A special track day for Kawasaki customers hosted by Kawasaki Motors Corp. U.S.A. and Sportbike Track Time today at Lexington, Ohio’s Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was deemed a success by participants and organizers. “It worked out really well,” Kawasaki Public Relations Manager Jan Plessner told Roadracingworld.com. “Monte (Lutz) and Bonnie (Strawser, co-owners of Sportbike Track Time) approached us with the idea to do an event here similar to the dealer-appreciation event they helped us with at Infineon Raceway. It was last-minute, but about two or three weeks ago we put the word out that we were going to do this fun track day at Mid-Ohio.” Kawasaki owners were offered the track day for the special low price of only $99, which would include a Sportbike Track Time Novice rider school, if the owner chose to take advantage of it. The price point was the main draw for 2000 Kawasaki ZX-6R owner and first-time track rider Matt Smith who drove 3.5 hours from Winfield, West Virginia to attend the day. “My buddy’s been on me for years that I should come to a track day,” Smith said, referring to his friend Christian Smith, no relation, who is an Expert-licensed racer with CCS and WERA. “$99 was in the budget and I own a Kawasaki, so I said, ‘Let’s go.'” Asked about his experience, Matt Smith said, “It’s been very humbling. You think you go fast on the street. Then you come here and find out you’re not fast. But it was great to work with the Sportbike Track Time guys. I had an instructor that I shared with only four other riders, and after every session he would critique my riding with me.” Plessner said she hopes to hold more low-priced track days for Kawasaki owners in the future, a move that Christian Smith considers “a tremendous benefit to the motorcycling community, because there are a lot of young guys out there riding their sportbikes on the street but they can’t afford to take it to the track. I think it would make a lot of better riders. And $99 is half the cost of a West Virginia speeding ticket.” The track day enjoyed the added bonus of having AMA Pro Racing’s Airfence soft barriers deployed around the challenging 2.4-mile, 15-turn track, since the track day was held between last weekend’s AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days and this coming weekend’s AMA Superbike Nationals.