Fort Worth Motorcycle Riders

Hey guys, I know little about lap timers, how they work, pros vrs cons etc.. So if you use a lap timer what do you recommend. I think Ride Smart rents lap timers and I have heard of Cell phone apps and of course the expensive ones that mount on the bike. I believe Gopros can also be used???? Suggestions, Advise?

I've been using the GoPro and just looking at the video afterwards at the time when I cross specific points on the track. The weakness is that it is a tremendously manual task and it takes work to get the data out. You can't just look down during the session and see what you put down last lap, in fact I usually don't look at the times until that night or the day after. Of course this saves me the embarrassment of having to tell people at the track what my times were. Now, the upside of using the GoPro, since it is a totally manual task, is that you can isolate any portion of the track from lap to lap so if you're working on a specific set of corners and relaxing the rest of the lap, this will let you see your progress. The GPS based times let you do this also.

I keep thinking I'm going to try a phone app and then I never remember to do it.

I rented a lap timer once, and I've used GoPro video to figure out lap times a few times. Knowing your times is interesting, but unless you're racing there's no real need and you don't want to get too focused on lap times that cause you to develop bad habits that don't let you go as fast as possible if you would had developed the good habits/techniques.

I tried a free app once but I guess it didn't get good signal in my pocket and I didn't get a time. I use GoPro now, but only record every other time or so.

I recommend GPS versions for track days around here

I use this one:
http://www.qstarz.com/Products/GPS%20Pr ... 000-F.html

There are a few other ones that are pretty good too.

I use the one built into my bike..... Hit the starter button when you cross a mark. Not exact, but close enough for government work.

JTChiTown wrote:I use the one built into my bike..... Hit the starter button when you cross a mark. Not exact, but close enough for government work.

Hey, What are you trying to say?

You know exactly what he's talking about...

My dad and older brother both work for the DoD, an auditor and an instructor. My younger brother works on projects funded by DARPA/ARPA-E.

I work for a company nicknamed government Motors.....

I can say what I want about the precision of the government....

But seriously, at this level, lap times don't matter much, more of a curiosity than anything else.

Yea I don't watch lap times to push things -

I will say this, your perception of speed is not what you think it is, your perception of speed SUCKS

example:

I was at TWS and I was "hauling ass" and I was one of the slowest riders in level 2, I was getting pissed and my lap times sucked but by god I was haulin ass.

I finally said screw this I'm going to slow down - I don't care if I'm the slowest guy out there and just focus on hitting my marks - I'll be damned if I didn't bust into the lower level 3 laptimes and it felt like I was crawling - if I hadn't had a lap time on me I would have never known.

Thanks for all the info, hope to see some of ya'll at TWS in a couple weeks.