Buttonwillow Trackday
Dylan - Twisting Asphalt

It's been well over two hundred miles since the last slug of coffee hit the back of my throat and even though I haven't had a sip since, a jittery, lightheaded and near over-caffeinated anticipation built buzz is keeping me awake with the purely devilish promise of a trackday. Scanning the radio stations up and down Interstate 5, nothing of value seems to be playing. Certainly nothing that can calm this sort of non-drug induced premature adrenaline kick? And ironically I haven't even swung my leg over a bike yet. In the world of gearhead foreplay this is about as good as it gets.

With several more miles to go I'm not even sure where the hell I am, let alone how to dial down the giddy factor. I've been working like crazy lately and now, on this glorious morning in the central valley I find myself staring down a dream. To take the 999 back on the track for the first time this year. It's the kind of pilgrimage that only a motorcyclist can understand yet because I've been busy and riding less than I normally do, inside I find myself fighting a crusade to maintain an even keeled balance of excitement in the face of an armada like onslaught of trepidation, passion, thrilling desire and downright fear.

photo by Dylan Weiss

Staring out the window at I-5's blank, canvas-like collection of nothingness, which amazingly sits two exits down from whatever nothingness is minus the nothing, I can't stop imagining how the day will unfold. The destination for this journey of emotional excess is Buttonwillow Raceway. Scenic it isn't, but as tracks go this one is exceptional and I've been waiting all weekend to take my first crack at it.

An hour later when I finally pull up at the front gate, it's hard to believe that there's actually a racetrack here. Buttonwillow, California, is surrounded by one cow field after another and it's flat. Very, very flat. The kind of uniformity in a landscape that bends the mind when you try to picture an exciting racetrack existing anywhere remotely close to here. But surprisingly it does, and while Willow Springs bills itself as "The Fastest Track in The West", Buttonwillow ought to sell itself as the most fun you can have on Southern California asphalt. Among the local tracks, this place is a remarkably wonderful blend of a speed freak charm and a technical odyssey.

After signing in, my old man and I head into the parking lot of the track for the first time and I'm flooded by a sense of glorious excitement, nervous energy and absolute total terror because of what I might do to myself today. Bands from the sixties and seventies couldn't have popped enough uppers and downers to even out the vast ends of the emotional spectrum that driving through the paddock creates. Everywhere I look people are pulling bikes out of the back of pickup trucks and off motorcycle trailers and they all look deadly serious. Top Gun "Iceman" serious.

As all of these divergent emotions collide together the combined force is both costly and yet oddly enticing. Because what these feelings speak to is something that doesn't exist on the street, the opportunity to truly push not only the limits of your own motorcycle but also the very paradigm by which you view your own riding. Tracks offer the chance to see where your own personal edge lies and for the first time in a long time, the rev-limiter on my soul is about to be unbolted and tossed away.

photo by The Track Club

For some, the idea of heading to a track might sound ludicrous or worse a prescription for a panic attack, yet it's exactly the opposite. Taking a motorcycle to a racetrack ? particularly an Italian thoroughbred that was built to be the bully on the playground ? is a near scientific form of riding that offers the prospect of exploring parts of your soul that the real world tends to condemn. It's a unique laboratory-like environment for any rider and one that offers the rare chance to push further and faster than a city street can physically allow.

We all push the speed limit when we ride, but at some point normal canyon roads only let you go so fast. They are constructed to get us where we're going as safe as possible. The beauty of a racetrack is that they are built with the sole purpose of going beyond that civil engineering maxim. Tracks are designed to tease us and trick us. They are not intended to be easy but rather to test our skill and our fortitude. But most of all they are created to bring us closer to perfecting the art of riding a motorcycle and ultimately that's the everyday application for signing up for an event like this. The skills riders learn on the track increase their odds of survival on the street. It's really that simple.

Today's adventure is also a departure from the previous trackdays I've experienced. This is not only my first adventure to Buttonwillow Raceway, but also my first time out with ?The Track Club' and my first track day with the guys from Pro Italia.

