khp

I've seen the UK guys bring their gear in a rolling bag like the one you (tried to) link to (link is dead for me). I think it's the same as I saw at the Malaysian GP in 2013, but I could be wrong. My concern with such a bag is that it's beyond the IATA max size, so you might get refused even if it goes in the cargo. I just stuffed my leathers in a suitcase and rented helmet, gloves, back protector and boots, when I went to Willow Springs in 2012.

Apologies for trying to get back on (thread-) track. What is it with crests that are making them a problem? Well, it's not that you're riding on a slope in itself, but the change in slope. From physics, we know that the amount of friction available, is proportional to the force between the two objects and the coefficient of friction. If the tires hit an increase in slope (e.g. starting going up a hill), the tarmac is "pushing up" on the tyre (and suspension), effectively increasing the force between the tyre and the tarmac. Conversely, if you hit decrease in slope, there is less force keeping the tyre and the tarmac together. So in this case you have less friction. A classic case where this goes terribly wrong is when a rider comes just over a crest and find something blocking the path, so the rider grabs the front brake just as the front tyre has gone over the crest, causing the front wheel to lock up due to the lowered friction and down he goes. Personally, I've seen this a couple of times. The point i'm trying to make here is that you'll have reduced friction available when you go over the crest (first on the front, then the rear tyre), and if you're (very) close to using all your 10 dollars worth of friction in making a turn at the same time, you might just go bankrupt.

I was refering to this experience http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=2355 Kai

Subtle "wagging" of the handlebars tells you that you're pretty close to the limit. In my case, the front tyre was worn out and needed replacement. Mind you you need to be fairly light on the bars to pick it up.

Let's see... Team Ducks Team Lone Wolf Racing Team Rubber Duck In line with T: Team Frodo

I went back to Sturup this past Sunday, determined to sort out RPs and getting reacustomed to lean and speed again. Sturup is a fairly compact circuit, with primarily left-hand corners (6 vs 2) due to a counter-clock layout. In contrast to two weeks earlier, where we had 32C/90F in the shade and high sun, we had overcast and around 16C/61F this time. Chilly, to be honest. Before my hiatus, I was riding in the fastest group ("White"), but for now I'm deliberately running in the 2nd fastest group ("Red") - which is a good thing, since the other guys are riding faster, and I'm riding slower. One advantage of running the Red group is that I have the option to watch the fastest group take to the track first, so I went out and looked at what kind of RPs and turn points the fastest riders were using in Turn 1. Turn 1 is a very big ~200 degree sweeper, but it is so bumpy on the "ideal" racing line, that you have to choose a different line when going into the turn. This gave me a good starting out for RPs, Turn point, and apex. Must it also highlighted a classic problem: their lines weren't very consistent between riders, and even some of the control riders were taking, uhm, 'alternative' lines. This was even more evident, when I went to look at the lines the riders were using in Turn 6 (around the lake), between 6 & 7 and in Turn 7. Turn 7 is a true hairpin, with a steep increase in elevation. The quickest way through those two turns is the shortest line, because there are no real straights after them, but this seemed lost on several of the riders. My fastest laptime here was in 2010, with a 1:12:69. Three weeks ago, I managed to squeeze in a 1:19.37 in the last session. A looks at the GPS logger data showed the bare facts: I'm slower everywhere. Armed with the knowledge from the GPS logger, the new inspiration of RPs, turn point and line through Turn 1, I headed out. After warm-up laps and getting around a Panigale rider, who was pinning it down the straights, but over-braking into the turns (so much that it was almost dangerous), I found myself settling into a good rythm and found that the RPs and line through Turn one worked quite well. After I passed the Panigale, I found myself doing a 1:19:51 lap, then dropping a second on the following lap, and then another 0.8 seconds, to hit 1:17:77, before getting hit with a bit of passing traffic. Woo-hoo, a good 1.6sec off, in just the first session! Between first and second session, we started getting raindrops, but not enough to to make the track wet. These raindrops would haunt us for a couple of sessions, but never panning out to make the track slippery, so we kept kept going at it. During session two, I worked on keeping the speed out of turn one, into through the fast turn two and down to turn three (there's a fairly sharp downhill 2/3rds between turn two and three). That picked me up another 1.4secs, so I was down to 1:16:37 - three full seconds faster than two weeks earlier! I was unable to follow-up on this in the third session, since because I'm not consistent enough yet in my riding. The fourth session was cut short, due to a guy lowsiding (15min sessions make even small spill a stopper). I decided that I didn't want to go out chasing laptimes in the final session, but rather working on the final three turns (6-7-8) and I eventually also did post a section time that was 0.36sec quicker that my 1:16:37 "flying lap" in the second session. So pretty nice steps forward, although they probably won't come as easy the next time I'm planning to go to my "home track" Ring Knutstorp next Friday for a full-day session. It's gonna be fun

