harnois

I think the principles are the same regardless of which tire you are using, but then again I've never used the stickiest tires available. When you load the front, you are giving more traction to the front wheel, but you are also simultaneously demanding more traction from that wheel. So the "fast guys" may describe their sensations of loading the front to get more front traction, but they are not describing the reason for trail braking, they're only describing why the trail braking is possible - trail braking hugely increases traction demand at the front which is possible partly because the braking itself increases the traction available at the front. But all would agree I think that the 2nd half of the turn (or more) should be done on-throttle. So no one is suggesting that anyone should go around a whole turn on the brakes because it increases front traction, right? Maybe you've hard the phrase "last on the brakes, first on the gas." But the thing is, being first on the gas is way more important than being last on the brakes, if you are talking about lap times. And trying too hard to be "last on the brakes" often gets in the way of being first on the gas. So you can see why, for all except the very top level or riders it may be of much more benefit to focus more on the getting on the gas sooner rather than pushing the braking. And it may be possible to go faster by trail braking up to the middle of the turn, but - based on the common theme that seems to come out of that long trail braking thread you mentioned - only if you do it extremely well. Furthermore, by trail braking you will be spending a larger amount of time in a less stable off-throttle condition, where you are more likely to lose the front. When you had these front end slides, where you on-throttle or off-throttle? Usually it happens when off-throttle. So if you are really looking to understand why you lost the front, I would really be looking at what you were doing with the throttle at the time. My only crash at the track involved losing the front end during heavy rain. I was off-throttle and I normally would have been on-throttle already by that point of the turn. If you were supporting yourself on the inside bar due to being tired or not focused, and then ya started hitting bumps at the same time, ya could easily end up essentially introducing all kinds of inadvertent steering inputs, cos you'd end up pushing more and less on the bar as you hit the bumps and your weight on the bar bounced up and down and thus pushing the inside bar forward (which is a countersteer that will cause more lean angle). I've had the problem before, for me it just caused a lot of wiggling and swaying feeling, which reminded me of the mistake I was making. Off-throttle tends toward front end slides, too much on-throttle tends toward rear end slides, somewhere in the middle, with slight steady throttle roll-on, is that perfect balance between front and rear traction, and to my mind the idea is to be in that range as long as possible for maximum cornering speed, but... that also has to be balanced against the advantages of later braking and a hard drive out of the corner and a shorter line.

Insurance companies build their policies based on stereotypes and prejudices. Of course they will say it's from statistics but they can slice and dice the stats however they want based on their prejudices. This is why Progressive will charge a young guy on a katana 10 times more than a bandit, even though the two bikes use the same engine, and even if the guy has a clean driving record. So if they knew you were a track rider, they'd just assume you were a bonehead thrillseeking moron who is guaranteed to crash his brains out. Even though, in my opinion, riders that go to the track are demonstrating responsibility, and riders who routinely go the track are probably that ones that put a lot more thought into their riding. But I do think that riding a motorcycle on a track and taking superbike school has made me a safer rider on the street. For starters, after spending a little bit of time going over 150mph with the front end shak'n around a bit, almost anything that happens at 60 just doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Of course 60 can still be very dangerous but what I mean is, I'm a lot less likely to panic at street speeds. And after spending time with my knee on the ground on the track, nothing I do on the street seems as extreme. Most of what ya learn in superbike school has to do with learning how to let the bike take advantage of it's own natural stability, which is a tremendous help in the street given the greater number of surface obstacles we encounter there. The visual skills are also very useful given all the different things to keep an eye on and be distracted by in a street environment. And I agree that riding a motorcycle makes me a safer car driver, mostly because I'm so accustomed to predicting the moves that other drivers are going to make in traffic. Sometimes I know what another driver is going to do before he knows he's going to do it.

