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Can Quick Turn Be Overdone?


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Holy thread revival Batman...

 

Well, after almost 1 year and a half 100% away from the track due a new job and my 1yo daughter, just did my second trackday in 2015 and the sh*t is f'up.

 

I can't carry any cornerspeed because I have zero confidence to countersteer/quickflick... in fact, I can't countersteer at all, only body steer and peg weighting.

 

Please, help me out to increase my quick flick rate... what drills can I try within my next trackday? I'm starting over again, that sucks a lot because I was used to ride in the advanced group and now I look like an old lady among the beginers.

 

I agree with the posts above: relax, don't put so much pressure on yourself, read the book again, etc. - but we can talk about some drills to work on. You specifically mentioned no confidence in steering the bike. Do you recall, as you were entering corners, what your eyes were doing? Were you able to use the 2-step drill to control the timing of your look-in? Did you have reference points chosen for turn point and apex for each turn, and were you able to look in to the apex early enough to know how much to turn the bike?

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I try to use the 2-step drill but I was lost when to look forward.

No ref. points at all... completely forgot this.

And never looked at the apex (try do use the 2-step and didnt look to the apex)

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Rikker;

A number of years ago a CSS Coach gave me an interisting assignment when I was struggling with my riding. He said to pick only a few corners to really concentrate on getting them as perfectly as I could. Get set early, find my turn point and apex, get my corner entry speed dialed in use the two-step and then turn as quickly as I could.

Ironically, by working this hard on a few corners and just "relaxing" on the others, all of the corners got easier. I didn't realize how effective this tool worked until I started noticing that I was getting through all of the corners with much less stress and much quicker than before. YRMV.

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I try to use the 2-step drill but I was lost when to look forward.

No ref. points at all... completely forgot this.

And never looked at the apex (try do use the 2-step and didnt look to the apex)

 

OK. So... if you don't have a point picked out for an apex AND haven't looked in toward the apex, you don't really have any info about where you want the bike to go - so how confident will your quickturn be?

 

This is a good review exercise for forum members, what is the timing on 2-step? When should you spot your turn point and when should you look in to the apex?

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... in fact, I can't countersteer at all, only body steer and peg weighting.

 

 

Sorry for the diversion from the great advice you are receiving but...I don't believe you. Seriously, I don't. Of course you are countersteering somewhat. It's practically impossible to steer a motorcycle at all without countersteering. You just aren't doing it very aggressively at present.

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... in fact, I can't countersteer at all, only body steer and peg weighting.

 

 

Sorry for the diversion from the great advice you are receiving but...I don't believe you. Seriously, I don't. Of course you are countersteering somewhat. It's practically impossible to steer a motorcycle at all without countersteering. You just aren't doing it very aggressively at present.

 

 

I'm going to play moderator here and intervene on this one. I don't think rikker is trying to argue that countersteering doesn't work - just that he is having difficulty DOING it right now. Certainly if a rider is unwilling to turn the bike quickly, he won't be willing to make a conscious, decisive steering input at the bars.

 

Let's give him a break for the moment; I suspect that once the underlying issue is resolved he will be able and willing to countersteer the bike with no trouble at all.

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I try to use the 2-step drill but I was lost when to look forward.

No ref. points at all... completely forgot this.

And never looked at the apex (try do use the 2-step and didnt look to the apex)

 

OK. So... if you don't have a point picked out for an apex AND haven't looked in toward the apex, you don't really have any info about where you want the bike to go - so how confident will your quickturn be?

 

This is a good review exercise for forum members, what is the timing on 2-step? When should you spot your turn point and when should you look in to the apex?

 

Spot your turn point as soon as possible because it controls many decisions (where to brake, when to downshift, etc.). Without reference points, there is no turn point. No bueno. The time to look at your apex is just before you reach the turn point. A rider requires a turn point to have the attention left to spend on his next reference point, the apex. If a rider is confident on his/her location (turn point/reference point), the rider is "free" to look at the apex just before flicking the machine into the turn. Like in real estate, location, location, location is of primary importance. You must have RPs to get your through the turns; you can relax on the straights.

