Hotfoot

Welcome! What do you ride?

Yes, you should have a steering damper on any race bike, it is usually required in the rules. I've usually heard it recommended to set it on the lowest possible setting, only turning it up if needed (and if it does need to turned up the bike should be checked for a handling problem). What gave you the idea that the school bikes don't have steering dampers on them? Usually you won't notice the presence of the damper but if the bike goes into a tank slapper, you need that damper to calm it down.

Great to hear it! It was very nice to see you and get to work with you, see you next year!

Yes that is me. I’m surprised how many people notice! It was great to see you at Barber, you sure looked like you were having fun and making great progress.

This is a great question, following!

I don’t have pain or tension while on the bike, but I do find that after riding on the track my neck is sore the next day, from the low hang-off position and from the helmet, I don’t seem to use those muscles any other time. I'd be interested in exercises to help prepare my neck for that. It’s the most noticeable on tracks with elevation change where I have to tilt my head more to see uphill, or on very high speed tracks where there is some wind buffeting on the helmet.

Hi Hanni! The school uses LiquiMoly Chain Lube and we are very happy with that.

That’s great, glad that was a enlightening moment!

Not sure what you are asking about the break-in; we break in the new bikes before the first school, is that what you wanted to know? We run with the ABS on. In the earlier model years the ABS was more invasive and noticeable and sometimes the coaches turned it off. However in more recent years the ABS is very well tuned (and adjusts itself depending on what mode you are riding in) and now I think nearly all of the coaches leave it on. You can brake very, very hard on these machines without the ABS changing anything in the feel of the braking so there is not much reason to turn it off. It is certainly nice to have it on as it can really help in any case where traction is poor, or if someone were to panic and overbrake, or brake too hard while leaned over, it can save their bacon.

Hi Vinny! Thanks for being here. I'm curious what you think of using octane boosters, and what they actually do. I have a race bike that requires a higher octane fuel that is a bit hard to find. What would happen if I had to run the bike on 91 octane pump gas? What are the pros and cons of using an octane booster? The bike manual says to use 101 octane (RON) or higher fuel and typically around here (Southern CA) I can only get 91 (R+M/2) octane pump gas. Also, if I do add an octane booster to fuel in my fuel tank, will it mix evenly? Does it separate over time? Can it safely sit in my bike's fuel tank for a month? Will it hurt the anti-slosh foam tank inserts? Thanks in advance!

When I say "not quite holding a line", I mean that the bike doesn't go exactly where I expected it to, which typically means I miss my intended apex by a foot or so, that the bike just goes a bit wide. It's most noticeable to me on late apex corners, when I'm off the gas entering the corner and I just don't quite get the bike on my anticipated line, don't make it to the apex I wanted. When I say "vagueness", that is a little hard to define but it is a step below what I listed above - I make a steering input but I don't get a positive certainty that the tire is holding and that the direction change is exactly what I expected. That is what I experience when I don't have a specific reference point to check against; if I DID have a specific point on my line and MISSED it, I would know exactly how much my line was off, but if I am in an area where I don't have an exact reference then I just get the idea that the bike isn't doing quite what I want but I can't measure it, so it is more of a vague impression. I have experienced small cold tire slides where the front tire goes suddenly sideways a foot or so and every time it happens I figure I was damn lucky not to have crashed. If you are feeling actual slides on the front you are definitely in a red zone. It is much better to notice the smaller signs and not get to that point. I haven't experienced much in the way of cold-tire rear slides, partly because I am not inclined to throttle up hard if the tire doesn't feel strongly planted, and also because the traction control on the S1000rrs will intervene to help prevent that.

Not sure if you are specifically asking Jaybird, but for me, on slicks when they are VERY cold, I notice that the bike wants to 'stand up', resisting lean into the corners. I notice it most on longer corners, I tip the bike in and it seems to fight me and requires some pressure on the bars to keep the bike leaned over. That tells me the tires are REALLY cold, they are so stiff that the contact patch won't flatten at all and they sort of bounce back. This can also show up as a weird vibration in a straight line. When they are getting warmer but not really gripping yet, I notice that the bike doesn't quite keep the line I wanted, I miss the apex I was aiming for, the steering feels vague and not confidence-inspiring. On Q3s or Q4s I have never had that 'resisting the lean' feeling, but I have had the steering vagueness and noticed the bike won't quite hold the line I want. There is a temptation to lean it MORE when it won't hold its line, but that is analogous to turning the wheel on your car on a slick road, getting no response and turning it MORE, it's a bad idea! That feeling that I need to lean the bike MORE in the middle of a turn is a great indicator to me that my tires aren't warm enough to grip properly.

Dual sport bikes! Been doing a lot of that already, about 50/50 pavement to dirt ratio, have to ride on the paved roads to get to the dirt/fire roads. A little bit of mini-bikes on go kart tracks, when we can.

It really is convenient having the movie available for instant viewing on Prime Video!

Hello, are you a motorcycle rider? What do you ride? Are you planning to attend a school?

Awesome! Have a great time at Thunderhill.

Welcome to the forum! There is a lot of great info here, cruise around and check it out, and post any questions you have. There are great articles in the Articles section, make sure to look around in there, too. Hope to see you in person in September! Are you coming to Streets of Willow?

