Just crashed my Zx9R on a track day yesterday. Luckily my brother was using the Blade so I took the Zx9 out as it had been on tyre warmers.. the bike was on Diablo Rosso Corsa's, and I had to wait about 10 mins to get our on track so the tyres may well have cooled down. It was around 10 degrees Celsius and pretty windy. I did too laps of the track , Bedford Autodrome , then decided to up the pace in the inters .. Proximately 1/3 of the way round I entered a right hander, one of only 3 proper right handers on the circuit (excluding a couple on chicanes etc).. So I got to the apex at a faster pace on the third lap, learnt over quite a bit , and opened the throttle and lost the front.. and lowe-sided at quite a pace.. bike pretty damaged but cheap to repair. Tumbling on the grass bashed my neck but bike kit did a top job.. not a bruise or cut anywhere.. Apart from an aching neck , just my finger tips hurt and I could not figure out why.. until I remember trying to grip the road to slow myself down ... Didn't work.. What surprised me about the crash was losing the front whilst on the throttle.. I thought you were pretty safe of losing the front once on the gas.. I think there rear shock may be a little soft as it's does get a little weight transfer on the gas to the rear.. Anyone shed any light on this.. ref losing the front on the throttle.. I was quite surprised I went down how I did. I'm thinking cold tyres and maybe a slightly worn shock. Just trying to justify why I crashed, though it could just be a lack of talent.
Sorry about the crash...good to hear you’re ok though. I won’t go on about fixing the bike but not you etc. Blah blah...I’m sure you’ve heard that plenty enough. now I’m no track/riding guru....but since you mention soft rear suspension could it be that as you get on the gas the weight transferred to the rear, the front goes light and coupled with cold/cooler tyres it let go. just my 2pmworth. Anyway’s get onto ebay and start the search for plastics....good luck with it.
Sorry to hear about your crash but sounds like you're ok and minor damage to the kit and bike! Again I'm no expert but this is how I would have tackled the corner.....get your braking out of the way, tip the bike into the corner with a steady throttle throughout the corner then as you start to exit the corner, sit it up and accelerate out of the corner. Accelerating or decelerating mid corner is only going to unsettle the bike causing loss of traction front or rear (lowside or highside inducing) if you're leant over quite a bit like you say! Two laps is not enough time for the tyres to be up to temperature either. So yeah ......accelerate on exiting the corner is the smoother, safer option!
I'm with hitch here. Classic low side while starting to get on the gas , weight shifts towards the rear unloads front tyre and down you go. You probably got on the gas a fraction too early while still at full lean or you were adjusting your body position back to the normal prone position with your backside shoved back as you start to tuck in ready for the acceleration. All of this shifting position and accelerating takes the weight off the front which was still trying to corner. You will hear pros going on about lifting the bike early to fire it out the corner to avoid this weight transfer issue at lean Glad your OK
Look at the right hand third of the tread of the rear tyre and it’s colour in relation to the middle and left hand side, can you see any difference ? It’s very difficult to post-mortem a crash if you don’t know why it happened, as it’s said you should learn from every crash, just wish I could say I did, but I didn’t and it’s those ones that get away from you that piss you off the most. Main thing is you bounced as bikes are easier to fix than bodies.
Having looked at the tyres there does seem to be a sheen on the front tyre that does not really show on a photo.. like it's not been scrubbed in .. My brother complained in the wet that he lost the front a couple of times at modest speed in the wet.. (I witnessed one whilst behind him). The rear tyre looks similar, but less so.. like riding on the road has maybe not scrubbed the edges and left a polished slightly harder surface.. Though both tyres have had the chicken strips removed.. over time they have again sort of polished up, if that makes sense. So probably too much lean and throttle application on a cold-ish tyre and the tyres not being scrubbed in on the edges properly..
