ThinkFast
Live Long
@peterhively and I met up at Sonoma for the Monday Z2 trackday at Sonoma. Peter had a garage reserved and graciously invited me to join him - pretty luxurious way to enjoy the day. Weather was perfect, group sizes were just right, everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Z2 used their 4-group format, with the B group divided into B+ and B-. We both ran in B+. You get one less session running this way, but the advantage is you get a little more time between sessions; and having the B’s divided this way lowers the sketchyness a bit that you often find in the B group by segmenting out the riders who feel like they’re ready to move up from C to B, but maybe aren’t really quite ready to. So B- works.
The R7 ran great, although Sonoma is a good bit more intense than TH-West in terms of braking, which exposed the limitations of the stock ABS with rubber lines setup. The stock suspension also struggled to handle the bumpiness. Man, that was a bummer - I had heard about the repave a while back and was expecting to have a nice smooth track out there. Nope. Someone said they thought it might be because the cars got on the track too soon after the repave and tore it up. Dunno.
What I do know is that T2, T3a, T7 and T11 were all pretty messed up. I followed a Z2 instructor for a couple laps and was amazed at how wide he was taking 2 and 3a to avoid the bumps - like 6 feet or more off the inside curb.
Despite any of that it was a lot of fun and brought back fond memories of my AFM days there.
The R7 ran great, although Sonoma is a good bit more intense than TH-West in terms of braking, which exposed the limitations of the stock ABS with rubber lines setup. The stock suspension also struggled to handle the bumpiness. Man, that was a bummer - I had heard about the repave a while back and was expecting to have a nice smooth track out there. Nope. Someone said they thought it might be because the cars got on the track too soon after the repave and tore it up. Dunno.
What I do know is that T2, T3a, T7 and T11 were all pretty messed up. I followed a Z2 instructor for a couple laps and was amazed at how wide he was taking 2 and 3a to avoid the bumps - like 6 feet or more off the inside curb.
Despite any of that it was a lot of fun and brought back fond memories of my AFM days there.
A bit of a breeze wasn't much of a bother, it was steady and out of the north, so you could go deeper into 1 and 7. I did get into 9 and 11 deeper than I meant to a few times until I adjusted my brake markers! 