Hugh, thanks for posting the blog entry - quite entertaining. Too bad about braking too late, but you sure did give yourself some motivation to pick up your pace!

Until 2011, I did quite a few trackdays (and a couple of CSS classes) per year. A small highside with broke my right radius bone (and a few bits on the bike) in August 2011 and a 2½ year expatriation contract put a effective stop to that. I did manage to sneak in 2 days on Big Willows followed by a CodeRACE class (Streets of Willows) in October 2012, but until this month, I was not get to ride on a track. Well, until this July 5th, when I went back on Sturup Raceway. The low-down of successes were: 1) I kept the rubber side down 2) I stayed within the track limits 3) The bike runs well (although it did a couple of lurches that I still need to figure out though) 4) I got my knee down again 5) I passed someone during the last session (yay!) I can feel that my I need to "get my mind up to speed again" - I'm riding way slower than before (~7sec), is a bit more cautious about lean angle (I'm barely getting my knee down) and I feel more concerned about how much the bike is moving around under me (the track has always been rather bumpy, and it has gotten even more so since I rode there last time in July 2010). Overall, I'm feeling that it's pretty OK overall. I'm planning to get back out at least a couple of more times this year, to conclude whether I want to continure with the track riding or sell the racebike and the van. ObCssRelatedContent: I absolutely need to work on my visual skills (as always). Getting the visuals and RPs right will help on getting the throttle control sorted out too. Just like on the Big Willow's Turn 8/9, it's the big, long turns that I suffer most. Yes Cobie, I need to get my "dots" out again so I can get enough RPs through the long turns to find and hit a good line Photos courtesy of my friend Carsten, who's a fellow CSS student.

Lucky guy! And very well done of the car drivers to brake and evade running into both the rider and his bike. The driver in the white pickup truck had no chance to avoid getting hit by the rider.

Hi Rob, Welcome to the forum, and enjoy that beast of an S1000RR '15

Cool stuff YD, congrats on the weekend. Sounds like humidity/water in the connectors somewhere. I would take all the connectors apart, use contact cleaner and maybe even fill the plugs with vaseline as a safeguard against humidity.

I'm with Tyler - if you change brake pad material (e.g. from Organic to Carbon), you need to clean the rotors. Also, you need to bed-in the rotors again with the new pad material. I have this not just from the Interwebz but also from the manufacturer directly (SBS). SBS recommended a slightly abrasive material to remove the surface film.

Lack of torque. Suzuki said themselves that they feared to be "out-dragged" by the other bikes. The Suzukis needed a good slipstream down the straight to set the qual times (and the softer tyres).

I have actually replaced the springs on my last 5 bikes, because the standard stiffness is too low to support my weight (I'm currently 200lbs, looking to drop 10-20lbs) and the forks would simply bottom out during hard braking. The first bike I tried this on was my old YZF600R ("ThunderCat") that I got in 1999. I found that when braking hard, the front fork would go "klonk" (bottom out) and then start to rise up on the front tyre in a rolling stoppie. No matter of preload and compression damping would stop the fork from bottoming out. I then bought a set of second-hand Ohlins fork springs from a YZF600R friend, who had sent the forks to Traxxion(sp?) in the UK for a full revalve job. I installed them the day before going on a Norwegian motorcycle course, which BTW was heavily inspired by CSS (Wobble MC, the precursor to "Full Control"). There we were asked to practice braking, and it was only when I let go of the brake in the end and the back wheel came back down, that I noticed that I had done a rolling stoppie (and a rather large one too). On my current YZF-R1 road bike, I had a shop install the harder springs and replace the oil. Unfortunately, they put in too much oil, so the spring rate became excessively progressive and rather harsh. When I got the oil level fixed, the effective spring rate became much more suitable for my weight and allowed the fork to pass through more of the stroke, which made the front end much smoother. Before someone says "Wait, spring rate isn't (compression) damping", let me say: Yes, correct, spring rate and compression are too different things. However, the spring rate both determines the static position of the fork (given a specific load) and how much travel the fork will go through, while the compression & rebound damping are only controlling the dynamic position. Let me explain with an example: Imagine that you add 50kg on top of the bike. What's going to happen? - From a static point of view, it's easy: the spring rate will determine how much more the fork will be compressed. The damping of the compression and rebound valves are irrelevant (we have infinite time to wait for the system to settle). - From a dynamic point of view, it's a bit more complicated: The speed that the fork will move with, will be determined by the compression valve, but how much the total stroke will be, will be determined by the (effective) spring rate. So with a very high spring rate, you're not going to get much fork movement, and that feels harsh to the rider. That's why you want the spring rate AND the preload to be sorted out first.

