Track Trip: Chapter3 - Saturday with APEX

I’ve never ridden at Miller. So I’m a little nervous. I’m not one of those riders that can just head out onto the track for the first time and start railing. I like to do recon. Lots and lots of recon.

I’ve also never ridden with APEX. Generally track groups are the same. But each seems to attract a slightly different type of rider. This event is a shared one between APEX and the local Ducati dealership. I’m hoping the Ducati guys (who are probably older and a little more conservative) will keep things civilized.

I arrive at Miller at about 7am, go through registration, and find a spot to pit. The place is amazing. Huge grandstands, covered garage space, clean and professional.

They announce that the first session out will have two “sighting laps” so new people can get used to the layout. (Whew) The track is as nice as the rest of the facility. Wide open sight lines, good pavement, well marked.

The third session is going pretty well. I was getting the feel of the track. I come out of the chicane and see the next corner worker waving the red flag. Red? That’s odd, but okay. While in the back straight I see a huge smoke column and a fireball off to my left! 20-30 feet of black smoke on top of 5-6 feet of flames!

Turns out someone low-sided in Turn 2, they separated from the bike and thought everything was fine. The bike slid across the infield then back onto the track in Turn 3 where it caught fire. The frame was snapped, all the plastic and fiberglass was melted, the rims were bent. I’ll see if I can dig up a picture of the bike after they brought it back to the pits. The rider was fine. Surprised but fine.

I was on the Daytona in the morning and thought I might switch to the Ducati after lunch. But, after a bike on fire? Uh, no.

In the interest of keeping things simple for myself I decided to ride the whole track in 3rd gear. The Daytona has enough torque at 4000rpm to deal with the slow corners, and can easily run to 100+mph on the front straight. Was I being passed? Yes. But it made it a lot easier to focus on body position and lean angle. And I wasn’t the slowest bike out there.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. The APEX guys run a pretty good event. And the Miller track is awesome. A day off, then back to the track Mon and Tues with STAR.