I dislike spreading the neg, but it must be said. Emily and I did the July 10/11 Barber weekend w/Xact Motorsports. in short, DON'T RIDE WITH THEM. unorganized, disorganized, de-organized, NOT organized. UNSAFE. we did not feel safe at all and MANY others echoed this feeling. at sat rider's meeting, fully half the crowd raised hands to answer the "how many have never done a track day?" question. a scary groan went up from the rest of us. certainly it's GREAT to welcome new riders, but NOTHING was done to make sure that HALF THE F'ING CROWD knew what to do. at sun meeting, one guy asked about pitting in. Pete brushed it off. I offered to take the new guys to the big poster by the elevator to explain and he said I don't have to worry about it. uh, yeah, I do. that guy and all his buddies not paying attention over there are in my group. how we wish we had gone to Tally w/all of you.... at sun a.m. rider's meeting, Pete wouldn't even tell the group how many red flags there were on sat. estimate: TOO MANY. not one on-time start for Novice on sat. he said he may cut after lunch sessions to 15 min if it got too hot. excuse me? that's 25 minutes total, friend. I'm capable of getting off early if I need to. I could go on. and on. and on. ok, there was some good: *lunch both days. *emily rode my bike a lot (since I didn't feel good at all about the whole thing). *she also had her first get off in T5 W/no consequences. * I shaved 7 seconds off my best lap. new best.... 2:02! I'm getting there. anyhoo, I imagine some of you have had pleasant experiences w/Xact. Bully for you. I hope this one weekend was not indicative of their usual show. As for E and me, we will never stray from the fold again. amen.
If there is a question that you feel was not fully answered at a rider's meeting, even if you didn't ask it and don't need the clarification yourself, you can always ask it again, just reword it a bit. Hopefully this will bring about a better answer. Another alternative is you can even reword the question as an answer like this: "So you put out an arm or a leg coming off of turn X when you want to exit the track. If you don't have the arm/leg out don't come off the track and if you do have it out you must exit the track. Is that the correct procedure"? In other words don't let it be "blown off". Remember it is our necks out there and if someone we are riding on the track with doesn't know the rules or procedures we may wind up in he hospital because of it. For the record I pretty much just ride with STT as well, although I am probably going to do a MotoVid day at BHF this year. I have heard some fairly good things about their track days so hopefully I won't run into what you did.
Sorry you guys didnt have a good time. It is different strokes for different folks. I know both of you and you are good folks. If your experience with them was bad then don't go back. Its your money, spend it like you want. Hope to see you soon.
"Maybe you want to check some of the other forums before you think "MANY" others echoed the same...... check these and see what riders really felt..... " when I wrote that many others echoed the same feeling, I mean many others at barber on july 10/11. and I did check out Xact before popping for $630. it's all the more vexing to go into a weekend w/no qualms whatsoever and come out astounded. good luck.
Xact review as evltwinn999 said: "everyone has an opinion" everything I wrote was either my opinion or the truth as I saw it. I posted it publicly because I am concerned for the safety of future riders. many disagree with my assessment, but still, I would not recommend Xact motorsports to any rider. I can compare Xact to 4 other organizations over the modest course of 5 years of doing track days. based solely on what I experienced last weekend, I feel Xact has room for improvement regarding basic safety instruction. that is my opinion. obviously, I've upset a number of people; that was not my intention.
Re: Xact review I was not there but you have every right to your opinion just like everybody else. Thanks for keeping your posts clean and respectful to othrs
More on the red flag thing...... Anyone who has done an STT southern event knows Mark runs EVERY day, and every riders meeting nearly identical to the last. On the same token, when I teach novice class, I do so nearly identical to the last time I did (not word for word, but same order, and same techniques) I have seen weekends where the weather was identical both days. Saturday, be a crash fest. Lost several novice riders, and the other groups were crashing too. Sunday........ crash truck barely even rolls all day. Not a single novice hit the ground. Or vice-versa...... saturday be clean, and sunday a crash fest. With all that said, it sort of proves how we really have no control. No org does. We do what we can do. The director of the event does what he does. The Coaches/control riders/instructors do what they do every weekend............ and some days are just ugly. It happens.