Hotfoot

I think I just identified a problem with how I asked my question. I asked for advice on how to stay "calm and sensible when the green flag drops". It occurs to me that if I was calm and sensible to begin with, I wouldn't even be DOING this crazy ****!!! Seriously, though, looking at the replies above helped me to realize I just need to embrace the nervousness as part of the experience, and just enjoy the rush of excitement that comes from doing something so new and thrilling and scary.

I could use some help... I'm rather new to the race scene and have an upcoming race which is my biggest race yet. How do you control your race nerves? I am worried about being calm and cool headed enough to get a good, smooth, fast start (in a big crowd!), keeping my wide view in a tight pack of riders, and being able to fight the urge to turn in early, something that I find happens when the adrenaline kicks in. Any ideas/advice on how to stay calm and sensible, when the green flag drops?

Since you brought up the motocross idea, another idea is to try racing a smaller, slower bike - I made some really good progress on testing limits by doing some racing on a YSR50. You get to explore traction and handling limits, but at speeds that are much less intimidating, and track time is much cheaper. I am bit slow to respond to your original question about crashing, but here you go: I decided to get back on a sportbike a little over two years ago, and decided I wanted to get fast. I have attended a number of schools and PLENTY of track days, and advanced from slow-and-scared in the street group to confident in the Expert group, and I've started racing. Zero crashes. I think, along the lines of what you say above, that if you keep your head (no red mist) and pay attention to what you are doing, approaching the limits gradually, you can certainly get faster without crashing. Training helps more than anything, of course; it's a lot quicker and less painful than trial and error!

Personally, I think this choice should depend on your goals for that day. If you want to work on your riding skills, you probably want to stay in group 2 where you can slow down a little and practice - if you are struggling to keep up, it's a big distraction, and can affect your concentration and the value of your practice time. However, if your goal is to improve your laptimes, find better lines, or find out what parts of the track present opportunities for improvement, you might go to Level 3 and see where/how you are getting passed, or try to tag along with some quicker riders to find new ways to approach corners. You can also observe where the faster riders are faster than you - which corners, and is it entry speed, mid-corner, or exit drive? For me I make better improvements in a group that fits my skill level (i.e., not blowing past me!), however if I get a bit 'stuck' and I'm not really getting any gains, a swim in the deep end of the pool can provide considerable motivation.

Hi YNOT, I know you directed your question to Cobie, but I am curious about something, after reading your post above, hope you don't mind if I interject a question. When you initiate your turn-in, do you have a specific apex point you are aiming to? Or are you starting your turn, then finding you have to tighten your line a little bit more to make it to the apex you want?

So, Mr. FossilFuel, how did your TOTW II studying go? Did you schedule a tryout? When and where?

I'm pretty sure they are talking about using your right knee for a right turn to help get into position. I never actually thought about what muscles/body parts I used to get slid off the seat and into the hang off position. I think I usually lift off the seat with my legs and slide off to the side of the bike. It would probably make it a lot easier to just slide yourself over by using your inside knee so you don't get tired as quickly. There's kind of a slick way to practice this and get the idea of how to use your knee to pull yourself across the bike. Put your bike on its kickstand, so it's leaned over to the left (you should have someone standing by to keep the bike from tipping over in case you get too exuberant). Get in a hang-off position for a left turn. Now use your RIGHT knee but NOT YOUR ARMS (take your hands off the bars completely if you can) to pull yourself back into the middle of the seat. Since you are leaned to the left, and have to pull yourself up against gravity to get back into the seat, you can REALLY feel the muscles required. If you have someone supporting the bike for you, you could then try using that right knee to pull yourself over toward a right-side hang off position. This was shown to me at the school, and doing it that way made it a LOT more obvious than trying it on a bike that's straight up on wheel stands. I used to always lift up, scoot over, then sit back down, but as I got faster that action became more and more abrupt (almost a bounce), upsetting the bike and loosening my grip on it enough that a rough spot in the track would launch me up out of the seat a bit. When I started using my knee to pull myself across, it took less time, was more secure, and didn't upset the bike as much; it definitely worked better.

