Riders continued to take the initiative on safety concerns and met with an official at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course yesterday during a team test at the Lexington, Ohio road course. Mat Mladin, Jake Zemke, Eric Bostrom and Jamie Hacking joined Yoshimura Suzuki team manager Don Sakakura and Parts Unlimited Ducati team manager Tom Bodenbach in a meeting with Mid-Ohio’s Dennis Rhee, followed by a corner-by-corner tour and review of the racetrack. Riders are concerned with several issues. The repaved racetrack proved to be between one and two seconds a lap faster in the dry during the two-day test, depending upon the class of machine. But riders said the new pavement was very slippery when wet or even just damp with dew, with some riders waiting hours for the sun to completely dry the track before resuming testing after initial forays onto the pavement. “The new surface is grippy when it’s dry and with rubber on it,” American Honda’s Jake Zemke told Roadracingworld.com Thursday evening, “but not so much after it rains or when it’s green. It rained yesterday, so we started with a green track today and it was slippery!” Zemke added that the new surface was abrasive but not extremely abrasive as when he first visited Miller Motorsports Park or Barber Motorsports Park. Because the track is now faster, concerns about run-off room have been magnified in several corners. Riders also reported that the infamous patches in several Mid-Ohio corners have been sealed over, smoothing the transition. “There are patches, and I don’t really understand that,” said Zemke. “There’s some sealer patches where it looks like they’ve sealed up the corner at the exit of the Keyhole and in turn 11, the double-right that leads to Thunder Valley. There’s some smaller patches and sections of sealer in other areas, too. The sealer’s not a problem in the dry, but it definitely doesn’t have the grip of the regular asphalt.” New curbing is much more vertical (almost like a city street curb, according to one source at the test) than conventional racetrack curbing, with riders worrying about hitting their handlebars (!) on the new curbs. “The curbs are horrible,” said Zemke. “They are so gnarly you don’t even want to get close to them. They come up abruptly at a very sharp angle and are flat across the top. They are high enough that you could catch a front brake lever on them. “We had a safety meeting yesterday afternoon. The people with the track actually called the meeting because they wanted to know what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we want changed. It would’ve been more helpful if they had asked to meet with us before they did these curbs, but they were very receptive to our feedback. Hopefully, we can get the curbs fixed before the race here.” No AMA Pro Racing officials were present during the test.