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Holy thread revival Batman...

 

Well, after almost 1 year and a half 100% away from the track due a new job and my 1yo daughter, just did my second trackday in 2015 and the sh*t is f'up.

 

I can't carry any cornerspeed because I have zero confidence to countersteer/quickflick... in fact, I can't countersteer at all, only body steer and peg weighting.

 

Please, help me out to increase my quick flick rate... what drills can I try within my next trackday? I'm starting over again, that sucks a lot because I was used to ride in the advanced group and now I look like an old lady among the beginers.

Bummer. I would slow down to 75% and revisit counter-steering. Press on the right bar to turn right, and left to turn left. You can't possibly quick-flick the bike any other way. The Twist II DVD illustrates the comedy of body steering and peg weighting as steering tools. Peg weighting is great to lock on to the bike and facilitate pivot steering-push with your quad muscles into the tank on one side, and press horizontally on the bar on the other side. Also, ensure your body is low enough to make your counter steering effective; it is possible that you are pressing down on the bar instead of horizontally, making your counter steering ineffective or inefficient.

 

Paying attention to riding can be tough with new life events. A new job and a newborn will demand attention; riding fast, like any sport, is a mental game and the athlete pays a price when not focused. Best wishes.

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I still think this is an awareness / confidence issue. I am not trying to be rude here. You *are* countersteering, you are just not countersteering very hard (quick flick).

 

Here's what I would do. With the tires warmed up (i.e., not first lap if you are not using warmers), pick a corner where you have a long braking area. Don't charge the corner at all - get your braking done very early and be off the brakes completely by the turn point so the the bike is almost level on the chassis (maybe just a bit of engine braking) , with your body already in position on the inside. When you get to your turn point sight the apex and *consciously pay attention* to what your inside hand is doing. Feel your self press the bar, and press it as hard as you dare. You will not break the front loose under these conditions (assuming warm tires, decent asphalt, etc). Next time, same corner, do it again but harder this time. You will be turning it hard in no time, and convince yourself that the front tire is not going to let you down. You just need to get comfortable again with turning the bike hard. I strongly doubt it is a matter of strength, leverage, etc. if you feel like you are not countersteering at all. It is simply confidence.

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  • 1 year later...

I came to this thread looking for a jewel to help me decide how much I can trust the QS idea. I've played around with the idea since learning about it at L2 @ Willow (ahem) many moons ago. I'm still not there and think I may need to get back on track in the school environment and give it a go again. Then I came upon this jewel which I think will have to tide me over until confidence and personal experience gets me where I want to be.

I never realised just how much force you need to put into the bars at high speed until one day i went into a high speed corner way too hot and the only thing i really could do was to turn as hard as i could and look through the corner and hope for the best!

Well i made it though the corner and it wasn't until then i realised what keith meant in his book about some guys back in the early 80s actually bending their handle bars.

That was a lightbulb moment!

 

I also happened across this in the thread and it became very distracting:

Unfortunately, I had an interesting lesson in overdoing a quick-turn at Barber the last day of CSS that I think is relevant to this discussion. Unfortunately it resulted in a crash.

 

I was riding hard attempting to catch up to my coach who was chasing another student and had the right side of my tires nice and warm as a result. However, the extreme left edge of my tire was still relatively cold (another of the many lessons from this crash) and I wasn't aware of that. Coming into the final (left) corner prior to the front straight, I quick flicked the bike in at a very high speed (both the flick and the entry speed) and almost immediately lost the front. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and damage was minimal.