What? No hi-jacking here, your posts are informative and helpful, no worries at all. I'm glad to see you active here on the forum, the more the merrier, and thanks for helping with photos! Cool looking bike, too, by the way!

Heck yeah, Fossil, I think it would be fun to go knee to knee, elbow to elbow with you... oh wait, maybe that's not exactly what you said... well, anyway, racing would be fun, too! So now I'm Relentless, huh? Maybe I'll put that on the back of my leathers. Where you can see it. For a while, anyway...

Seize the day, darlin'! If you are capable, and willing, and can afford it, by God you oughtta do it! That's my philosophy, anyway. But, I am very lucky that my husband loves this stuff, too - I rarely get any grief about going to track days, he's right there with me. But it's definintely expensive, good grief. You could try getting your wife into horseback riding, preferably dressage. It is equally expensive, time consuming, and absorbing. So you will have no money, but you'll both be very busy living life to its fullest. What kind of bike are you getting? And when is your tryout? And where? And I bet we can coordinate a WERA race one of these days (but CodeRace would be way more fun).

We have the same brand of front stand but mine is the kind that hooks under the bottom of the front forks, not under the triple tree. The pins fit OK and I think there are different sizes available, but on this stand they are nylon, not metal. Thanks for posting the photos of your stands, that was pretty cool. Someday I'll figure out how to post pictures here. Cobie was talking about a Pit Bull restraint system that doesn't require tie-downs at all, so you don't have to compress the suspension. It's new, I think, and you can see it on the Pit Bull website. I read somewhere about someone that used them and the bikes were secure even when their trailer popped off the hitch (gulp!) which reorganized almost everything ELSE in the trailer. Seems like a cool idea, the main reason I didn't look into those more is that I wanted to be able to remove the chocks easily and leave a flat floor, and if I remember correctly there is some hardware sticking up with the Pit Bull system.

Gee, I don't know if THOSE pictures would make it through your Internet filtering system... Oh, you mean the BIKE tie-downs! Right, the plastic wheel chocks. They are lightweight, reasonably priced and a clever design. One small criticism, they are a little wide for the sportbike front tire so they allow a little bit of turn to the front wheel, I'd like them better if they fit tighter. But, I LOVE the way the quick releases work, it's very easy to remove the chocks and nothing sticks up out of the floor. The manufacturer is Black&Gray, here is a link: http://www.blackandgray.com/wchockMain.php

Well, did you see they added a 2 day camp at Laguna Seca over Thanksgiving? If I read it right, it's school on Wednesday, day off for Thanksgiving on Thursday, then school again on Friday. Sounds like fun, I think you should rent a house and host a big Thanksgiving dinner for everyone on Thursday!!! Oh, by the way, FossilFuel, I am booked for CodeRace Oct 26-27th, are you up for it?

Thanks to all for the advice and ideas. Here's what I ended up doing, in case anyone else finds the info useful. First I tried the really cool Pit Bull forward-handle rear stand, which I thought would be easier to use, since I could operate it from the side of the bike while still holding the handlebar. Turns out, though, it's very high effort. The handle is rather short and doesn't have much angle to it, so it takes quite a bit of force to get the bike up on the stand. I still think it's a terrific concept, but I found the standard rear-handle Pit Bull so much easier to use that I bought that instead. For the front stand I got the Lockhart Phillips pin type stand that sits under the forks. I got the aluminum one, and it is incredibly light weight, cool looking, and well designed. I feels like it weighs less than half what the Pit Bull fork lift front stand weighs, and I found it to be quicker to put in place and require less effort to lift the bike. I highly recommend it, it is by far the lightest stand I've seen and has really good leverage and smooth operation.

