Going to School

Track Report
By Pete Hitzeman
for R6Live.com

A few years ago, I had reached a very frustrating point in my track riding. I had worked my way up to running a solid “A-group” pace at my local track days, but I was stuck. Despite studying hard and working harder, I just wasn’t going any faster. Worse, I didn’t know what I needed to do to go any faster. It was almost to the point where I wasn’t having fun anymore. Going to the track had started to seem like work, instead of the fantasy-land it once was. Even my wife started to ask me if I was having any fun, wondering why I looked so serious all the time at the track.

I had asked for help. At a few track days run by some very reputable organizations, I had asked the control riders to follow me and tell me where I was going wrong, what I needed to work on. But the feedback I got was, well, not feedback. “Yeah, you look really smooth, your lines are good, just keep at it,” was the essence of what I was told. Not exactly useful, substantive advice. So I went nowhere with my riding, and continued to try to do the same things, but faster, which yielded exactly nothing in terms of lap times.

Then the best possible thing happened, and I was forced to take a break. A knee injury and subsequent surgery sidelined me for the 2010 season, and an extended training tour for the Air National Guard kept the bike on stands for all of 2011. I missed riding on the track, but realized through the break that when I came back, I needed to do it right, do something entirely different, or I would quickly run right back into the same stone wall I had reached before.

Enter Jason Pridmore’s STAR Motorcycle School. Through his partnership with the Michael Jordan Motorsports Suzuki team, Pridmore had gotten involved with the National Guard a few years ago, and started running school dates throughout the year, free of charge to Guard members. The Guard, and the military as a whole, have become painfully aware of the accident and fatality statistics for military riders, and asked Jason what he could do to help turn the tide. The STAR school’s emphasis on conscious control has turned out to be just the thing, and their National Guard Rider Training dates have received universal acclaim for enhancing rider skill, preventing the losses of control that are so central to most motorcycle accidents.


Since the 26 June date at Blackhawk Farms Raceway wasn’t full of Army Guard members, a few of us Air Guard bums were allowed to attend. I arrived as soon as the gates opened, set up my pit as usual, and did my normal track-day prep, unaware that this would be nothing like any track day I had ever done. A thorough morning rider meeting gave an introduction to the course from Pridmore, introduced the instructors, and explained how the National Guard training days had come into existence. Then Pridmore did the first thing of many that day that raised my eyebrow, in that he went around the classroom and asked us what we thought we needed to work on. I answered that when I’m trying to go fast, I think I’m working too hard, and he nodded, looked me in the eye and told me we’d figure out how to fix that today. Today.

The first session out on track was something entirely different than I had ever done. I had never been to Blackhawk, and had nothing more than a couple YouTube videos to tell me which way the track went. Before, when learning a new track, I had just tried to get a tow from a fast guy for a few laps, jumping straight into the deep end. This worked out okay most of the time, but usually resulted in a whole lot of puckering moments, and me not knowing the track all that well at the end of the day. At the STAR school, we spent the first 20 minutes on track just cruising, looking at the surface, the bumps, the lines, never getting out of third gear and never going much faster than highway speed, even on the straights.

I had never approached a track this way before, and the best way I can describe it is “enlightening.” Instead of a frantic, panic-strewn first session where I spend most of my time guessing at brake markers, turn in points, and basically trying not to crash, I was able to calmly explore. I rolled over different parts of corners to find bumps, looked far ahead through sections to visualize the lines, and generally got loose and relaxed on the bike.

Between each session, we’d meet with the instructors for feedback, instruction on new and different techniques, and advice on a few drills to try during the next session. And this is where my eyebrows went up again, because there was a distinct lack of preaching. So many schools I have read about, and indeed so many riding technique articles and books, claim to profess the One True Faith™ of riding technique. In a vast departure from the pulpit, Jason and the other instructors broke things down simply. Instead of “this is how you will ride,” it was “if you’re having this problem, this is why, so try that, because that’s what we’ve seen work for us and others.” This might seem like a small difference, but the presentation gave me confidence to try what they suggested, knowing that if I needed to modify the technique to suit me or abandon it altogether, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

All of which leads to the part that impressed me the most about the STAR school. Pridmore, along with his instructor cadre, have an absolutely complete coaching style. I don’t mean merely that they’ve mastered the science of riding safely, quickly and in control. I mean that they’ve taken that science, broken it down into understandable portions, and analyzed it in such detail that they can explain exactly why, how, and when things should happen. Without giving too much away, I was led to inspect and evaluate parts of my riding that I had never before considered to be the slightest bit important. And when a problem was found, I was told exactly what I can try to alleviate that problem. The improvements were immediately visible to me.

We each turned in over 60 laps on the day, with classroom time before, between and after on-track sessions. I received 1-on-1 instruction on two separate occasions, and was given suggestions that, once I can follow them reliably, will yield enormous gains in my riding. In a single 20-minute session, those two instructors gave me more useful information about my riding than I had received in several seasons of track days.

And perhaps the best part of the STAR school, if one had to be picked, was the atmosphere. The staff was friendly, relaxed, and very personable, while remaining totally professional. There was none of the fast-guy-snobbery that I’ve seen at so many other events. While the instruction they were giving you was completely serious, they were clearly also there to make sure you were having a good time, probably because they know nobody learns anything when they’re miserable or freaked out.

If you’ve been wondering whether taking a track school is worth it, I can tell you that this one is. If you’ve been waiting to do it for any reason, don’t. I can’t wait to get on the track again to apply what I learned at the STAR school, and I’ll be looking for a chance to attend another one very soon.



For more information, check out the STAR Motorcycle School's webpage or their Facebook page.
Also follow Jason on Facebook and Twitter.