 

The quick-turn lesson from this, after much discussion with several coaches, was: the fast rate of steering didn't DIRECTLY cause the crash, it was the cold edge of the tire once I got it there. The tire was able to take the FORCE of the quick-steering just fine, but the reason the quick-flick was an issue was that I didn't get the chance to feel indications that the tire edge was cold in time to stop leaning the bike over. Had I steered the bike more slowly, I would have been able to feel the cues the cold edge would have given me in time to prevent the complete loss of traction. The bigger issue was really my awareness of the cold edge on the less used side of the tire, but since this thread is about quick-turning, I thought the quick-turn lesson would be a good one. This is a big reason you don't quick-turn on cold tires... It's less because they won't take the force while steering, and more about giving yourself a chance to feel where the cold tire traction limit is before you exceed it.

 

Benny

 

I have reason to believe that analysis of Benny's crash was incomplete. Here's why:

 

Motorcycles are turned using countersteering; that's what Mr. Code has been preaching for quite some time. Given that we accept that as fact, we realize that in a left turn, the LEFT edge of the tire becomes the leading edge turning under and producing traction (friction) against the road surface, thereby turning the bike over on it's side. If traction is deficient on the leading edge of the tire, the rider experiences front end push. Pushing the front was not described in Benny's post. What Benny described was that the tire gripped the road and the gyroscopic forces flicked the bike over as he expected.

 

The next action that must occur in a NORMAL steering action is that the rider must allow the handlebars to move to a proper turn-in position, which naturally happens due to the bike geometry. Keith has articles discussing riders interfering with the bike's normal tendency to balance the front by turning in 'just the right amount'. This introduces all sorts of unwanted behavior from the bike, including crashes.

 

Jorge Lorenzo used to have this happen to him a lot in his early seasons in the Premier class of MotoGP. We discussed it at length here on the forum and often reached the conclusions that he had inadvertently applied throttle while turning, which caused several of his high-speed lowside crashes. The post above lends insufficient information to determine if that certainly is causative, but with today's technology the ability to look at a data logger is available to determine the contributing factors to a rider's crash beyond rider perception.

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I had it pointed out to me a couple things about my post that may have been unintended:

1- An oversimplification on my part of what happens in steering and traction

2- A possibility of a perceived slight against Benny's cause-effect satisfaction- not what I wanted to do.

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  • 2 months later...

Can anyone explain the proper timing for quick flick?

While releasing the brake with some trail braking?

While opening the throttle?

Sometime in between?

 

Trying to understand this article written by Keith Code:

 

http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/braking-styles-motorcycles-code-break

 

"Straight-up braking inspires less physical drama, but still demands intense attention from the rider. In some cases, completing the braking act before you turn is more difficult than trail braking to the apex. In this case, the bike's turning arc must be established before the turn is initiated. The ability to predict line, apex and exit is vital. This requires, among other things, superlative visual skills. In addition, quick and accurate steering is a must. The rider must have enormous confidence in front and rear tire grip before flicking the bike into the turn. Coordinating brake release and turn-in steering actions must be spot-on, or the suspension will rebound as the bike is entering the turn. This all requires deft coordination and impeccable timing."

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Can anyone explain the proper timing for quick flick?

While releasing the brake with some trail braking?

While opening the throttle?

Sometime in between?

 

Trying to understand this article written by Keith Code:

 

http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/braking-styles-motorcycles-code-break

 

"Straight-up braking inspires less physical drama, but still demands intense attention from the rider. In some cases, completing the braking act before you turn is more difficult than trail braking to the apex. In this case, the bike's turning arc must be established before the turn is initiated. The ability to predict line, apex and exit is vital. This requires, among other things, superlative visual skills. In addition, quick and accurate steering is a must. The rider must have enormous confidence in front and rear tire grip before flicking the bike into the turn. Coordinating brake release and turn-in steering actions must be spot-on, or the suspension will rebound as the bike is entering the turn. This all requires deft coordination and impeccable timing.

In this article the timing of the quick flick would depend on 1) Are you braking straight up or 2) Are you intending to trail brake. If you are choosing the first, then all braking is done before the flick. If you are choosing to trail brake, you might still have a little pressure on the lever during the flick but you should already be tapering off. Too much brake while initiating the turn may just push the front past its limit.

 

You should definitely be off the throttle during initiation of the flick.

