noamkrief

Putting weight on the pegs does not lower the CG. I know it seems like it does but go ask your common highschool physics teacher and they will tell you the same thing Putting weight on the pegs makes your knees into a suspension component = good! Weighing the outside peg makes sure you're locked in with your outside knee to the tank. You can't lock in with your outside thigh without bracing at the peg as well. The bike CG only changes when you move your body, not where your body is contact with the bike. Watch this video and you'll understand

Your buddy is correct 100%. Counter steering makes changes to bike lean. While in a turn - BELIEVE ME - your handle bars are pointed in the direction of the turn. Keith Code in his movie explains and demonstrates this. again - you turn the handlebars to the right to lean left, but once in a left hand turn leaning - your handle bars are turned to the left I've heard alot of people take "countersteering" to the N'th degree like that. The exception is oversteer conditions. So if you are in a turn and you are on the throttle hard and your rear tire is spinning, the handle bars will point away from the turn - or at least so it seams. In fact, they are still pointed towards the turn, just that the ass end kicked out and that's the natural correction that also happens automatically.

The more you hang off, the more you shift the C.G. and the more upright the bike is during a turn. The more upright the bike is, the better the suspension works since it's only 100% efficient at 0 degree lean angle. Also, you can keep the edge of your tire cooler if you're racing for 40 minutes I guess. Like others have mentioned. Those motoGP guys are athletes! They are working their ass off hanging off like that. They look relaxed because they are at the gym 4 hours a day and have amazing stamina and weigh less than my girlfriend who is a buck ten soaking wet! Also, as McKeen said - at 2 lateral G's, and 63 degrees lean, you are being SUCKED into the bike in a major way, so hanging off requires less work. Main thing with hanging off is WHEN to do it. I'm working on that as well. You can't hang off like a monkey through-out the turn. There are difference phases in the turn which you will be hanging off more than other parts of the corner. Play with it, feel it out. And be ready to sweat - it's hard work...

Counter-steering is NOT how you should turn the bike on the track. Body steering. I know Code doesn't agree here but it's true! When you come into a left turn, move your butt off to the left, and your upper body as well. You will not be able to move alot of your upper body to the left while still in a straight line, but try - like 6 inches off the center line. Obviously - at this point, you are on the brakes coming up to your turn. So let me explain what has happened here. When you shift your butt and body to the left in a straight line, your bike will be slightly leaned to the right to maintain a straight line. You basically just spring loaded the bike into potential energy. The bike will want to lean. Let go of the handlebars and the bike will dive in all by itself.

It could be a psychological defensive riding tactics that the riders just got used to and do it all the time. What i'm saying is perhaps they feel less vulnerable to inside passes made on them if their leg is out taking up more space that could psychologically effect the rider behind into imagining less space than there actually is. Also it could be a security thing. You know how when you are dragging your knee you feel more stable than when you are not leaning as far to drag? It's almost like our brain "thinks" that our knee can support us if the bike would attempt to lowside. Alot of the crashes in motoGP are quick violent lowsides under threshold braking phase transitioning to the trail braking phase. Maybe they feel more confident pretending that if they lowside under trailbraking, that their leg will hold them up... What we do for an extra ounce of confidence out there! It's all confidence! I have thought about the dynamics of the leg out thing, all I can see is negatives. Less locked on the bike, more weight on the handle bars etc... People are funny - like sheep. They saw Rossi doing it for a while, thought it's the secret for going fast, now they are all doing it.