Yes - but I guess it had not occurred to me that the bike front suspension would move during a hard left-right transition. Wouldn't it just stay compressed? What state is the suspension in midway through a turn Hotfoot? What position is the suspension in when the bike is stood upright (say going in a straight line)? Bullet This might get long, sorry... To answer your prior question, the bike was set up by In House suspension, when they did the Ohlins internals on the front, and it has an Elka rear shock. Will Eikenberry from CSS has tweaked it as well, and the bike is set a bit higher in the back than stock, per Will's recommendation. It is set up for me, but we were doing a little fine tuning with it and tweaked the pre-load based on Suspension Guy's observation that my transitions through a particular tight chicane were pretty slow. The change in preload (two turns) made a dramatic difference, the transition was way easier and quicker. We did go on to adjust compression and rebound to get rid of the bouncing. When we tried adding more preload the bike got unstable under acceleration, nasty headshake, so we went back to where it was. I can give you exact sag setting measurements as taken that day if that would be useful. Not sure if you are asking a general question above about how it should be, or about how mine specifically is behaving - but I'll answer about mine. The suspension midway through a sweeping turn is nicely mid range and the bike handles great. I am running a zip tie in front and under the hardest braking or cornering it goes to about 1" above the bottom. In a straight line, how it sits in the front depends on throttle - when WFO, it feels like it's up pretty high and under braking and entering the chicane Suspension Guy is telling me it dives noticeably, which is what he was trying to fix with preload. I did notice with a LOT of preload (2 more turns)the bike felt more balanced and did not dive under braking, but I preferred the braking dive over the acceleration headshake! In all other areas of the track the bike handles very well, and in fact I didn't KNOW there was a problem in the transitions, until we changed it and it got so much easier! So I guess I'm confused about what happens in a quick chicane - this one is a left-right and here is what I do: I brake hard with three downshifts coming in, release the brake as I make the left flick, then flick it back to the right as quickly as I can, then roll on the gas. I am off the throttle and off the brake between the turns. So, under those conditions, does the bike spring back up in between turns? Is it supposed to? Or wouldn't it just stay compressed? If you added a ton of rebound damping, would it stay down, and if so, would that make it easier to turn, or harder? Presumably with more preload added the bike doesn't dive as far in front, but doesn't having it down in the front normally make it EASIER to turn? Maybe I am missing something obvious. I guess I'd like to see a graph of, or close-up video of, a front shock through a chicane to see what it does. I hope you can make this more clear to me, it bothers me not to understand it.

Just as a note of interest Mike I did a trackday at donington earlier this year and I had watched a few video clips of the motogp guys there just to get an idea of the layout of the track! In that I noticed they were turning in at the white line so I tried that only once to realise that it was way to early a turn point for me, I go a fair bit past the line and take a later turn point that works with the throttle control rule! At the time I thought that maybe the faster guys can turn earlier as long as they get the rear wheel spinning about the apex and at that moment point the bike where they want to go! An interesting point too about attack angles is if you watch Dani Pedrosa in this turn he actually pulls right into the pits exit lane to line up for it! Is that three different spellings for one made-up word, or three different made-up words? You get points (uber-points?) for creativity, that's for sure!!! I thought about going back and editing it just to mess with you. CF I guess that would be Fair play.

Just as a note of interest Mike I did a trackday at donington earlier this year and I had watched a few video clips of the motogp guys there just to get an idea of the layout of the track! In that I noticed they were turning in at the white line so I tried that only once to realise that it was way to early a turn point for me, I go a fair bit past the line and take a later turn point that works with the throttle control rule! At the time I thought that maybe the faster guys can turn earlier as long as they get the rear wheel spinning about the apex and at that moment point the bike where they want to go! An interesting point too about attack angles is if you watch Dani Pedrosa in this turn he actually pulls right into the pits exit lane to line up for it! Is that three different spellings for one made-up word, or three different made-up words? You get points (uber-points?) for creativity, that's for sure!!!

Yes - but I guess it had not occurred to me that the bike front suspension would move during a hard left-right transition. Wouldn't it just stay compressed?

