Fajita Dave

Disclaimer: this turned out much longer than I intended. I had an excellent example of how technique effects traction recently while riding mountain bikes with my wife. The sensation of traction on a hard-tail bicycle with limited front suspension is extremely evident compared to a motorcycle's heavy weight, large tires, and suspension. Shes just starting to get back into it but didn't have to much experience to begin with. On the downhill sections I pretty much drive it into corners with both front and rear tires sliding on their limit and I had no idea why my wife had a hard time going far less than half of my pace while still having issues with traction! Not to mention how the bike reacted on roots and rocks. They are different bikes but I've ridden both and there isn't nearly THAT much difference between them; her bike actually corners better. There was obviously a difference in the riders technique that was causing the massive gap in the bicycle's performance! She complained about the front end slipping going into every corner unless she slowed down a lot and the rear of the bike severely moved around when hitting any sort of imperfection in the terrain like rocks and roots that I just blew right over. It was all pretty easy to see while riding behind her. So we began talking about handle bar pressure and how she was supporting her body weight on the bicycle. What we found was she was supporting a lot of her weight on the handlebars and the remainder of it was put on the seat. Because she was putting constant pressure on the handlebars it prevented the bicycle's rake and trail to find the optimal traction and put unnecessary load on the front tire which caused it to slide easily compared to me being very relaxed on the handlebars. The issue with the rear of the bike moving around was caused by her placing her weight on the seat instead of using the petals. The bikes tire couldn't handle the shock of imperfections with no suspension while supporting the weight of a rider. You need to at least raise off the seat slightly so your knees absorb the shock instead of the bicycle frame. This keeps the rear tire from skipping around and helps maintain consistent traction. Anyway, the moral of the story is by simply changing how you hold yourself onto the motorcycle and how you create the inputs on the controls you can change its personality from being unsafe and dangerous to being an absolute dream and predictable to ride at the same speed. If you want to lower lap times you need to use traction more EFFICIENTLY instead of more aggressively. Not only will you slide less but the slides will be predictable and easy to control while lowering your lap times all in one. If your doing casual track days it really doesn't matter what tire you use. If your looking to improve your skill level than learning how to ride predictable tires with less traction like most street oriented sportbike tires than you'll learn how to use the available traction efficiently much easier than you would on a more track performance oriented tire as Hotfoot explained earlier. So you'd be much better off using something like the Dunlop Q2. A friend of mine finally upgraded to using the Dunlop GP211 after about 9 years of track day riding going at least 8 track days a year. He really could have switched to them sooner at his skill level but he was having plenty of fun on the Micheline Pilot Powers and Dunlop Q2s. He said the GP211s were a huge upgrade over the Q2 and he can be much more aggressive with the throttle before the rear starts sliding. Another thing to keep in mind with tire selection is they aren't all created equal. My friend tried some Bridgestone 003 tires on the second half of his 4 days at VIR and hated them compared to the GP211. He had to be much smoother with the throttle application and the rear tire would start sliding with less throttle input compared to the GP211. If he had a different suspension setup or riding style he may have actually liked the Bridgestone tire more. You'll just have to try different tires to see what you like.

I practice emergency braking on my sportbike a lot on my local rural roads with no traffic. I try to do it in varied conditions and have use different tires so I get a better feel for whats going to happen. The only major difference that I've noticed between braking in the dry compared to the wet is how suddenly the front tire locks. On a hot day and a clean surface on my bike the front tire is just about impossible to lock so the rear tire simply comes off the ground which rules out the front tire locking in this scenario. However on a cold day (lower than 50 degrees F) or when its wet (lets assume 70 degrees outside for wet conditions) the front tire will almost always lock when maximum braking is reached. In the cold, dry conditions the handlebars start to twist one way or the other and get a vague feeling to them but it happens slow enough that its easy to figure out and adjust to with brake pressure in time. In comparison, on a wet day the front tire loses grip with less than half of the warning it gives you in the dry and its much more sensitive to sudden or jerky inputs compared to dry conditions. The braking distance between the two conditions really isn't all that different but its MUCH more difficult to get it right in the wet so your margin for error is smaller. Usually that smaller margin for error makes your braking distance much longer since you need to be careful with brake pressure and its impossible to get a real feel for the conditions until you run out of grip (by then its to late). If its cold and wet than you should leave plenty of space between the car in front and yourself . All of this braking was done with the front brake only. The rear tire gets so light that it simply locks and provides almost no reduction in your stopping distance. If it were REALLY slick for road conditions, in dirt, or on a cruiser / dual sport than the rear brake would be handy. Other things that I noticed while practicing with my bikes maximum braking capability is that how you hold onto the motorcycle has a pretty large effect on how it behaves. From 60mph I found that holding onto the bike with your legs instead of putting your weight on the handlebars under braking is worth about 20 feet in braking distance! It keeps the rear tire on the ground under harder braking, the bike stays more stable, and you have more accurate feel and control of brake pressure. P.S. I wouldn't count on staying in the cars tire tracks. There probably is more grip there but the bike will move around a lot under heavy braking which will put you outside of those tire marks. Not to mention you'll start your braking with more traction in the tire track and suddenly lose that extra grip when you move outside of it! It would be good to take advantage of any extra grip you can find but it wouldn't be a good idea to rely on something that isn't exactly guaranteed.