I stand corrected. Yes - wheelbase has effect period. nomatter how small of an effect. So I think we both agree on the fact that the longer the wheelbase bike, the tighter radius the rear wheel will negotiate during a turn. I drew this up real quick. Going CCW, black line is the front tire, blue line is the rear tire, and red lines represents the bike. So lets say: black line is 200 foot Radius blue line is 190 foot radius Shouldn't we just combine the 2 and get 195 foot radius? That brings us to another question, when talking about radius of a turn, are we talking about the average between the two? Or the tightest one (rear)? or the radius the front tire tracks? Again, very negligeable especially when comparing to a car which you have the same problem. The outside of the car makes a considerably larger radius than the inside of the car. When I think of a car's turning radius, I think of the very middle of the car, The average between the inside tires and the outside tires. Regardless, I think that the term "effective lean angle" needs some clarification then as you mentioned in your original post. Effective lean angle should be the angle of the average of the 2 contact patches to the center of gravity of the bike. I have known this already not just because of the wheelbase argument, but more-so because the tire on the front is much thinner than the rear. But for the sake of forums and not confusing people that are following this thread and trying to understand, I think it's safe to say the following: "Nomatter what type of bike or bicycle, or downslope skier, when you see the lean angle look like 45 degrees, they are pulling about 1G." I can think of many other fun things to talk about in regards to physics of the bike. Too bad there is no specific forum for this. One main thing I always wanted to find is how much exactly hanging off the bike really shift the COG. Looking at photos I say the average good rider shifts their entire body around 1 foot towards the inside of the turn. So if we have a 400Lbs bike, and a 200Lbs rider, since the rider weighs half as much of the bike, can't we then just say that the bike is leaning over another 6 inches? But of course we have to take into account the original COG of the bike alone without a rider. How do you measure that without having to balance the bike on a string? Just something to think about...

OK, now you are getting picky but at least you are intelligent which I like! In the common sense of wheel base effecting lean angle calculations where some people think that the Harley Davidson can't turn fast because its wheelbase is 69 inches and their zx6r can turn faster because if its shorter wheelbase of 55 inches that is not the deciding factor. The fact is that even if we take into account the wheel base into consideration, both bikes regardless of wheelbase would have the same effective lean angle for a given radius give or take 0.0001 degrees of lean. What T-McKeen is talking about wheel base effecting lean angle is in fact true but negligible but still - I like that we are going this far into it. Yes, if you look at the line created by the front tire versus the line created by the rear tire, the radius is different The rear tire "trails" behind the front tire so the rear actually negotiates a smaller radius than the front. If you've ever seen the difference between the 2 arcs created by front vs rear over a "normal" radius turn like we find at racetracks of over 200 feet radius, the difference between the front and rear is a matter of inches. Yes, inches in radius. Now if for the same radius turn, we extend the wheelbase by an entire 2 feet, you would hardly notice a difference. A wheelbase length will make noticeable difference in parking lot type turns where a long wheelbase bike's rear wheel will negotiate a significantly smaller radius turn. So again: T-McKeen is correct. Wheel base will actually make a difference, but over a 200 foot radius turn, the difference between a 50 inch wheelbase bike and a 80 inch wheelbase bike would be so negligible, don't expect to be able to see it with the naked eye. Both bikes will look at identical lean angles. In regards to calculations of wheelbase effecting lean angles, I think we would have to find out what radius the rear will negotiate. For example, if the front tire is turning 200 foot radius, the rear may be doing a 199 foot radius. Then I think we just average the two and get 199.5 and do the calculations for lean angle in regards to speed off of 199.5 foot radius. I'll bust out some pen and paper and take a look at developing some formulas for this and get some hard figures. Sounds like fun!

No, wheelbase and effective lean angle have nothing to do with eachother. Please explain to me the effects of wheelbase as it relates to turn radius, lean angle and speed. I would love to hear it...