Getting out of the car after three plus hours of driving, my immediate instinct is to scrounge up some more coffee but the heat wave that's rustling through the central valley seems to fight the idea. Temperatures today are expected to nearly hit the 110's and looking around the parking lot, hydration seems to be the catch phrase of the day.

photo by Dylan Weiss

It certainly is inside of the Pro Italia garage. Buckets of bottled water are already on ice when I enter the bright white cinderblock cell, which looks like a prison for bad boy exotic Italian motorcycles. All sorts of bikes are crammed into every single corner of the space and before I can even find my own bike, a friendly hand is sticking itself out at me, shaking my hand. Less than ten minutes later I've been introduced to a dozen different people whose names I will never remember, but who all seem remarkably mellow and welcoming for a trackday. It's an almost bizarre junior high at lunch like social scene compared to the experiences I've had at other tracks where people were either dead set on getting every drop out of the education that they paid for or simply out to beat everyone else down. I've stood in some fairly competitive rooms before and this isn't that kind of feeling. Instead, people here are lending a helping hand, making quips about certain corners and generally enjoying the moment together as a group. It's a rather remarkable kind of camaraderie.

Over the loud speaker a five-minute warning announcement booms across the garage. The mandatory riders' meeting is about to begin. Quickly my old man and I head over to the shaded patio where the meeting will take place. On our way over the deadly serious looks on the vast majority of riders faces seem to vanish. Trackdays are like that ? there's a tremendous amount of bravado to begin with but ultimately everyone is here for the same purpose, to learn and to have fun.

At 8:30 AM the riders meeting starts and Mark Duncan from ?The Track Club' introduces himself to the crowd. He immediately starts outlining the day and explaining how The Track Club runs its show. Like most track schools, The Track Club splits the riders up into groups. Today there are three groups; A, B and C. The A group obviously is the fastest and the C group is the slowest. The rules for all three sections are basically the same with one lone exception, the A group is allowed to pass on both the inside and the outside. Having never been to Buttonwillow before I decide to start in the B group. Some people it seems can ride a new track fast immediately, however I'm not one of those folks. Usually I need one full day of riding to visually memorize the course layout before I feel comfortable with where I need to be and when I need to be get there.

A few minutes later Mark starts a brief speech on safety. With track time just around the bend and feeling like I've already heard this chatter from a half dozen other schools it's a bit hard to pay attention, but Mark impressively keeps at it. He seems hell bent on making it clear that everyone needs to respect the other riders out on the track and while folks can go as fast as they want, they need to do it safely. Listening to him it seems apparent that The Track Club is a far more serious educational riding organization then their website might lead you to believe.

While there is no big name out front like Freddie Spencer, Kevin Schwantz or Reg Pridmore, The Track Club offers a tremendous amount of instruction ? if you're willing to check the ego at the door and ask for it. The first session for the B & C groups is comprised of small batches of riders following instructors as they take you around the course and point out the various features of the track. This is immediately followed by a mandatory riders' debriefing that's inside of the main tower once the group riding session is completed. The next riding session for each respective group has no instruction at all during the time spent out on the track, but another debriefing is required afterwards.

Once Mark finishes going over the schedule for the day, he asks for a show of hands to see who's riding in which group. When he gets to the C group he asks, "Who's never been to a track before?" As he asks the question, I can't help but be reminded of the various times I've heard more experienced riders encourage new motorcyclists to try getting out on a track by selling events like this with phrases like, "there's no traffic" or "no old ladies crossing the street", but the reality is that the concept of track time goes well beyond the mere rules of the normal road.

It starts somewhere within the opportunity to do something that's extremely hard on the street, repeatedly hit the same corner, lap after lap, while making small adjustments to the way in which you ride and then seeing how it affects your sense of security and your personal comfort level. Gradually this feeling works its way up to include an almost holistic ratcheting up of your sense of speed. Unlike The Rockstore, people at a trackday rarely brag about going faster. Magically they just go faster. It's easy to brag about your skill set when no one sees it. It's quite another thing to have to do it in front of an actively participating audience.

Looking at the show of hands in the audience it seems clear that the folks in attendance aren't here to brag about how spotless their bikes are but rather they've come to take the next logical step towards enjoying their motorcycles. When Mark asks how many people here have been to a trackday most of the folks raise their hands. To be honest I'm not really sure why there aren't more first time track riders. The track is not only a safer and easier place to ride, but also a faster one. Ultimately aren't those the characteristics and attributes that most motorcyclists are after?