Interesting stuff. Yeah I agree, after hundreds or thousands of times around the same turn, I KNOW how fast I can do it, and I can repeat that speed lap after lap with no worry of sliding. Which is why I don't get the popular concept of riding "at 70%" cos frankly I can do 98-100% all day long and not really be worried. But perhaps this is a matter of experience and newer riders can not judge it as well. But anyway that's another topic. The part that I don't have a feel for is intentionally initiating a slide without going over. Anytime I've tried it, well it just sticks, and I'm amazed at how much traction the tires have! So I'm just not there yet, and I don't think thats emphasizing the negative, it's just being objective - it will come in the future. I also think this is an interesting contrast to another concept that I think I've seen Keith write about somewhere or another, about the ability to "ignore the noise," meaning when things start squirming and twitching, to ignore it and keep on get'n it and not let it distract you because there's nothing you need to do about it anyway. So these are things that happen without your initiation and you may or may not know their coming. The slides that I described above, they happened without my intentional initiation, but they were still controlled and smooth. Were they slides or maybe just "noise?"

Look at this thread here especially starting with Past 13 and 14. http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=1672 It seems to hit on a lot of the same kindof thing as this post. Like for example bullet's mention of Attack Angle. Also in that thread, you'll learn some new words. I've noticed during motorcycle track days, racing video games, go-kart racing, and rc car racing.... in every case I can think of examples where the standard straight approach then quick flick technique just doesn't work out to be fastest. Sometimes it just seems better for various reasons to move toward the inside of the turn during braking and turn in the rest of the way later. An example is VIR North Course Turn 7. It has a dip right in the middle so you can scream up the inside and then just use the extra traction from the dip to turn the bike later (this happens kind naturally anyway). And based on the way the superbike school puts the yellow X turn points down in that turn, and my observation of the coaches going through that turn the same way, I'm certain it's not just me. Sometimes there's a balance to be struck between what line allows you to maintain the most momentum through the turn, vs what line is just simply shorter. Sometimes the shorter more elliptical line does work, but it's an exception that applies generally to a very small percentage of turns in my experience. As for the quick turning I don't see why you can't do it just as aggressively if already partly leaned over. Obviously ya wouldn't have to push on the bars as long or hard as usual, since you don't have to go as far. Generally I find that this does not require the same level of conscious hard pressure on the bars the way it does to flick from full left to full right or upright to full right or left. But it still does require a very conscious turn-in point.

GregGorman's comment about intentionally making the bike slide rather than just waiting to see when/if it happens, that's an interesting concept. It reminds me of taking a jump on a mtn bike or dirt bike, if you just let yourself get thrown into the air it's very awkward, whereas if you launch yourself off the jump ya seem to have a lot more control in the air and for the landing. But if you try to hard to intentionally make it slide, wouldn't you run the risk of making a sudden input and overdoing it? I guess it's all about getting a feel for it which I guess I just don't have. On the sportbike on the track, I'm just barely fast enough at this point to have a little bit of sliding going on here or there, and I mean barely.. like I can count the slides that I remember on one hand. They all happened without me expecting it or planning it, and to my surprise they were all basically uneventful and smooth and not scary. In one case I remember my rear tire sliding in a right hander as I got on the throttle even though I wasn't going all that fast, next lap around it did the same thing, so I figured the tire had gone through one too many heat cycles. Anyway I apparently stopped rolling on the throttle during these slides because it just came back into line smoothly, but if that is the case it seemed like a fairly natural reaction. And twice I recall the feeling of going over a rise in a turn, and because of the lift in the rise taking away some traction both tires kindof drifted out a bit, but they drifted equally and I just held the throttle in place and prayed, and nothing really happened, just rode it out until I got traction again when the rise ended. Now that was a neat feeling but after doing it a couple times I was too chicken to keep up that speed. Watching Moto GP I can see in certain turns in certain tracks they are doing the same thing but like a 100 times more extreme and they do it every time around and with a pack of bikes around them. bah! Anyway, point is none of my slides were intentionally initiated, they just happened, and they worked out fine and smooth.

Yeah I remember that comment on that DVD. He's never been a crasher, but yet we all know he has crashed... but not very often. Certainly some other pro racers seem to have a lot more issues with crashing. I also used to ride mountain bikes, and race occasionally, when I was maybe 15 to 18 years old. I was always one of the faster downhillers in any group ride, but in many years of riding I only remember one bad high-speed crash off-hand and that was during a downhill race and I was pretty young and probably just overexcited to be participating in such an event.