Hey buddy. Glad you have the same brain as me and you are interested in this topic. I don't really agree with your statement though. A wider tire will suffer a greater difference between "visual lean angle" vs "effective lean angle" at all angles. In fact, at moderate lean angles such as 20 degrees I think the thick tire would suffer a bit less since your contact patch is still towards the center of the tire. As you lean farther and farther you get to the edge of the tire which can create a big difference between visual and effective lean angle. I drew up a picture of a bike leaning to 90 degrees visual lean. Note that effective lean angle of 90 degrees can never be reached. You MUST have an infinitely thin bike and tires. Something very magical happens as you get close to 90 degree effective lean angle. With "out of this world" tires you could get to lateral G's as high as you want as you approach 90 degree lateral G's approach infinity. In other words, you could never lean the bike 90 degrees even if you had infinitely thin tires and blke because even when pulling 10,000G's the force of gravity will pull your bike down at 9.81m/s^2. At 89 degrees lean angle you would need to execute a 57 lateral G turn and it would actually be possible if your tires can have that coefficient of friction and your body can withstand it hahaha It is very sad that bikes and their physical dimensions only allow a 60 degree lean or so. Once you get past 60 degrees things can really get nasty - in a good way! The difference between a 60 degree and a 70 degree lean is at 60 you do 1.7G's and at 70 you do 2.7G's!!! At 80 degrees you could do 5.6!!!! At that point we can corner better than a F1 car!!! It's almost as if bikes have hit this barrier where they are not limited by grip of the tires. They are limited by physical dimensions and the amount of lean possible according to those dimensions. As better tire compounds advance through technology, we will never benefit in terms of mid-corner phase (mid corner speeds) but only in the aggressiveness of our trail braking / power out of the corner. Mid corner speeds are sort of set in stone, nomatter what we do with our tires. A cool thing about a bike that is mentioned briefly in Code's article is it has built in "aero" in the turns... Most racecars need a fins to generate artificial gravity (downforce). The problem with fins is that anytime you create lift (down or up lift) you create drag which slows those cars on the straights. On a bike when you turn the resulting force travels through the bike. In other words, the bike gets sucked into the ground the more you lean. Just like in geometry, when you do a 45 degree lean, like a 45 degree triangle, where the opposite, and adjacent are 1, makes the hypotenuse 1.4. At 45 degree lean, a bike and rider that weigh 600 pounds would put a force on the tire of 600*1.4 = 840 pounds! That's alot more grip!!!!!

So are you saying that if you have very wide tyres, a low CoG and a huge wheelbase it will corner exactly as fast as a short bike with narrow wheels and a high CoG, provided they are leaned over the same and the rider sits perfectly in line with the bike? You must understand the difference between "effective lean angle" and "visual lean angle". All single track vehicles regardless of wheelbase, CG height etc at 45 degrees will generate exactly 1G at a 45 effective lean angle. Effective lean angle = the angle between the contact patch of the tire and the COG. Visual lean angle is the angle of the bike itself relative to the horizon. Due to tire width, effective lean angle will ALWAYS be less than visual lean angle since the contact patch is ALWAYS on the inside of the lean. For example lets imagine a bike without a rider. If the bike itself is leanning at 45 degrees (visual) with 10cm tire width, the "effective lean angle" will be something like 43 degrees. If the bike had tire width of 50cm, the effective lean angle will be more like 35 degrees. The higher the CG of the bike, the lesser the negative effect of the wider tire. Study the image below: But visual lean angle (black line) is very meaningless. The angle that matters is the "effective lean angle". So who would have thought? Your motorcycle with the 190's on the rear is actually less efficient at executing an aggressive lean angle as a bicycle with skinny tires. Also note that visual lean angle vs effective lean angle are not worlds apart. Even on a very wide tire, the difference would not be that great since the reality is that motorcycle tires are never actually THAT wide. So now that we only look at effective lean angle, i'll repeat. Every single track vehicle at 45 effective lean angle will corner 1G. Mr Code did not pull that number out of his ass trust me. Lean angle and lateral G's are easily calculated using the Tangent function. Lets do some math: tan(0 degrees lean) = 0 lateral G's Tan(10 degrees lean) = 0.176 lateral G's Tan(30 degrees lean) = 0.577 lateral G's Tan(45 degrees lean) = 1 lateral G's Tan(60 degrees lean) = 1.73 Lateral G's Tan(63.3 degrees lean) = 2 Lateral G's The relationship between lean angle and lateral G's is not linear. That means you can't say something like "for every 10 degrees lean, we add another 0.176 G's). Like Mr Code mentioned, once at 45 degrees lean, every little extra lean makes alot of difference regarding lateral G's. So why all this talk about lateral G's? Why is it important? Because lateral G's symbolizes the relationship between a radius and a speed. An example: to negotiate a 200 foot radius turn if you travel at 55mph you will be pulling 1 lateral G. There is no way around that number. Whether you are running, driving in a car, or riding on a bike. 200 foot radius at 55mph will result in 1G of lateral acceleration. That means exactly what it looks like. You MUST be at 45 degrees effective lean angle to ride on the 200 foot radius arc at 55mph. If you go faster, you will lean more and pull higher lateral G's. It also means that if my bicycle tires had enough grip, that I would also be leaning to 45 degrees for this 200 foot radius turn at 55mph. And if I was ice skating following a track of 200 foot radius at 55mph, i would lean to 45 degrees. And my harley davidson if I raised the pipes and pegs and allowed it 45 degree lean, that's how much it would lean on the 200 foot radius at 55mph. A single track vehicle is NOT a car, nomatter how much we want it to be. Lowering the CG, changing wheelbase will NOT effect the fact that 45 degree lean always results in 1 lateral G. Changing wheelbase, C.G. etc will on the other hand effect handling characteristics. But alot of people misunderstand the term "handling". Handling is NOT how hard the vehicle can turn (how many lateral G's it can execute). A Formula 1 car can pull 3 lateral G's in a turn and handle like ###### and an old BMW can pull a max of 0.8 lateral G's and handle brilliantly. Handling is about predictability. Ease of driveability. In the car world it would be something regarding understeer and oversteer. In the bike world it may be regarding how easily the bike flicks from side to side, or how stable it is under trail-braking. This predictability increases confidence. When a driver / rider is confident, they are more comfortable pushing the tires to their absolute limit. I have a tutorial on my website that explains lean angles vs speed vs radius and various thought experiments i've came up with to attempt to explain the physics behind a single track vehicle - ie - motorcycle. Have a look and contact me on facebook if you would like any clarification I'm more than happy to explain... http://www.howfastca...howitworks.html