Finally Mark turns the microphone over to another instructor and a few moments later the day officially begins when The Track Club organizers let the A group go. Twenty minutes later the B and C groups are released and I finally have some time to take the Duc through tech check.

The 999 quietly sits in the corner when I walk back into the garage, begging to be fired up so it can explore the mortal limits of reasonable anarchy. It's truly a form of divinely inspirational artwork, an alluringly shaped package that's filled with the soul of a speed demon and the heart of a passionate fanatic. Even the mildest tempered individual can't help but hear the bike beckon for a full tilt attempt at total roadracing debauchery.

photo by Dylan Weiss

As I get closer to the bike, I suddenly realize that its already been taped up and prepped. Mike from Moto Assist, who trailered the 9 up from Pro Italia where it was in for the 6,000 mile service broadly smiles and says, "I hope you don't mind but they were getting antsy at tech check". It's a small gesture, but it speaks volumes about the feeling of camaraderie in the paddock.

Typically I've always brought the bike I was going to ride on the track with me to a trackday, but today is the first time that someone else has transported the 9 for me and it's a surprisingly relaxing sensation. I have to admit that on the car ride up I felt somewhat uneasy at the prospect of having someone else handle the 999, but now that I'm here and able to see the kind of respect that Mike has for the bike all those worries disappear. Instead, for the first time I feel somewhat akin to an actual professional roadracer. While others are still unpacking, I'm simply here to do a job. To pull the throttle back when I'd normally let it go. It's an amazingly calming vantage point from which to view the world and especially a racetrack.

Twisting the key for the first time, the bike fires right up. In the relatively confined garage space it shouts out for attention. Burbling with a typically strong Ducati V-Twin symphony that makes claim to it's own form of eminent domain of the racetrack. After the 6,000 mile service it seems more than willing to take its first post-service ride around the pits of a racetrack on its way to a tech check.

Every trackday I've ever attended does some form of tech checking and while conceptually I understand the basic gist, I have to say that I have yet to figure out what they're actually checking. In some ways it seems like a proforma exercise built around the fact that historically there's always been someone who looks over the bikes before a professional race. Yet where The Track Day folks really excel is that instead of forcing you to do your tech check before the introductory meeting, they offer the option of allowing you to go through tech check before or after the introductory riders meeting. This was yet another small but surprisingly liberating detail. Instead of running around in a panicked rush, The Track Day folks created a refreshingly pleasant attitude that speaks volumes about the way the want their riders to feel. It's both more serious and yet at the same time more laid back in comparison to some of the other trackdays I've attended. That sounds contradictory, but instead of feeling pressured to get from one place to the next, you suddenly felt free to focus on the various aspects of riding and not the formalities of getting ready to ride.

Going through the later tech check forces me to miss the first B group session. This makes my old man the first one of us to get out on the track. Twenty minutes later when the C group session ends, he comes back into the garages and is nearly out of breath. "Wow, this is a great track", is all he can muster.

photo by The Track Club

When the five-minute announcement blares over the loudspeakers and calls all B group riders to the starting grid, it's finally time for me to hit the track. After a three plus hour drive, a thirty to forty minute rider introduction meeting and one full cycle through the various group sessions, it seems damn near impossible to rein in the heightened level of anticipation and the exhilarating rush that you know is only moments away.

Heading down pit lane, I smoothly roll on the throttle only to look up and find the first real corner that the track presents, a subversively named corner called "The Off-Ramp". It's a relatively tight, uphill right hand decreasing radius corner and I immediately know that I instinctively do not like this section of the track. For all the glowing anticipation, "The Off-Ramp" is a rather rude awakening that forces me to acknowledge the power that a track can hold. To call it life or death sounds grossly exaggerating, but let's be honest, this isn't the safest activity in the world.

As it would turn out this one particular corner gave me fits all day until Bill May, who works in the PI parts department, offhandedly suggested a strategy for where I should be looking at the entrance of the turn. Every now and then it's shocking how such a tiny bit of advice can so dramatically affect your ride. From the moment he mentioned where he'd be looking the corner became infinitely easier.