Well said! My mind is usually jumbled with so many ideas. But on a bike on a track.... Serious mental focus in the midst of extreme physical activity. That is the challenge and I love it! And at least for that time there is no mental junk interfering - my (and others') well being depends on it! If you are really running at your 100% it's quite a lot of work - the quick turning, the long hard braking zones, hang-off position without leaning on the bars, and just trying to hold on to these absurdly powerful bikes we get to ride these days, all combined with the mental focus. I know I can't do it but for maybe 10 laps at the most without a break. And that's fine with me cos I'm no trying to be a pro racer.

I concur with many others here about GregGorman's post... a great example of the how the technicalities lead to speed, not "pushing it." I didn't understand this until I took superbike school. And I like lwarners recent post here too as I've explained it very similarly to others before. My first track day was maybe around 2001 taking superbike school level 1. At that time my times were about 2:05 on VIR North Course and I seemed to be one of the fastest students there that day. Now about 50-some track days and many years later, my lap times are about 1:45. There's no crashes in there that had anything to do with trying to go too fast. And I never really felt like at any point I was making some huge leap in speed or pushing it beyond my confort zone. Yet I can now do 6 laps in the same amount of time it used to take me to do 5. But... the Pros in AMA are like 1:30 or less on this track I think. They are riding much closer to the edge without quite going over, and that takes a much greater degree of perfection to pull off than my measly 1:45s! And nobody's perfect. I'm basically agreement that crashing is no a part of the learning process, but just to play a bit of devil's advocate here, who knows of any top pro riders who have never crashed? ...

I've noticed that too Andy. With softer compound tires, rolling over a small amount of sand dusting or small gravel bits, it does seem that the soft rubber just kindof absorbs that kind of thing and you don't lose much traction. And you can even stop and see the bits embedded in the rubber sometimes. And larger pieces, if scattered, it does just like you describe. I think this is a fairly recent thing, like last 5 years maybe, that we've had these kinds of tires made available to us, when I first got into this 11 years ago no tire I ever tried seemed to behave like this. I also have to wonder, but have never paid attention to it, if the tires we use now would behave like this in colder weather? If we're talking about larger piles of gravel or sand, where the tire has no chance of staying in contact with pavement, I think it's more down to the grooves at that point, and any sport tire these days has very few grooves, and so is quite volatile in my opinion. Thus the comparison with the knobbies on the KLR. Dunlop has this tire with lots of grooves for sport bikes: http://www.dunlopmotorcycle.com/tirecatalog_tire.asp?id=93 And in my opinion, that would be much more appropriate for street riding as it would handle the sand and dust and gravel and RAIN much better because it has more grooves. It looks more like a car tire kind of tread. Why do you think car tires always have so much more grooves? More consistency in the driving behavior. I would try these Dunlop 616s on my SV650 commuter bike for sure if they made the right size for it, especially since I'll prolly end up riding it in the winter. Makes me wonder a lot about the supermoto guys riding slicks on dirt!

Intersections pretty much never have such an accute 90-degree point that way it is shown in his drawing. Even city blocks have somewhat of a curve which will increase the largest possible radius by a lot. The way they have that drawing, a norml car couldn't even make the turn without driving up on the curb or into the other lanes. Usually there is also a row of parking or shoulder or something between the 12-foot lane and the curb, so rarely is the lane actually against the curb. This would also drastically increase the largest possible radius. The 23mph limit shown in the link seems to be based a cornering ability of 0.9g. Of course more is possible. But intersections usually have large grease spots and other vehicles traveling in a lot of different directions, so it doesn't seem like a great place for practicing your corning. The speedometers on most bikes are not accurate. Usually they are 10% optimistic. I've owned 8 bikes, they were all like that. So 25 indicated = 23 in reality. Not a big difference but it becomes one at higher speeds when you figure that 80 indicated is actually only 72.