Your views are common and incorrect! There is nothing "simplistic" regarding the calculations of lean angle vs lateral G's. An effective lean angle of 45 degrees ALWAYS yields to 1 lateral G. Period. Effective angle = the angle between contact patch of tire and the Center of Mass. (can be slightly altered by rider position). If you are at 45 degree lean and not doing 1 lateral G, you are not at equilibrium between centrifugal force and gravity meaning - you are a millisecond away from falling! This direct relationship between effective lean angle and lateral G's seems to really piss off alot of riders. Most think that they and their bikes can defy the laws of physics, and that their recent $500 purchase of slicks is going to make them corner faster for a given lean angle. False! A bridgestone Bt016 at 45 degrees will negotiate the exact same radius at 50mph as a racing slick. The only difference is: The racing slick at 45 degrees is "yawning". Meaning - the tire is bored. It's only using lets say 30% of its potential allowing the rider to get on the gas hard at a lean. While the Bridgestone BT016 is probably working at 80% of its ability and excess throttle will overload the tire and the tire literally gives up. And just to piss some of you guys some more. Your wheelbase, geometry, weight of your bike, height of the C.G. of your bike will NOT effect the fact that effective lean angle of 45 degrees will result in 1 lateral G. That means if a harley davidson could lean to 45 degrees, it would turn just as tight as your beloved zx6r or whatever you choose to ride.

Affirmative!! Google maps does not provide road camber!!! Sorry The program is still accurate even though it doesn't factor road camber... Here is why: When you select your desired lean angle you are selecting a line between the contact patch of your tire and the Center of Gravity of the entire system - bike + rider. That line has an angle relative to - THE HORIZON, not the road. That's how the mathematical formulas for lean angles are composed - with Horizon being measured against, being the horizon is always 90 degrees perpendicular to the force of gravity. So if you selected a lean angle of 45 degrees and you are on a road with a positive camber of 10 degrees. The lean angle calculated is 35 degrees relative to the ground. So yes - on that corner my software would read "slow" but it's still correct because that's the speed for 45 degrees lean relative to the horizon. Again - sorry I couldn't do camber calculations which would be super easy if only google maps provided this data - data they don't have i'm almost 100% sure. This app was mostly developed to find cool fun roads. If you are like me, I like using google maps to find nice fun twisties. But looking at the map, it's very difficult to judge how wide or tight a turn is. So you might find a nice road 100 miles away that looked on google maps like it had tons of fun turns, but when you get there, the turns are super wide and to get any sort of fun lean angle (35 degrees or more in my opinion) you'd have to be doing 100mph.

