Trackday update.
My R15 was stuck at the service center for wheel swap and general service. Its over 2 months since I last hit the track and my itch was getting stronger. So decided to ride down along on Kushanth’s Karizma. Prepared his bike barely on time on Saturday and we left Sunday early morning from Bangalore. Started at around 3.30am. Karthik R also joined us.
Hit the track by 8.00am and got dressed to set to ride.
The first bike that I took out for a spin was Sksy’s Karizma with our stage 1 port job. I knew the karizma was gonna hop its front all over the fast corners, but decided to give it a try. And it did hop all over the track. It was a task getting the bike to take high speed corners(C1, C6,C7,C9) however on the straights, the bike was pretty composed and through small sections it could negotiate decently.
Later took Karthik’s R15 for a spin. I instantly started feeling at home and immediately realized how effortlessly this thing could handle and I was in my pace. The bent front brake lever on his bike was however giving me a little dicey feel when depressing. Overall felt happy after putting a few laps.

A little later, got the RTR FI for some fun. During the first lap I was not to happy about the way it went thru corners, maybe coz its been a while I rode the RTR on track. 2nd lap I was feeling better and from the 3rd lap I started loving the RTR FI. Has terrific mid-corner punch and a slight de-clutch can get a lot of response from the engine. This is where the R15 fails. Corner speeds as per the RTR speedo was some 3-4kmph more than my speeds on the R15 (could be coz of a bit of speedo error), but still the overall feel was great. The bike was running very good footwear. R15’s front rubber and rear was the Zapper C.

Took out our modified (kushanths) karizma to see how it moves and then again I was feeling that the bike was going all over the place. However I was more prepared this time to take corners, and changed my riding style a bit. I was easily going around scraping my knees on a really tall bike like his karizma. The problem with the karizma is that front is too soft but the rear is decently hard. If only the front is stiffened a little more, things will surely change and you can get better on the bike.
The tacho/speedo was mostly not working due to a loose contact on the dash but I could see the speedo hit 130kmph once on the main straight.
A power engine with a bad handling package is almost a Killer package. I mean literally.

The same RTR Fi crashed coz the owner over-cooked it in a corner. I was somehow really wanting to ride the RTR, so I fixed the foot pegs somehow and got started again. Did a few fast laps and surprisingly there was no one to time me. Donno how much that was anyways, don’t wanna guess either. However after about 5 laps the foot reat gave way when I shed my weight on the peg. Retired to the pits and was chatting with the xbhp crowd.

So I heard a lot of them complaining about the way the Pulsars were handling on the track. Praful was just bragging about the way she went around the corners, the wrong way . I had never ridden a pulsar around, so just took a fellow xbhpians almost brand new p220 to see what the actual story is. Every moment I spent on the P220, my balls were in my mouth. Handling was something that I have never experienced and I don’t know what to comment. The bike basically goes all over the place and I was nearly 10kmph slower than the RTR everywhere. The bike would struggle to see 3-digit figures unlike an RTR despite being technically more powerful. The engine is quite strong on the straights with a heady top-whack of 123kmph but scares the hell out of you through a corner. There were surprisingly a lot of pulsar owners and I’m sure all of them are now convinced where their machines stand on the track. Anything but a pulsar on the track is good.

Overall a decent session. I not for a bad crash by Karthik and a few others, the trackday went quite well.
Thanks to Sksy for those superb pics and pls don’t forget what I said

@all – Please post all the pics here.