Yes. Yes. Seems to me that either the lean angle has to subtly become more severe or your radius has to subtly get bigger, or some of both. I've seen this discussed a lot on here and other forums and I think in Keith's books - the general question of what effect do throttle inputs have on lean angle. Based on that reading and my own experience, the slight throttle roll-on does not make the bike want to stand up nor lean more. It also does not make it under-steer, quite the opposite, the slight throttle roll-on helps the bike around the turn for a lot of reasons. Yes. That's the main reason for hanging off, to get more effective lean angle without leaning the actual bike. I'm just a guy who rides bikes and likes reading and thinking about motorcycle physics - not claiming to be an expert on it.

Here's my take on it.... If you can slow down prior to rolling over the slippery spot (most common in my experience on the street is a patch of gravel), then do it. Just don't get too carried away with the braking mid-corner and create more problems. Most importantly, before you actually roll over the gravel, go to SLIGHTLY ON-THROTTLE, enough to maintain speed or slightly increase speed. You don't want to be off throttle when you roll over the gravel, because the front will step out big time. If too heavy throttle, the back will step out big time. If slightly on-throttle, the front and rear will slide about equal, and neither nearly as badly. With experience you can figure out what amount of throttle gets the front/rear balance perfectly equal. Also remember to look around the turn because if the slide startles you it can cause you to target fixate on the outside of the turn and end up in the ditch. This happened to my little brother (he's OK now though). Most of the time now when I see gravel, I can judge that it's not enough to cause a problem, so I don't bother with the slowing down part, I just try to keep the throttle steady or continue slight roll-on and let the wheels slide and catch. The tires that have the most grip on dry pavement, like most popular sportbike tires which are darn close to slicks, are also the worst for dealing with sand and gravel on the road, so they can react quite severely to a patch of gravel. I also have a KLR650 with knobbies, it barely reacts at all to gravel but I'm also not leaning as low around turns in the first place. I have ridden a sportbike to Alaska (lot's of gravel), have commuted a lot during winter with all the salt on the road, rode the KLR650 on mostly unpaved roads from Tennessee to Orgegon (Trans America Trail), and overall have about 170,000 miles of street riding experience over the last 10 years. So I've had some practice with this sort of thing! :-D

Nice video man, especially the part about the rider with the red x. :-D I remember your video you posted here a while back and it certainly does look faster and smoother now and using more of the track. I find that focusing on looking really far ahead helps alot with getting on the gas more and sooner and more accurate lines. That track looks really cool. That long right hander that tightens up at the end looks interesting! It's about 5 hours from me (I'm in central VA) so I'll have to look into a possible track day up there. I'm about to buy a track-only bike. Hopefully I'll be able to afford all the expenses involved in taking it to various tracks to make it worth my while.

