TRACK TIME
It always pays to be a step ahead of the game – when we left the hotel on the morning of our track ride I convinced Frodo it was his turn to ride the ZX-6R. That way, when we made it to the track it would be my turn to take the Ninja for its maiden track voyage. He fell for it, hook, line and sinker and my plan worked a treat. We arrived at Circuit de la Ribera in good time for our track session as neither of us could wait to see how well the Kwacka performed on track.
Circuit de la Ribera is a tight and twisty little circuit and not much bigger than a kart track so the first few laps on the 636 were a bit of a struggle. Once I had figured out where the track went left and where it went right, I started to relax and make the bike work a little bit under me. The first thing that hit me on track, which had seemed less noticable on the road, was just how sharp the brakes felt. There was an instant bite that required a bit of respect. And they were fairly powerful too, with an ABS system that didn’t kick in too abruptly. Even with the ABS on (it only has one setting) I was able to pop the back wheel off the floor, even if only fleetingly – there are plenty of stock ABS systems that won’t let you do that, even if you want to.
As I started to up the pace a little bit, I found myself changing gear an awful lot. I put it down to the new, shortened gearing. The quickshifter works nicely on the Ninja
(I was certainly making good use of it) but
with no blipper, I seemed to be working extra hard on the way into corners.
I thought I would try altering my technique; rather than having the thing revving its nuts off, I decided to use the bike’s torque to drive through the corners, thus giving myself and the gearbox an easier time. Almost every corner on the tight little circuit was as fast, if not faster, when attacked in a gear higher than I had originally being doing.
The circuit was way too tight for anything over 600cc and I didn’t envy Frodo, as I saw him wobbling his way round the tight hairpins and chicanes on the Gixer Thou’. The 636 didn’t embarrass itself though; it was light enough to turn in as quick, if not quicker, than I wanted it to and at the pace I was hustling round at there were never any dramas. I was even impressed with how well the new Bridgestone S22s coped with corner after corner of serious abuse, with no real respite to speak of.
After a strong handful of laps on the Ninja, somebody released the hounds and before I knew it I had Spanish children passing me left, right and centre on everything from Metrakit 80s to CBR600RRs and everything in between. Not only did I feel like an idiot, I’m sure I looked like one too and poor old Frodo was having just as torrid a time on the big Gixer. To avoid any further embarrassment we both pulled in to the pits with our proverbial tails between our legs. Later we found out that among the super-fast Spaniards were GP race winners Arón Canet and Philipp Öttl, which made Frodo and I feel a little less inadequate.
Having been frightened well and truly off the main track, we decided we were enjoying the bikes and having far too much fun at Ribera to ride back to the hotel – so we decided to demote ourselves to the kids’ track. The kids’ track was an actual kart track, but we couldn’t resist having a fly round on the 636 and the Gixer, and nobody seemed to mind us tearing round on the man-sized motorbikes. I say ‘tearing round’ neither of us got either bike out of first gear – the only thing that was 'tearing' were the kids, nay the infants, tearing past us. It was really quite embarrassing, but one hell of a laugh. One lad who made us look particularly stupid was Sullivan Mounsey, an 11-year-old British rider who was over there training in preparation for his assault on the upcoming British Championship. Sully thought it was really funny to ride round the outside of Frodo and me, with his elbow on the floor… lap after lap. I suppose he thinks he’s clever.
Apart from getting absolutely annihilated by all and sundry on both tracks, the ZX-6R really impressed us. The power was easy to use, the chassis worked well, and the brakes were more than strong enough for all the abuse we threw at them. Frodo and I both agreed that, while on track aboard the ZX-6R, the only thing that we wanted for was some talent.