Yup, there's an old saying... Want to go faster? Go racing. I've seen it time and time again that riders take seconds off their best lap times their first race weekend.

Awsome! I look forward to seeing you in the New Racer School on of these days!

I would love to go racing. A couple of things stopping me. 1, money, its expensive even if everything goes right. 2, there are virtually no track days open for just motorcycles anywhere near me, and I am in a decently populated area with a decent amount of tracks near me, just no idea how to find one that is within 5 hours of me. 3, time, Before I moved, all the motorcycle track days they did have were on friday, I work a job, so unless I want to take off random fridays not really feasible.

I'm not sure I understand your comment? Besides the fact that Australia has had 3 premier class champions (Stoner, Doohan and Gardner) and the US has had 7 (Roberts, Spencer, Lawson, Rainey, Schwantz, Roberts Jr. and Hayden). National pride aside, are you trying to say that Australia has better riders because they don't have track days down under?

@@stumanrides I didn’t state the categories of world championships winners. As this list is long, you did (not sure why). Nor did I say none have not done any track days. My kids for example have watched both of my WSB rides at Phillip Island (my old home racetrack) along with several other races on KZfaq and have actually purchased a ride day pass for them to watch me live at Phillip Island. What I was getting to was we don’t, as a majority, start with track days. As mentioned clearly we start out in smaller capacity bikes by joining racing clubs to learn how to ride slow bikes fast before progressing up the ranks. Either way, the split of World Champions is not a 1 to 10 ratio (as per population) even as you have noted with just MotoGP. Which system is better? Having people on (for example 500 - 1100 cc) class bikes learning to race from track days or as per Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe etc… where the road riders also start out on lower cc bikes and/or restricted bikes which based upon all the available statistics is safer. Does this make sense now or do you require more information supported by facts. To be honest, I’m actually more nervous about a track day than racing in front of 130,000 trackside fans and full TV coverage. Lol.

@@marcusgeorge1825 I guess it would depend on what your criteria is for "Better". Track days attract more people to the sport. There are many riders here in the US that don't want to jump right into racing and would rather have fun riding around on a track at a track day on their street bike. Some of these riders never race, and IMO that is all good. Others do some track days and find that they would like to try racing, it's like a gateway drug. Those riders already have some track experience and are typically pretty proficient riders when they decide to go racing. As for starting out on smaller displacement bikes, many do. The ultra-lightweigh classes are filled with amateur racers just starting out. However, we don't limit amateurs to riding only the little bikes, they can start on a 1000 if they like. Joe Roberts raced with our club on a 1000 when he was very young and just starting out. In any case, maybe the way you do it down under produces higher quality racers, that is great. The way we do it with our club attracts a large number of riders to the sport of racing, we probably have one of the most well-attended new racer programs in the US, graduating about 15 new racers every month for our 7-round series. Motorcycle racing is very niche in the US. Riding sportbikes in the US is very niche as well. Most motorcyclists here ride cruisers or adventure bikes. Anything we can do to get more riders on the track is a good thing for the growth of the sport here and track days have been a boon for that.

@@stumanrides Let’s take the country pride out of all of this and look at the history of arguably the GOAT. Valentino Rossi. Did he start off with track days? No. Just talking 2 wheels here. He mastered racing slow bikes fast. 125 cc World Champion, 250 cc World Champion etc. Bit to even mention the smaller categories he raced before the main events. I don’t believe anyone can argue with his success. Would he have been as great if he started out doing track days on bigger machines? Possibly not. Same story for all the European racers.

nah, you get to follow way better riders which makes you way faster. trackdays are full of crashes and traffic jams for no reason wasting your money

That’s absolutely untrue. That’s why there is an amateur race class and an expert race class

Just curious, why do you think it is pointless?