Is that where the “patient” in your user name comes from? Being patient and not charging corners? There is a section in Twist II called “Discharging” on this topic, it’s a good read.

Interesting question. The 3 month number that I threw out was a pretty rough estimate, just my sense of it for myself. I suspect it is very individual, that everyone will have a different threshold for how quickly they get "rusty" and how fast they come back. I asked Cobie that question once when I first started coaching and as I recall he said something like around once a month, but of course that is not always possible, depending on finances, weather, and proximity to available tracks. I will say that I see a LOT of riders feeling much more comfortable on their second day (in a row) of riding, which in my opinion is a big benefit of doing a 2-day camp vs just one day of school. So - I'll throw that question back out to the group - anybody else have a sense of how long they can go between schools/trackdays and still feel sharp and ready to go when they DO ride next?

Well done on your observations and on being able to re-pass the other rider. This is a common issue at trackdays, you can get riders that accelerate as hard as they can on straights and push very hard on entry speed, that crowd you and think your entry speed is too low and get anxious to pass. But if they pass you and then totally blow the corner, it shows you that they are the ones that are mis-judging the entry speed, not you. Smart riders will learn from that, maybe after the second time the other rider tried entering the corners without charging and got a better result. What group are you riding in? Intermediate is often the worst for that. You can usually get a lot faster lap time improvement from getting better drives than you can from pushing entry speed; definitely use your 2 step and WV to check your visuals if you think you are overslowing but be careful you don’t get sucked into charging corners.

That sounds like a GREAT plan, one that would be widely applicable to any track day or ride. Any time you feel like your entry speed is suffering, or you realize in the middle of the corner that you have entered it too slow, visuals are a good first thing to check: do you have good reference points and how is your 2S/3S timing. On your track day if you have other riders around you braking hard and late, watch to see how the rest of the corner goes for them - do they overbrake and end up slow in the middle? Do they miss their apex, end up a little wide, and have a weak or late drive out? That can help relieve any pressure you feel from seeing other riders brake harder and later.

Yes, it does seem to take a few days to shake off the rust if you have not been on a big track for many months. That used to be a huge frustration for me. Now I just accept that it is part of the game, that if I am off the track for 3 months or more, I cannot expect to go right out and ride at the level I was at before. It takes some sessions - or even a couple of days, sometimes, if I was riding at a really high level before - to get my confidence and my timing back to where it needs to be. Honestly I also find that riding my smaller bike (the 250), while it improves a lot of skills, doesn't quite prepare me for riding an S1000rr on a big track like VIR. It helps fitness and flexibility and works the right muscles, but the forces are SO different because of the much harder acceleration and braking that it takes some time to get used to that, and the speeds go so much higher so much faster that my visual timing has to adjust, too.

We have some very cool Level 4 drills that revolve around visualizing the whole turn, and making a plan for the line based on that. Some riders are able to visualize a turn as if they were viewing it from overhead, and can imagine their line through that turn as if there were a continuous chalk line drawn for them to follow. Other riders find this difficult to do, and are much more comfortable finding and relying on specific reference points that they can follow, in a smooth visual flow. For example, if you think of a place you are familiar with that has a blind hill, especially on a turn or curving road, you can probably recall the feeling, the first time through, of being very tentative and not knowing which way the road will go, on the other side of the hill - is it straight or will it turn? Which way? After going over the hill a few times, you have a better idea of what's on the other side and are willing to approach it faster. That's still imprecise, though. The next step would be to have CERTAINTY on where the road will go on the other side and exactly where YOU need to be, going over the rise, how fast you can do it and how much lean you can (or must) carry over the rise. Some riders can solve that by having a very clear mental picture of what is on the other side, so they know just where to put the bike cresting the hill. Other riders are more comfortable picking a reference point to know where to be at the top of the rise, perhaps a mark on the track that they can see, or they can just know they need to be, say, 1' from the left edge of the pavement, to be correctly lined up (for whatever comes next) as they crest the rise. If you are someone who thinks well with visualizing the whole turn or the whole line, and especially if trying to focus on a series of RPs becomes a distraction for you, you can mention this to your coach and consultant, and they can get into some drills like apex orientation, wide view, line plotting, envisioning the turn, etc., which may suit you well.

Sounds like some good overall improvements. It's true, James doesn't BS anybody, and if you have strong fundamentals and can ride calmly and safely without making mistakes, and ride with intention and not be tired, that is great stuff and I'm glad to hear you are getting those kinds of results. I don't usually get to VIR or NJMP but I will be at Barber.

Were you braking hard or lightly? It is harder to get the entry speed right with braking; the faster your rate of deceleration the easier it is to overshoot the braking and end up too slow. In order to add in braking, you would have to increase your approach speed enough to allow some use of brakes, and one purpose of the slow brake release is to be tapering off the brakes enough that you can dial in to a very accurate corner speed. If you think back on it, when you began adding in brakes, did you end up focusing more on the turn point than you were before, or less? What would you say you had the MOST attention on (visually or otherwise), while you were approaching a corner, when using brakes?