You are 100% correct!!!! And I didn't want to get into that because most people wouldn't understand this concept. So let me make a clarification. When my program calculates lean - it calculates total SYSTEM LEAN. So for example: if your actual bike lean angle measured 45 degrees but with 190's on the rear, your SYSTEM LEAN is probably about 40 degrees. Then the rider is hanging off with amazing body position bringing the SYSTEM LEAN down to 49 degrees. the 49 degrees is the lean angle that I calculate. The SYSTEM LEAN basically the angle between the contact patch of your tire, and your CG. So to clarify - my app doesn't know and doesn't care how you achieve the preselected 50 degree lean. You can lean the bike 45 degrees, and hang off to achieve a total system lean of 50 degrees. I added a page to the website that explain motorcycle dynamics. http://www.howfastcanigo.com/howitworks.html

Yeah - sorry. you are wrong. Lets take an example: for a 200 foot radius turn leaning at 27 degrees a 2 wheeled vehicle will be doing exactly 39mph It doesn't matter if you are on a Harley, or a Honda CBR 600RR It doesn't matter if the motorcycle weighs 600lbs or 400lbs. It doesn't matter if you have racing slicks, or normal street tires. For a given lean angle, at a specific speed, all 2 wheeled vehicles would generate the EXACT same radius turn. I know it sounds strange, but it's 100% accurate. Check with your local physics professor. Same goes with airplanes if it helps you envision it better. A Cessna 172 at 140mph banking at 45 degrees would provide the exact same radius turn arc as a 747 banking at 45 degrees at 140mph

Hey everyone. 20 hours ago I had an idea. To create a tool that will allow you to input your favorite road on google maps and it will tell you how fast you can go around each bend for a given lean angle. www.howfastcanigo.com Hope you guys enjoys it!!! I made it for everyone I know, friends, and peers at the forums. After programming for 20 hours straight, time to sleep...

Like I said - putting your body weight on the pegs will not change the CG of the bike +rider system assuming that you still hold the same body position... I can see why in offroading putting your body weight on your legs and footpegs is helpful. You basically gain another set of shocks!!! I think the human body is a superior suspension system of any ohlins and HP4 dynamic dampning control out there. I don't think technology has reached the level of the human body acting as suspension... For example - I challenge anyone to build a suspension system for a GoPro that you can mount on a bike, and it would have no vibration, up big ups and downs during bumps... Even with the latest designs that electronically adjust 1000 times per second, try mounting your gopro on top of your helmet... Smooth as silk!!!

How tense does your upper body feel when you hang off like this? My upper body doesn't feel tense. My lower back was a bit sore at the end of the day... How are you supporting your weight now that your butt is not planted on the seat? I think my body weight is on my inner knee. My outer knee against the tank is also holding alot of my body. Once I installed stomp grip during the lunch hour of the track day - I felt alot better supporting my weight with the outer knee. Do you think this could add any unwanted input into your steering? I don't have any unwanted steering input. I make a point to keep my grips light as a feather. If I had the balls, I could theoretically take my hands off the bars mid-corner... On the other hand - during chicanes or turn that leads onto another turn in the opposite direction, I definitely haven't figured out how to flick the bike to the other side without using my arms. I can definitely feel unwanted steering input there... On rare occasions I'm able to flick the bike the other way without steering input, but it's mostly luck. I understand the concept of using the legs to switch positions, but haven't applied it in real life yet...