Yeah, I read that too and found it quite interesting. Not related to braking as such, but I noticed that it was only Lorenzo and Rossi who were doing 1:42:xx laps in the second part of the race. Everyone else were doing 1:43-1:44s. Just wow.

Today had a very mixed bag of results for the brits: Win in Moto3, 4th place in Moto2, and 5th/DNF in MotoGP. Danny Kent showed why he's the guy to beat in Moto3, by first testing if he could get away from the pack (he could only gain about 0.4sec on a lap, which wasn't enough to avoid the others slipstreaming him down the main straight), then checking that if he was indeed 1st coming out of the final corner, then he wouldn't get passed before the finish line, and then sitting back and waiting for the pen-ultimate lap to pounce from the rear of the lead group (6th place) to slipstream to 1st by Turn 1 on the final lap, and then keep the others from passing him before the chequered flag. Brilliantly done! Sam Lowes had been struggling a bit during the weekend (he seems to been doing that for the last couple of races), but was in the lead trio of riders that got away in the front. Lowes lead the race for a couple of laps in the beginning, before falling back to 3rd place. There, Alex Rins chased him down and passed him. It seemed that Lowes was struggling to keep the pace of Rabat, Rins, and Zarco. Zarco made an audacious move on the final lap to pass Rabat, and Rabat blew it a couple of corners later to allow Rins to pass him. For Cal Crutchlow, the race was quickly over when he got a slight bump on lap 3 by Aleix Espargaro. Out and down he went. But the biggest news of the weekend was probably that the two Suzuki's qualified as one-two. Last time Suzuki qualified 1-2 was in 1983, with Schwantz and Barros. Unfortunately for Suzuki, they got out-dragged by "everyone" from the front line to Turn 1, so they had their work cut out for them. Lorenzo quickly moved to the lead, and only Marquez could follow him. Unfortunately, Marquez completely blew a corner (Turn 10?) on lap 3, and narrowly avoided taking Lorenzo out from behind, before going off track and dropping the bike in the gravel trap. This was a race with a lot of falls - 8 riders would not finish the race. By the time Marquez fell, the race was almost over. Rossi had moved past Dovizioso, but was 1.5s behind Lorenzo and while the gap moved up to just over 2 seconds, Rossi slowly reeled in Lorenzo at the end of the race, but he was only able to cut the lead to 0.88s at the finish line. This was the first time Lorenzo have won 4 consecutive races. Oh, and Rossi only leads the championship by a signle point now. Questions to everyone: - What's up with Marquez? He's had 3 DNFs in 7 races, and he's 69 points down on Rossi. That's a mighty big deficit. - Why couldn't Lorenzo ride that way the first 3 races? What changed from Argentina? - How can Rossi get back at Lorenzo? It seems that he's not qualifying well (OK, he's never been a suberb pole-setter) and his race-launch is not as good as the others, so he's creating work for himself here. I guess that previously he relied on his race-craft to pass the others, but he is now facing a couple of riders (JL and MM) who are able to ride quite as fast as him, and for the full distance. How can or should he compensate?