I was thinking this too. It seems many/most of the responses including my own could be summed up as "whatever I'm working on at the time." And it seemed to me that Cobie's question to open this thread was intentionally vague. I mean what's top priority for who? For an expert racer? For a beginner? For a street rider, for a track rider? And are we talking about es turns, or wide sweeping turns, or reducing radius turns, or that really sharp turn at the end of the straight? For sure quick turning seems to me to be practically THE thing that determines how fast you can get through a set of eses. But then coming out of an increasing radius turn it's all about throttle control. A rider hopping on a bike for the very first time in his/her life is probably thinking mostly about how to modulate the clutch and shift gears and remember which levers do what. And in my opinion the very next thing they need to think about is visual skills and avoiding target fixation. And next would that magical stabilizing affect of the throttle. I remember on my first tract day (which was taking level 1 with the school), I was dragging pegs, so at that point my biggest priority became body position, and I had to think a lot about the transitions and how I was holding onto the bike. Now 50-some track days later body position is not something I think about much cos I think it's pretty good and I seem to do it naturally. Then I realized more recently (thanks to some coach input) that I wasn't always looking as far ahead as I could and it was slowing me down, so now visual skills become the thing I have to concentrate on doing differently than I'm used to. I would also like to add that learning to overcome panic reactions is very helpful. The skill of focusing on your task in the midst of a very intense activity is a challenge that I think really keeps me interested in this sport. The faster you go the more intense it gets and yet the more important it is to focus and stay smooth. You find yourself doing things things that laymen think are crazy and you never thought you'd be doing - 160 mph around the kink, hard braking, quick turning, and amongst all that physical effort and speed and subtle sliding and twitching, you know as long as you keep the focus it will all work out. What you must remember is that the question is Whats Top Priority, and not where do you spend your attention. It is a good question and has brought forward alot of interesting opinions I myself believe that when Keith sat down and worked out the levels he put them into an order of importance and prioritised the learning procedure from level 1 onwards, So even though I dont spend much attention on it I still have to go with the first lesson throttle control! The funny thing about throttle control is get it wrong at road speeds and it can be quite forgiving, but once you take up track riding good throttle control combined with the ability to overcome SR's will keep your bike stable and if you get it wrong wont be so forgiving at the higher speeds! Once you have good TC all the other skills are added to this and you will improve, but from a novice trackday guy to the best in the world in WSBK and Moto GP bad throttle control will make it all go very wrong in an instant, it is the foundation skill that only if practiced correctly allows you to work on other techniques such as vision and body position! That's a good point, that "What's top priority" isn't necessarily the same question as "where do you need to spend your attention." But it is also not necessarily the same question as "in what order should the skills be taught." And "What's top priority" is still vague, cos for what? who? A beginner? A top racer? On the track? Or street? In what kind of turn? After reading this thread and thinking about it more, I think visual skills, throttle control, and quick turning (or generally understanding countersteering) all work together and a rider must be decent at all of those before he can be safe at any real speed on the street or track. An easy going street rider as you pointed out can get away with not so great throttle control. Being loose on the bars is a big stability gain and having decent body position so as not to drag parts, these 2 things are a close 2nd once a rider gets up to a certain speed. Is it perhaps a bit pointless to pick one out of those? To be a good racer you'll have to get good at all aspects of riding.

I was thinking this too. It seems many/most of the responses including my own could be summed up as "whatever I'm working on at the time." And it seemed to me that Cobie's question to open this thread was intentionally vague. I mean what's top priority for who? For an expert racer? For a beginner? For a street rider, for a track rider? And are we talking about es turns, or wide sweeping turns, or reducing radius turns, or that really sharp turn at the end of the straight? For sure quick turning seems to me to be practically THE thing that determines how fast you can get through a set of eses. But then coming out of an increasing radius turn it's all about throttle control. A rider hopping on a bike for the very first time in his/her life is probably thinking mostly about how to modulate the clutch and shift gears and remember which levers do what. And in my opinion the very next thing they need to think about is visual skills and avoiding target fixation. And next would that magical stabilizing affect of the throttle. I remember on my first tract day (which was taking level 1 with the school), I was dragging pegs, so at that point my biggest priority became body position, and I had to think a lot about the transitions and how I was holding onto the bike. Now 50-some track days later body position is not something I think about much cos I think it's pretty good and I seem to do it naturally. Then I realized more recently (thanks to some coach input) that I wasn't always looking as far ahead as I could and it was slowing me down, so now visual skills become the thing I have to concentrate on doing differently than I'm used to. I would also like to add that learning to overcome panic reactions is very helpful. The skill of focusing on your task in the midst of a very intense activity is a challenge that I think really keeps me interested in this sport. The faster you go the more intense it gets and yet the more important it is to focus and stay smooth. You find yourself doing things things that laymen think are crazy and you never thought you'd be doing - 160 mph around the kink, hard braking, quick turning, and amongst all that physical effort and speed and subtle sliding and twitching, you know as long as you keep the focus it will all work out.

"My thinking is that it takes even more throttle to combat the deceleratory forces of the lean." I figured it had a lot more to do with wind resistance. At top speed the bike is using most of its power to push through the air.