 

Hopefully that helped a little. BTW... that paragraph you quoted appears to be in reference to why he feels straight-up braking is perhaps a little more advanced than trail braking. Thanks for sharing the article. I enjoyed reading it.

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The short answer is yes it is possible to over do Counter steering ( i.e. Quick turn.)

The obvious context is when one exceeds the mechanic limits of the bike. This may not be the tyre, but rather suspension or frame components. I have experienced headset bearing failure when initiating a particularly brutal U-turn at moderate speed (40 mph). The bearings were well maintained and properly preloaded, but couldn't reliably handle the load. Having previously completed similar turns on the street in emergency situations where braking to a full stop or simple evasion was not feasible I was confident the turn was possible, but the under engineered 400cc Honda commuter frame had its limits.

Thank god, I'd invested in an Arai as I ended up scaring along the road on my head, and wore a tennis ball sized hole in the temple of it, without feeling the impact at all.

Run of the mill Street bikes are manufactured to be ridden far gentler than superbikes, and motoGP, and to a much lower technical specification.

 

Note: the example given reflects the only occasion in 30 years of riding which might be described as having been high sided. Having read a little booklet by 1980s racer Dr. Roger Freeth on how to ride safely, I learnt the physics of counter steering early in my riding, when this notion was still controversial even amongst the racing fraternity. Luckily, he also explained the need to be soft on the bars to allow the front to turn in.

Roger who was a physicist in his other life also wrote the textbook on pre-taping any likely injury sites before hitting the track. Long before modern trick body armour came available he figured that most orthopedic injuries occurred due to a lack of support. So with a bit of gym tape he would stablize all the joints that might be injured. So broken fingers, or elbows or dislocated shoulders etc were taped before his races as though they were broken. At worst he figured that such a process rendered first aid unnecessary!

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 months later...

*MOTOGP ASSEN 2017 SPOILER ALERT*

So if you watched the motogp race from yesterday you obviously saw Vinales crash in the chicane from change of direction.  Catching up on news this morning, here's what Crutchlow and Dovi (who were right behind when the crash occurred) said (From David Emmett's article on asphaltandrubber):

“Viñales was so fast there,” Crutchlow said. “When he was in front of me, he was changing direction so fast that when it picked up and took off, the thing was gone. But obviously he changed direction too fast. We’ve seen that crash quite a few times there over the years.”

Dovizioso shared a similar opinion. “I think he was too aggressive in the change of direction, but I’m not sure, I didn’t check the video,” the Italian told us. “It was in front of me, but I was focused on my line at that time, I wasn’t looking at him, so I didn’t see how that crash started.”

 

Here's what Vinales said:

“It’s something I cannot explain because I don’t even know how I crashed,” Viñales said after the race. Ironically, he gave away the cause of the crash in his next sentence. “I passed there 2,000 times and don’t crash. Today, I don’t know, I was pushing myself over the limit.”

 

Just as Rossi lost the rear a couple of races ago, it could be something about the Yamaha.  Alternatively, I don't know if Vinales was also increasing throttle as the bike changed direction; getting on the throttle too soon is an easy mistake to make.  The motogp riders seem to think that changing direction too fast may overcome the ability of the bike (tire+chassis+suspension) to handle!

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As to when to quickflick, it seems do it after braking, and don't mix trail braking with the quickflick.  Trail brake when adjusting entry speed in high speed turns, where realistically, I don't think it's possible to quick flick.  

 

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Thanks for discussing this with a SPOILER ALERT as I've not yet seen the race on my DVR.  Having now seen the YouTube it doesn't look like a quick flick related crash to me. I'm with Dylan on the front end push but there also seems to be some rider induced instability with the timing of his body shift- the bike seemed to come back at him.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dave Moss posted a discussion on his facebook profile of Maverick's crash along with 4 pictures. On one of them, it looks like the rear wheel has come off the ground.

The asphalt is crowned right there (as normal roads are) and going over the crowning and changing direction at the same time could have caused the crash.

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