Coming out of "The Off-Ramp", I bring the 9 back to an almost upright position and joyously wring the throttle backwards as the track opens right up before my eyes. The short straight away eventually ends at a viciously tempting right-left-right combination of tightly wound and nearly ninety-degree corners, the last of which elevates uphill with blazing speed so that it's impossible to see through the turn or over the hill. At first blush it's a tricky little combination of jagged edges, but as the course becomes more familiar you start to realize that there's a joke being played on you. This marvelous section of track offers a passionate three step dance routine done on two wheels <ETH> only on this floor I don't really care what others think about my form. When you finally hit it correctly and merge the three separate endeavors into one singular flowing motion it's an almost revolutionary feeling. Lap after lap and session after session this was one of the best parts of Buttonwillow because it encased a wildly back and forth movement while offering an exploration in subtle elevation changes.

photo by The Track Club

Once you clear this section of corners the track drastically alters its complexion, changing face in seconds as it shifts away from the merely technical and enters an arena of wide-open and free-range speed. Tucking down behind the fairing and sliding onto the back of the saddle while hammering the throttle, the 999 reacts with a ferociously dedicated sense of purpose that's intent on total destruction. Everything in its path is wiped out as the bike ceases being a friendly object and transforms into a full-blown attack machine. It's feels like you're bringing a gun to a knife fight and when the bike launches forward you find yourself witnessing a first hand real world version of actual motion blur.

This diabolical sense of speed culminates at the very end of the Western Loop when the track delves off into a near endless right-handed sweeper known only as "Riverside". To talk about this section of track as if it were a mere corner is an incredible injustice. From the moment you enter it, the asphalt keeps continually rolling itself over until you find yourself so firmly planted on the inside edge of your bike that you wonder why you even need an outside foot-peg.

It feels like you've spent an eternity riding leaned over when the track finally straightens up its act, but just when you think the course has shaken itself free of the continual attack of drastically different corners, the track relapses on a wonderfully bad habit called the "Lost Hill", where an elevation change at the top of a right hander brings you face to face with your own personal belief system.

No matter how technically competent you are nothing prepares you for this remarkable moment of truth. Yet while riders might hesitate here, the 999 acts more instinctive then ever as it repeatedly sniffs out the kinks in the road surface before forcing you to flick yourself around the bend. The first couple of times you attempt taking this section of the course feels like an incredibly enlightening experience on multiple fronts. It momentarily disconnects you from the act of riding and asks you point blank, how far are you willing to believe? It is the most non-secular form of faith there is and as a rider you have no choice but to believe.

Of course being pulled out of the moment while riding a motorcycle on any kind of road surface is a dangerous activity, but here it's twice as bad. Conquering the "Lost Hill" doesn't offer you a reprieve from the threat of the speedway, but rather shoots you directly down what feels like the longest straight away on the planet. Racking up through the gears offers no solutions to this problem, just a higher sense of performance mortality. As the wonderfully impressive sense of speed increases, you find yourself going so outrageously fast that it becomes downright hard to determine what's thumping more, the V-Twin that lies beneath you or the beat of your own heart. With each instantaneous engine revolution the racebike pedigree of the 999 shines through and ultimately gives birth to an undying sense of personal empowerment on the track. You feel somewhere between invincible and cockily confident. It's an unorthodox kind of contradiction where the faster you take the bike, the happier it seems to get.

Mentally this high performance rush comes with a significant price tag, the western most straight away is the one place on the track where you can actually hear that tiny clock in the back of your head tick away. In one of the great ironies that a joyously long straight away presents, no matter how fast you to get going, it never fails that somewhere in the not so distant future you're going to have to bring it all back down. The end of this straight away forces you to engage in a massive movement to slow your bike from top speed to cornering speed. Missing your braking marker by just a beat can bring out a full-fledged case of white knuckled fever.

The end of the straight requires two things that sound basic but are extremely hard to do coming down from your bike's top speed-- smooth downshifting and equally hard braking. You've got to conquer both before you can even entertain the idea of entering the "Mazda Turn".

photo by The Track Club

"Mazda" is a double-apexed right-handed switchback that forcibly makes a rider think about how they are setting themselves up before they enter the corner. You can't fake this one - because once you get through the first apex the road blast-offs on an entirely different promotional campaign. Politicians can't change their messages this fast. Before you know it, the road acts entirely different than you first imagined and you're riding a completely different line. The corner requires a whole new degree of focus yet it also offers an entrance into the realm of eternal puck grinding. If you hit it right the sensation is purely magical. Successfully coming out of this corner leaves you feeling so incredibly dominant that it almost seems like you can reshape the very foundation of the road that lies beneath you.