In addition to the physical spring, a front fork with an enclosed spring/fork oil* actually have another spring: the air volume above the oil. Since the air is in a closed box, it will work as a progressive spring, that should be added to the physical spring's rate (straight or progressive). *) This includes both the Right-Side-Up ("Normal") and Upside-Down forks. I'm not sure if the BMW telelever fronts are included. Setting sag has been described by several good people, including Paul Thede from Racetech and Keith Code (there's a section on the Twist-2 DVD where they show how to measure it). Sag is calculated by measuring the distance between two fixed points, one point below the suspension and a point above the suspension. Measurements are taken independently on front and rear suspension. Both Racetech and CSS recommend taking 5 measurements, measuring 3 things in total: 1) Fully extended length (1 time). Here, the wheel is off the ground to get the maximum extension. 2) Unweighted length (2 times). Length of suspension, when there is no rider on the bike. 3) Rider-loaded length (2 times). Length of the suspension, when the rider is on the bike, in riding position. For (2) and (3), the measurement is taken twice: first time, the helper is gently lifting the suspension up, and let it down again to it's equilibrium. Second time, the helper pushes a little down and lets the bike rise back up to the equilibrium point. For the sag calculations, the average of the two numbers are taken. Ideally, the two numbers should be identical, but if there is stiction in the suspension system or the two fork legs are not fully parallel (but wedges in/out like an A or V). This would especially show up when the rider is sitting on the bike. "Free sag" is (1) - (2), while "static sag" is (1) - (3). As long as I have a helper (or two), I have found sag measurement to be rather easy. As I recall, static sag should be around 30mm (1.2 inches) for a road bike.

Go ahead YD

I remember watching the Qatar race wondering that if MM didn't have such a horrible start would he just pick up where he left off and run away from the field this season like he did last year. Now I am not so sure. After Stoner retired, Lorenzo seemed to be the Alpha Male amongst the pack up until Marquez showed up and won immediately. Now JL seems lost. Does a similar fate await MM if Rossi keeps the pressure on him for the entire race every race? It was almost reminiscent of Sete Gibernau's season long battle with Rossi back what ten or twelve years ago? I don't know if Rossi can keep the fires stoked that high for the whole season but this is the most fascinating start of MotoGP that I can remember. On a simpler note, the fact that Rossi can be this competitive after such a long time struggling with Ducati and then sitting on the B Yamaha is a testament to his character if nothing else. I agree, Lorenzo seems lost at the moment. As for Marquez and Rossi, I am fairly confident that Rossi has the willpower, determination and interest to race for the wins and the championship all year. If not, he would have quit several years ago. Like you say, it is a testament to his character. I think that Marquez is outright the fastest rider on a single lap. In the 36 races of 2013 & 2014, he set fastest lap of the race in 23 of those 36 races, 24 poles, and 20 wins. That's awing 64%, 67% and 56%. Rossi is nowhere near those statistics in his 252 starts of 500cc/MotoGP between 2000 and 2014. Those stats say: 71 fastest laps, 50 poles, and 84 wins. 28% / 20% / 33%. As for poles, 2003 was Rossi's best year with 9 poles in 16 races. I guess that what makes Rossi into GOAT, is his ability to ride very very fast throughout the race distance, with lightening fuel load and tires wearing more and more out. Will Marquez crumble if he can't keep winning and have a some crashes? He doesn't seem to me to have a (relatively) frail character like Biaggi or Gibernau. But only time will tell.

Bridgestone provided this explanation of why graining occurs on tires, when discussing the tire performance during the Argentian GP: (My emphasis).

I was rather impressed that Danny Kent took out 0.5sec from his competitors on every single lap, for the entire race. What kind of doping did they give to him and his bike to do that - it's totally unheard of. Really nice to see that Zarco was able to hold all the way to the finishing line, taking his first Moto2 victory. MM should take a line from Sam Lowes, who accepted to relinquish his 2nd position to Alex Rins, when his tires were worn out and he couldn't stay in front of him any more. Sam scored 16 points, unlike MM. MM is clearly the fastest rider of the MotoGP field, but he seems to be too much do-or-die.He made an interesting gamble on the 'hard' rear tire, and it paid off all the way to 1½ lap to the finish line. It was really exciting to watch VR manage his race and tires perfectly, punching after him when he knew it would hurt. In some way, MM's crash was sweet payback for Bautista, who got clipped by Marquez in the Qatar race so he had to retire due to torn brake hoses and sensor wires. I wonder why VR looked over his right shoulder, just before the 2nd contacts. Was he trying to make sure MM wasn't there, or that MM indeed was there? VR has shown before that he's willing to take the racing to contact. MM can call up Stoner and Gibernau about that, if needed. Cal Crutchlow deserves a shout for his pass on Iannone in the final 2 corners, to beat him to the podium. My biggest question is JL - he's definitely not where he wants to be, and where Yamaha wants him to be. Is he crumpling from having a MM who is obviously a better rider than him? JL was on the same "extra hard" rear tire, but was barely able to keep up with the Ducatis? JL is supposed to be Yamaha's rider #1, but he's not delivering to that.