I think you missed my point. When hanging off and going too slow, the bike was completely vertical in the corner. It was only till I started trusting that hanging off will allow for more cornering speed, where I increased my speed during the corner and that's when hanging off body position felt very comfortable. Without the centrifugal force of a high speed corner, hanging off is a bit awkward... Try it sometime

I'm a crappy rider but I may have a grasp on some physics concepts. Lets have a go at a simple thought experiment. Imagine a rider that has no weight on the seat. All weight is on their feet on the pegs. The rider is hanging off like a monkey to the inside of the turn. Would the hanging off then be for nothing? In other words, would the hanging off be pointless? I drew this up for you... Hopefully it makes sense. The circle that looks like a BMW logo is the symbol for C.G. As you can see, C.G. is not effected. It doesn't matter where the "brace" for the weight is. It only matters where the weight ACTUALLY is. If I take your thinking a bit further - the tires are contacting the ground right? So is the C.G. at ground level? Nope. besides, why would you want to lower your C.G.? It's not a car... In a car, lower is better because high C.G. causes sway / lean. On a bike, a higher C.G during a corner is better flat out. I'm a crappy rider but I know my physics. Because the tires are not infinitely thin, during a lean, you end up riding on the inside of the tire which actually shifts the CG a bit to the right... ooops!!! I drew this up for you: Case #1 does not exists. As you can see, the black line in reality does not make contact with the ground. Only the red and blue line touch the ground. Case #2 you can take X corner at 50mph Case #3 you can take X corner at 60mph Hanging off the bike is just gravy, but nomatter what, higher CG is better during the turn. On the other hand higher CG is not good when flicking the bike from one direction to another. So for that, like in a chicane, perhaps it's best to lower your upper body as much as possible - bike will flick quicker. But once in the turn, higher CG is better. If you can manage to hang off the bike and be way up high at the same time - that is most ideal. Physics talking, not me...

Had the exact same question when I was taking private instruction from an AMA racer. I told him I don't want to weight the handlebars during braking but I want to get my body position done and over with right before the braking begins... He agreed. Hang the butt off before you start braking. He said - the truth is, use your wrists to brace your upper body from going forward. He literally got on the ground and did a push up for me. I guess the point is this. During a corner, it's very important to keep the grip on the bars light as a feather. But when you are going in a straight line, I guess they can be used to brace yourself. As you start to enter the corner, the braking force is eased and you can get your weight off your wrists...

Thank you guys! I was at chuckwalla for 3 days last weekend and hired an AMA racer to help me out a bit. The biggest difference he made was my feet position. although I had the balls of my feet on the pegs, they were too close to the bike. He had me pretty much put my feet on the very outside of the peg. That allowed my legs to twist easier so I can move my body. The 2nd thing was to sit a bit farther back. Because I am so new and timid, I was riding all the way forward to the tank. That also disabled me from moving my upper body. The third thing is the upper body position. Just like you guys mentioned - I feel like i'm hanging off, but from pictures and video - it's pathetic. The instructor had me make sure my inside elbow is bent, gripping the handlebar almost from the side, and my outside arm is stretched over the tank!!! At first it was uncomfortable. I felt unstable. It was because I had the proper body position but was trying to turn at the same speeds as before. So what ended up happening is that I was hanging off, and the bike was almost vertical!!! regardless of how awkward and unstable it felt, I kept going round and round the track with my bike almost vertical around the turns. After a few hours, my brain started trusting that my body position was allowing for a much greater apex speeds. So I started to up the pace... The faster I went into the turn, the more this body position made sense!!! My good friends that were with me were really excited!!! They couldn't believe the speeds I was carrying (for being new). At day 1 and 2 since it's open session format with many advanced riders, I had people passing me during the corners left and right non stop. By day 3, I was only getting passed on the straights, and not even that often. Very exciting for me. I went for a ride with a couple of friends today just trying to soak in the things I learned at the track and to really hammer in that body position. They were running a good spirited pace and I was working on hanging off and having my outside arm stretched around the tank. And while they are leaning like 40 degrees, my bike was almost upright! For the first time riding on some twisties, I felt like I wasn't running wide. I actually was running too deep over and over. On a right hand turn, my bike almost ran over the curb at the apex of the road. On left hand turns, I have to keep myself from running over the double yellow. Just all proof that expert instruction pays off!!!!

