soon.