In short: yes, full reciprocity. I have had schools in Sweden, UK, Sweden, then US, and all I've had to do was to explain when I had done the previous levels.

As the commentators said: "Normal Operation has been restored". Q2 had quite a drama: Marquez came out of the pits for his final run (outlap + 2 laps), but on the very start/finish straight, his HRC machine turned on a warning light. He parked the bike against the pit wall, jumped over it and sprinted back to the garage, where the team had quickly pulled out his #2 bike and started it. When he left the pits, there were less than 2m30sec remaining to the chequered flag. Despite the #2 bike wasn't set up the same way as the #1 bike and had the "wrong" tires on, he rode it in anger to demolish the lap record and put in on pole - again (while this happened, Marquez went from pole to 7th on the grid due to others setting their fastest laptimes at the very end of the Q2 session). Marquez didn't do a brilliant start, but I think his main point was to get through turn 1 without incidents. I think he was down to 5th place in the beginning of lap one, but by the end of it, he was 2nd. By lap 5 he had passed Dovizioso and he never looked back since then. The battles for 2nd/3rd and 4th/5th were much more interesting to watch, with the two Yamaha's being sandwiched by the Ducatis (Dovi taking 2nd and Iannone taking 5th). Rossi still leads the championship by a single point to Dovizioso (41pt vs 40pt). Good with 3 different brands on the podium. Suzuki and partially also Yamaha still have their work cut out for them to get more power from their engines. There was an odd collision incident in turn 11 between Scott Redding and Pol Espargaro, which resulted in Pol crashing. It seemed like a "race incident" to me, but it would be interesting to hear other people's opinions. The Brit's are likely to be ecstatic after the Moto3 & Moto2 races, with two winners (Danny Kent doing an unparalleled disappearing act at the front in Moto3, and Sam Lowes take the win by 2 seconds).

Picking up the bike cannot be the cause of a highside in inself - picking the bike up is one of the ways to actually avoid having a highside. However, you now wrote a detail which I think could be crucial: that the road is bumpy. If you ride on the "wrong" side of a bump-crest, you effectively have a road that falls away from you (negative camber), which means you suddenly have (much) less grip available. IF (and this is just a hypothesis) the bike slid on the negative camber, the sideways moveent COULD be enough to cause the highside if the (sideways) movement comes to an abrupt stop (as opposed to a gradual stop of the sideways movement). I had "the world's smallest highside" back in Augst 2011, which broke my radius bone in the wrist. Due to other circumstances, I didn't ride until I was at CSS for 2 days at Big Willows in October 2012 (followed by 2 days of CodeRACE). At the time I was "what the heck" about why it happened, but since several others very inches from crashing out within a minute or two, clearly the track had suddenly become much more slick (this was on the slow-down lap). By the time I got back on the bike, it didn't affect my psyche anymore. Sure, I apprehensive, but that was the normal "I haven't been riding all winter and need to get the hang of it again" type of caution. Heal well, and get back on the bike.

Marquez was less than 4 seconds off the lead rider (Dovi) by end of lap 1. Marquez kept approximately then same gap all the way to lap 20 (biggest gap was 5.4258 sec on lap 9, smallest gap was 3.342 sec on lap 19) when he decided that he would not be able to catch the quartet in front, and opted to ride it home safe in 5th spot. Intelligent move. Interestingly, the all top-10 riders ran 1.55-1.56 laps out to lap 20, which just shows how close the fields was. Whether Marquez would be able to run away from the others is an interesting question. For the Qatar race, my guess would be a "no", because the quartet in front were able to run faster laptimes than Marquez. But did anyone noticed that Marquez hit Alvaro Bautista's Aprilia so hard that he clipped Bautista's brake hose? - Marquez hit Pedrosa either last year or the year before, which resulted in a torn sensor wire so the anti-spin didn't work and Pedrosa got spit off. I am surprised that none of the race stewards didn't give Marquez a warning or fine for that.