So cool seeing a post of someone in a similar situation. I'm from the car racing world, and a novice rider. Your question regarding finding the limits of your tires is one I have questioned myself many many times. In a car, we can hear the tires, and we can feel the grip through the steering wheel and our ass. I think driving a car on the track is like walking on level ground. Where riding fast is like walking on a tight roap. I bet after some time we would get a sense of when the tires are about to slip. Unfortunately on a bike, once the slide starts, there is alot of risk. If you don't manage the slide perfect - you wreck and can hurt yourself. I'd be scared riding a car that if every time a tire started sliding, there is a chance, even a small chance that the car will roll over. I totally get what you are saying regarding corner entry phase. In a car, I throw the car in very hot under trail braking. The first 25% of the corner, i'm actually just trying to "save" the car from loosing control. I think in a bike you can do the same but pretty high level stuff. Go in very fast with trail braking, and use your knee to hold the bike from falling over during the first portion of the corner.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I've been using 50% of my concentration worrying about whether my tires will hold. Just paranoid but I can't get past that. Now with very sticky tires - I won't think about them any more. They will hold - at my level of riding, unless I do something really foolish and abrupt, they will hold. Now I can have complete focus on the things I actually want to focus on. Body position, and good visual skills. Those are my main focuses for the next - probably forever...

I am not an expert at all so don't listen to me. I do have alot of experience with car racing though. Front end giving up is called "under-steer". If you have understeer because your front tire is over loaded because you have too much weight on the front due to braking / engine braking, then a slight roll on the throttle will transfer some of the weight off of the front tire onto the rear therefore your front tire will regain traction. The slight roll on may accelerate you about 2mph before your front tire starts to grip again - NOT MUCH AT ALL. At that point - you're back in business and can probably keep slowly accelerating. Don't chop the throttle because you'll get right back into the same mess. Now - lets say you have understeer when you are perfectly balanced - 40% weight on the front 60% on the rear since you are at the ideal 0.1G acceleration the fix is the following: LET it keep sliding, don't do anything. Maintain neutral throttle. The front end sliding will naturally slow your bike down. A sliding tire is SLOW. That's why "drifting" in cars is slow. Your front end sliding (assuming you can maintain balance of the bike and it doesn't lowside) will automatically slow down. At a certain point, your tire will regain traction. I would assume if I had to guess in your situation, it would only take about 1 second and a natural decrease of 2-4mph due to front end slide to get your front tire gripping again. From the books i've been reading about motorcycles, when stuff slides, the most important thing is to NOT chop the throttle, and to keep a loose grip on the handle bars. Apparently motorcycles are actually very stable machines. The only thing that makes them unstable is US. So when a bike slides, I guess it self corrects as long as you don't get in the way hahaha. Again - i don't know much about motorcycles so please, if i'm wrong about anything here - correct me... PS - if you are indeed in a 40/60 perfect weight distribution and the front tire gives out you may want to ask yourself the following question: Which end of the bike would I rather slide first when reaching my traction limits in a corner? In cars, you can set up your suspension to be more understeer (front end gives up first) or oversteer (rear end gives up first). Other ways of saying - a "loose car" = oversteer or a "pushy car" = understeer. Once may always strive to tune their car (or motorcycle?) towards the most neutral balance meaning that both rear and front will give up at the same moment. But this is the real world - so one always comes first. It also can be track specific. Some tracks it's faster to utilize understeer and some tracks it helps if the car is looser.

Thank you. your points are all very well taken. On the street roads I always make sure i'm in the straightest line as possible from the apex to the exit point. On a track like ACS in fontana, there are a few corners where the run off area at the turn exit is just a ton more pavement. So that's where I try to maintain a constant radius. I've been really wanting to find a great parking lot and just spend a few hours doing 360 turns each time increasing my lean angle a bit more. Next weekend I have 3 track days back to back at chuckwalla. I put the best tires I could find on both my bikes - 2011 ninja zx6r and 2012 s1000rr. I got pirelli diablo supercorsa SC. Apparently they have alot of grip where I can trust that I can explore steeper lean angles. Again - by steep I mean relative to what I do now, which is not very much at all. Once I can relax a bit during a lean and get more confident, I think i'll go back to less sticky tires in the far future and explore the limits of traction. Thanks again everyone. Hope to see some of you at streets of willows in march for the school!