It's an amazing sensation but the reality is that you're only a mortal motorcyclist who happens to be delusionally riding a sportbike around a near mythically laid out selection of pavement and the track seems to acknowledge just how frustrating that can feel by presenting a series of five back and forth kinks in the road that allow you to take out your aggression at merely being human.

It takes a little bit of time to realize that the "Esses" are not worth the effort to drastically lean through but rather offer an opportunity to wildly punch the front end back and forth while slightly dipping from one side to the other. This progression of pinball mechanics is both amusing and addictive before it ultimately comes to an untimely end when the last kink spills you out on to a short straight away that leads you down a pathway towards the last corner before the front straight away.

As it turns out the "Sunset" corner is cagey bastard. Like most curves it comes rapidly flying at you and as it does you tend to think to yourself it's just like a million other twists and turns you've taken, but as often happens appearances can be quite deceiving. The turn lies on one of flattest sections of the course, which makes it just a tad beyond difficult to differentiate where the road surface ends and the infield dirt begins.

Repeatedly throughout the day I kept finding myself diving into the tiger teeth at the bottom of the corner because I didn't want to be to overly exuberant and end up in the infield. So while this should have been a relatively fast corner, it just wasn't for me. Several times throughout the day I headed into this section of the track behind several more seasoned Buttonwillow riders and watched as they managed to take a far more graceful line then I did. They glided along an almost predetermined path towards their eventual assault on the front straight away. No matter how many times I watched them swoop in for the kill, I simply found it hard to replicate the points that connected their path. Whenever I get the chance to come back to Buttonwillow this will undoubtedly be one of the corners that I spend my time trying to master.

In some ways the "Sunset" corner felt like the most important bend in the track because it leads you directly onto the front straight and the sooner you can get through it, the faster you can open up it up and pour on that magically addictive sense of Italian rocketship acceleration. I tend to use that phrase a lot, "Italian rocketship acceleration" and on a day like today I'm not sure the words adequately articulate just how seductive a 999 can feel when you ride it on a racetrack. Especially on a chunk of asphalt like the front straight at Buttonwillow where you have the opportunity to repeatedly whack the throttle back and shift sequentially through the gears from second to fifth gear while hurling yourself towards the edge the world.

Now it doesn't take an economist to understand that the act of riding an expensive Italian motorcycle at an excessive velocity down a straight away on a racetrack isn't exactly the most prudent financial decision one can make. Rifling through the gears I had visions of my accountant falling out of his chair if he knew what I was doing. But then he and the millions of other non-riders in the world have absolutely no frame of reference for understanding or conceptualizing how fantastically compelling the thrill of going faster than the speed of light feels like. Shooting yourself down a racetrack on the 999 makes you believe that it's possible to actually catch a sonic boom. When you feel the massive engine displacement hit the ground what transpires isn't so much a ride but rather creating your own emotionally entertaining destiny that results in a cathartic release of mythical proportions. It's the most impressive feature that a Ducati offers and perhaps the only reason to truly own one. In some respects the beauty of a trackday like this is that it separates riders - not by virtue of their skill level - but rather along the battle lines of whether or not an individual is into appearances for appearance sake or feeling the absolutely visceral sensation that can only come from attempting to explore the outer limits of the sport of riding.

Like most trackdays, I spent the first several sessions simply getting acquainted with the layout of the track. I didn't really ramp up the pace until later in the day once I felt I had a decent idea of where the asphalt was headed. I suspect that for most riders who fly around the same canyon roads weekend after weekend this is one of the more unnerving parts that a trackday offers. It's a mental exercise that most of us are somewhat unaccustomed to and perhaps unwilling to entertain because on an average weekend we don't have to think all that much about where the road we're on is headed. But it's worth pushing yourself to pass this milestone because once you become familiar with the layout it becomes rather effortless to increase your speed past any pace you normally would ride.

