Thursday January 12, 2006 Random ramblings
Thursday January 12, 2006 rally and rs250 track day videos
"Climb Dance" is an excellent little film of world champion Ari Vatanen sliding his Peugeot 405 up a switchback gravel mountain road. There's a great helicopter shot of one spot with the car backing into a corner, and the rear wheel literally less than a foot from a steep drop.
Also, google video is a great source of track day videos. E.g this one of an RS250 at Zandvoort (the Netherlands). Lovely two stroke wail. You can see the strengths of the RS250, particularly on his later laps as he gets into it: much later on the brakes compared to the bigger bikes, much greater flexibility in choosing a line, or even changing a line mid-corner. You can also see the downsides though, the 4 strokes just drive out of corners so much better, particularly if you let the revs drop too much on the two-stroke. The rider really should fit some rear-set foot pegs to his bike - you can hear them scraping a few times 
. The pegs digging in and picking the bike up throws him offline at least twice; once early on and once later where he ends up running off track.
Zandvoort seems to have an absolutely awesome last corner, running onto the main straight. Long double apex corner, slowish in and then accelerating seemingly forever, from 3rd or 4th into 6th at the exit. He takes it pretty much flat out on his very last lap, revs in the powerband nearly all the way and at peak power (10k to 11k rpm) near the end of it and it looks stunning.
I have to go on a track day there some day. 
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