It seems to me that the basic idea it to give it enough throttle to generate slight acceleration to get the "40/60." My observation is that at lower speeds and lower rpms, it takes very little throttle do to this, but at higher speeds and/or higher rpms, it takes more throttle to do this. So at slower speeds/rpms the smooth throttle roll-on begins with it just barely cracked open. At higher speeds/rpms the gradual throttle roll-on might begin from 1/4 or half throttle. If near top speed obviously you have to have it almost all the way open just to maintain that speed, so this kinda makes sense. I also think this may be more noticeable on less powerful bikes because what made me think about it this recently is I went from riding a gsxr600 to an sv650.

My personal opinion on this is that you are basically correct, but maybe it's all not as severe or significant as you think. What I mean is you are letting the downhill aspect psych you out when it really isn't that much different. Yeah, if your bike is pointed downhill that will mean more weight on the front. And yeah, the bike may accelerate down a steep hill due to gravity (and the acceleration due to gravity will not add stability). To add stability you have to accelerate the bike with the throttle because that is what makes the downforce transfer to the rear. When you add up the affect of gravity and the affect of your throttle it will mean more acceleration than a flat or uphill turn, but the actual action you take *exiting the turn* is still basically the same - roll it on, and look ahead as much as possible to judge your roll-on rate. I think it's what you do in the first half of the turn that is different due to the downhill... slower entry speed, turn in later, roll-on later, or roll-on less, or hold the throttle flat in the first part of the turn (is that what they mean here by "maintenance throttle" I dunno?).

I agree with Thor... visual skills. For a brand new rider on the street, learning to "look where you want to go" and getting past the "target fixation" tendencies is extremely important for staying alive. I've heard about and read about and seen videos of so many cases of riders just running wide in a turn and crashing for no other reason than they target fixated. All they had to do was convince themselves to look through the turn and their crash would never have happened. So many times I've been startled by something (let's say a truck in the oncoming lane around a blind turn) and was tempted to target fixate but instead focused on looking through the turn and it immediately became a complete non-issue. But 10 years ago when I got my first bike I remember a few close calls due to target fixation. When I ride on the track, and I remind myself to look way up ahead around the turns as far as possible, I immediately start going faster, getting on the throttle sooner and more, feeling smoother, using up more of the track, and holding more accurate lines. At my current point in my learning curve on the track, it is easy for me to revert back to looking one step ahead instead of two. Throttle Control is really important for all the reasons others have already stated here, but a rider who is tensed up and staring at his front wheel or the outside of the turn will never convince himself to get on the throttle. And even if he did, if you get on the throttle in the middle of a turn, and you are tensed up and looking at the outside of the turn, all that will happen is you will go faster to the outside of the turn! For an experienced rider on a track trying to go as fast as the track boundaries allow, looking way ahead is what allows you to see how things are lining up for you and how your line is working out, and make adjustments as soon as possible where they are the most effective. Looking way ahead allows us to judge when to get on the throttle and how aggressively to roll it on. If you roll it on too aggressively you might run wide, if your roll it on too easy you might not use as much of the track as you could've and therefore won't go as fast as you could've, but if you are looking up ahead it's easy to judge how much to power on so that you'll come out of the turn in the right place. So for the total novice or fast track rider alike, if we are not looking in the right place, we don't have enough information to accurately apply any rider input.

I would try out one or two or all of these things: - turn in later - enter the turn at a slower speed - begin throttle roll-on later I am not familiar with the particular track or turn but these are all things I might do differently in a downhill turn vs. other turns. I'm pretty sure I've seen Mr. Code answer a very similar question on here before so you might find it by searching on "downhill" or something along those lines.

"...while turning right entering the snake my tires are headed for the grass off the left side of the track, but making the quick transition from full right lean to some left lean moves the tires to the right a few feet and keeps them on the road while my eyeballs pass over the grass." In this video starting at about 09.09, as they are showing a replay from the helicopter view leading up to a rather disturbing crash, is a good example of this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/nw200/ The guy in the black leather, after just making a pass in the braking zone and overshooting the turn a bit, he's leaned left and his tires are headed for the curb... until he makes the quick flick over to a right lean, which moves his tires his tires to the left and around the curb. The overhead view makes it easy to see.