For me the greatest annoyance of the day wasn't memorizing the track, but rather the odd amount of chatter coming from the front end of the 999 when it was under heavy braking. While this made getting on the front brake feel less than settled, it also presented a chance to explore the one aspect of riding that I've rarely delved into ? suspension set-up.

When I came in from the third session I asked Eric, a wickedly fast rider on an ST4S and one of the lead mechanics at Pro Italia, if there was anything that I could do to reduce the violent shaking coming from the bike regardless of how smoothly I applied the brakes. My initial thought was that something was up with the actual brake units, but Eric's suggestion was to carefully play with the compression and rebound settings on the 9. In five minutes he taught me more about my bike than I've learned in months. After a quarter of a turn here and a twist there, I went out for the next session and found that while the problem was still there, the bike felt significantly better. Coming back into the pits, Eric asked with a smile, "Was it any better?" and when I told him what was going on he made a few more suggestions.

After a few quick changes, I went back out on the next session and the bike felt great. It was not only a revolutionary discovery, but also the kind of thing that highlighted just how unique spending a day at the track with folks you know from the dealership you go to can be. One of the unique parts of being at a PI trackday was seeing how true gearheads interact. The usual lines of demarcation that usually separate an individual from a business disappeared. The day wasn't about sales or promotion; but rather it was a day based on a common passion for riding.

Towards the back half of the day I decide to bounce down to the C group, not to be a big fish but rather to get a chance to ride with my old man. Nothing makes for a more enjoyable dinner conversation than recounting how you passed your father heading into a third or fourth gear sweeper. Unfortunately due to how the starting grid for the group worked out, my line of riders left first and his went out second to last. That put me halfway around the track when he was just getting started. It took several laps but eventually I worked my way up behind him coming out of "The Grapevine" section. Hanging back, it was wonderful to get a chance to watch him do his thing. For the next few moments I was able to witness my old man scoot his way around the track as he headed towards the wildly fast sweeping ÔRiverside' corner.

In some ways my old man is perhaps the best example of why riding on a track is a worthwhile exercise. When I first started riding he had only done two trackdays that I can remember, neither of which were anywhere near speed demon status. Yet after I started riding and we started attending more and more trackdays together, his style and his ability to ride dramatically increased. He's been riding for twenty plus years but trust me when I tell you that that his skill level has not increased in anything near a linear fashion. However during the last several years as we've done more and more trackdays it's rapidly progressed and I attribute the vast majority of that growth to taking days off and spending them at a track and not on some a family vacation hanging around in-laws no one really wants to see anyway.

Ultimately the glory of a trackday experience is that it offers two very unique tenants; the chance to increase your skill level by attempting to get better at riding a motorcycle and on the more wicked side of life, the prospect of breaking every rule that confines us on the street in the real world. It's the one place where speeding is encouraged and going slowly gets you pulled over. Imagine that.

After pushing myself as far as I felt was reasonably sound, I called it a day around 3 pm. Several minutes later Milt and I started heading back down I-5 while basking in the glory of a remarkable separate yet shared adventure. For the next three and half hours the radio didn't get turned on once. There was simply too much to talk about; corners, downshifts, sensations, you name it. In this trackday postmortem it seemed pretty clear that The Track Club folks have found a perfect formula for any participant because they offer an equal opportunity for both riders like myself and riders like my old man to find the same kind of thrilling emotional experience and passionate attempt at performance on the track. They create a unique environment where an individual's skill isn't as important as their thirst for knowledge, their willingness to try something new and their desire to search for the secrets to their own level of speed is what matters.

While I would say that the folks who show up here were a level of magnitude faster than say a CLASS Course (In other words the A group at CLASS is probably the equivalent of the B group here), I never felt like I was being put in harms way by another rider or put into any situation at this particular track that seemed even remotely questionable. Mark Duncan and his wife Dora run a furiously fast show that allows each person to adjust it to their own particular taste. That alone is an amazing attribute yet they go a step further by creating an atmosphere of safety that seems heartfelt but not heavy-handed. The goal that gets clearly articulated from start to finish is an open desire to allow each rider to safely enjoy their time on the track, run at whatever pace they feel comfortable with and ultimately have an opportunity to learn just a little bit more about themselves in the process. In the world of trackdays that's not an easy proposition to offer and yet they do it in a wonderfully friendly setting that makes you beg to come back for more.