Hi all, I ride a ZX6R. At my last track day, a suspension guy suggested to me that we add some preload in the front, to make it easier to flick the bike from side to side in a quick transition. He observed that my bike was low in front during the first turn and transitioning slowly to the second turn. He added a couple of turns of preload, and lo and behold, it was in fact MUCH easier and faster to flick the bike from one side to the other. I'm not quite clear on WHY this helped. My normal thinking is that when the front suspension is compressed, the bike is easier and quicker to turn - but in this case, when going quickly from one side to the other, Suspension Guy said it was diving too much and therefore had to come UP and over, which was slow. I'd love a little help in understanding this better, if anyone has a more detailed explanation. Incidentally, we tried another couple of turns of preload and OMG the front was suddenly really bouncy and now I have a whole new appreciation for the term "tankslapper". So needless to say those extra two turns came back out. Surprisingly, I never really noticed a difference in the intitial turn-in rate - I though more preload would make the bike a little harder/slower to turn.

Disclaimer: I'm not a coach. But this is a neat question, hope you don't mind if I chime in. When I ride on the road, I use this technique all the time. Mostly I use it to tell me if a blind curve ahead is getting tighter (decreasing radius) or opening up (increasing radius). I remember Keith saying in class that if the vanishing point appears to be getting closer, the curve is tightening up, and if it seems to move away from you, then the curve is opening up. That was a revelation for me - I had sort of been doing it unconsciously but when I started thinking of it THAT way, my confidence went way up, and now I can control my speed better because I have a better sense of what the road will do up ahead. Just look ahead to the farthest point on the road you can see - it could be a short distance, on a tight curve on a mountain road, but that point, where the road disappears behind a cliff, will appear to be coming toward you or going away from you, and that will tell you if the curve is becoming tighter or straightening out. If it's coming toward you really fast, slow down.

HURRAYY!! Can't wait to see the DVD. Can you post the trailer online here or on YouTube so we can see it?

Hi dbtriple, you may want to make sure your leather is good fit---(especially the pant not baggy, 1 piece leather is highly recommanded and a must for me at drills). it will help you hangoff with 1 leg locking the bike with ease-- and the inner foot off the inner peg, and with both hands completely off the handlebar at same time. You will find this exercise helpful at level 3, especially in the hook turn drill. You will have fun and new skills at level3. Wow, I never thought about this detail, but I'm glad you mentioned it - I am hanging off more and having a bit of trouble locking in securely. I have plenty of Stomp Grip on my bike - but my leathers are a bit loose and it never dawned on me that my knee/thigh might be sliding within my leathers. I bet that is part of my difficulty, and of course that would not be easily observed. I'm going to watch for this on my next track day, you may have cleared up a little mystery for me! Thanks for that clever idea.

HURRAY! Nice job! OMG, 98 degrees. I'm so glad you're doing so well. Pretty impressive to come back off a crash and kick butt like that, awesome. Thanks for letting us know how it went!

I think wide view is most important, particularly on the street, where it helps to anticipate traffic, but also on the track. Without a good wide view my sense of speed is distorted and I can't be smooth or calm and I certainly can't go very fast.

I am looking for some advice on motorcycle stands for racing. I finally have to bite the bullet and remove the kickstand from my bike, and start using tire warmers, therefore I need to buy stands. This is new for me. I see that there are front stands that sit under the bottom of the forks, and others that have a pin that grabs up under the nose of the bike. Which is easier to use? I don't care about being able to remove the wheel or work on the forks, I just want the easiest-to-use stand for tire warmers. I DO want a lot of leverage, so that it's easy for me to lift the bike - the Pit Bull Forklift stand seems very popular, but seems a bit high effort and rather heavy, is there a lighter, easier one? I also need advice on the rear stand, I see that Pit Bull has a front-handle rear stand that looks pretty cool. I am a woman, and rather short, so the idea of being able to grab the stand and lift the bike without having to try to walk behind it while holding it upright is appealing. It also seems handy not to have that handle sticking out behind the bike in the pit area. Has anyone tried it? I'm sure with practice it becomes effortless to manage whatever stand you have, but I am looking for the EASIEST option, to get me through this learning curve without dropping the bike in the garage. Thanks in advance!