When I looked at the specs of the 650r, under suspension it doesn't mention any adjustments, except for rear preload, which basically every bike has, theoretically to allow for passengers. If you look at the specs of the zx600s you'll see mention of adjustable rebound damping, compression damping, etc. Plus things like the lower handlebars and inverted forks and such. Even if the bike has such features, and you never actually adjust anything, it still matters, because bikes that have these features also seem to have stiffer springs and damping in general, making them more suitable for aggressive riding. And it makes sense, one bike is basically a track bike, the other is a street commuter type bike. The zx600's suspension is all about going fast, the 650R's suspension is about comfort. It's honda civic vs. ferrari. My first bike was a yamaha seca II 600, no adjustments, but still a nice bike that served its purpose well. I currently own a KLR650 which has 9 inches of mushy suspension travel and forks that are so flexible that after countersteering hard it takes a second for the front wheel to catch up with the handlebars! My gsxr600 is like a rock compared to either of those and at relaxing street speeds it seems kinda silly stiff, but when I ride it hard it works great.

Well I'm not exactly an expert at sliding bikes around or anything but aside from tire pressure, here are a couple reasons I can think of that your front would slide but not the rear: 1. If you are going through the turns off-throttle, then your front tire will be the first to slide. If you are going through a turn with a lot of throttle, then your rear wheel will be the first to slide. If in a turn you hold the throttle slightly on, or slowly increasing, enough to maintain speed or slightly increase speed throughout the turn, then the traction will be balanced front to rear and both tires will slide about the same (and most likely not at all unless you are some super racer dude or run over something slippery). 2. Keeping your arms really relaxed throughout a turn will improve front wheel traction. It allows the front wheel to track naturally due to the trail. These 2 things are both stuff I learned in Level 1 with superbike school but obviously they go over them in more detail. Both will make the bike generally more stable and accurate. Even if not riding hard they really help out with how the bike reacts to things like bumps or gravel patches in the middle of turns - very useful for public road riding. You say when you hang off the bike "turns a lot quicker--sometimes unpredictably so." 99% of that is because you are pushing on the bars as you are shifting your weight around, or in other words you are putting a countersteer into the handlebars causing it to lean lower. Having your weight off the inside of the bike has a very very mild effect compared to what you are doing with the handlebars. If you get into a turn too hot, in my opinion the best thing to focus on is: Look through the turn where you want to go, relax your arms, and get the throttle open slightly. And somewhere in there you may need to countersteer briefly to make the bike lean lower if necessary, but that will come naturally if you do the other stuff.

"Reference Points, How does an ordinary rider find them?" Just look for the big yellow X's.

I push and pull with both hands too. It's way faster. The other thing I think I saw in the TOTW books that was helpful for me was being conscious of pushing directly forward and backward on the bars, and not wasting any energy pushing up and down. Getting back on the seat with low shoulders to get your forearms in a more horizontal position helps facilitates this. And then pushing against the footpegs to get leverage against the handlebars, the more I do this the more I realize why a lot of riders use rearsets. I do think the faster you do the lean angle change the more you will notice the front wheel track out the opposite side. I'll continue with your right hand turn example.... When you lean in slowly, the bike starts curving towards the right before you've even completed the countersteer, plus your eyeballs are moving right as you lean right, so it is easy to get the impression that you are leaning the bike over by rotating it around the point where the tires touch the ground. But when the transition is fast you can really see how the bike actually rotates around it's center of gravity, with the tires going left and your eyeballs going right. If you set up for the turn too close to the outside (left) edge, it's quite possible to countersteer really hard and put the tires in the grass off the left side of the track. This can be useful though for things alike avoiding road kill. If it's too late to actually curve around the obstacle, I can just counter steer to move my tires around the object and then countersteer the other way afterwards to recover my original line and stay on the road. And on VIR north course turn 5 and 6, a long righthander leading into a little quick left-right-left snaky section that you can kind of go straight through, while turning right entering the snake my tires are headed for the grass off the left side of the track, but making the quick transition from full right lean to some left lean moves the tires to the right a few feet and keeps them on the road while my eyeballs pass over the grass.