Well from a bio-mechanical point of view I think weighting the inside peg makes it impossible to lock your outside leg into the fuel tank. If you have your inside knee out and your weighting the inside peg it would dislodge your lower body's lock onto the motorcycle. That would force you to hold onto the handlebars which can potentially make the bike very unstable. From a mechanical point of view the point of hanging off the motorcycle is to increase gravity's leverage on pulling the motorcycle to the ground. That single aspect lets you go around a corner at the same speed only with less lean angle on the bike. By weighting the outside peg and locking your leg into the fuel tank there is much more leverage that your body has on the motorcycle compared to leaving your weight on the inside peg. It makes your hanging off body position more efficient to get the desired effect and weighting the outside peg lets you keep your lower body much more stable on the motorcycle. For accelerating having your weight on the pegs will lower the CG of the bike. This helps keep the front tire on the ground under hard acceleration. I don't think thats very useful on a 600cc sportbike but for 750cc+ it can be tough to keep the front tire on the ground.

Since you mentioned that it got me thinking about an aspect that the original article doesn't cover. Dragsters use those wide tires because they spray the drag strip with what ends up being an adhesive. The more surface area you have with an adhesive the better the surfaces stick to each other without a doubt. So what about a hot race tire that's up to its full track temperature? The rubber pretty much turns into a soft adhesive that sticks to whatever it touches (like all of the rocks that stick to your tire while riding back to the pits or your finger if you press your thumb into it). If that is the case than a larger contact patch on a hot tire should give you more grip because its adhering to the track surface for the moment that its touching.

I do honestly think contact patch does increase grip, however, so does a higher friction coefficient. If you have a wider tire than you have more surface area supporting the same amount of weight. This means there is less pressure per square inch pushing down on that contact patch. If you have less pressure pushing the rubber into the pavement per square inch of contact patch than you have a lower friction coefficient. Which is excellent for tire wear.... however the contact patch vs. friction coefficient pretty much cancel each other out so you end up with more unsprung weight and no extra grip to show for it. This would make perfect sense looking at the way our sportbike tires are shaped and sized front to back. -The rear tire has more surface area which reduces the tire wear so it can handle the bikes power without ripping to pieces in no time. Most of the tire wear at the track happens on the side of the tire which also happens to be where the contact patch is the largest while the tire is under heavy load on the side of the tire. Having that extra surface area of the large rear tire is perfect for getting the rear tire to last longer compared to a smaller tire. Of course the extra weight of a big tire drains power from the engine and probably has quite a few other draw backs to the performance of the bike that I'm not really aware of. -The front tire has no power going to it what so ever. It simply needs to slow the bike down and corner. Its also less likely to slide or slip compared to the rear tire. So it doesn't need to be as durable as the rear tire which makes it easy to get away with a smaller tire size. The smaller tire size reduces the unsprung weight (the worst kind of weight a race machine can have) and makes the steering more responsive. Since the contact patch vs. friction coefficient cancel each other out the small tire size has plenty of grip to support heavy braking/cornering forces. I'm definitely no expert when it comes to this stuff so I can't say for sure but personally I'd think there would be a point of efficiency that the people making these race tires have already found. A larger contact patch on a hot race tire probably does give you slightly more grip but the extra weight would probably hinder your bikes performance more than the very slight amount of traction you gained with a bigger contact patch.

I always have my camelbak filled with 70oz of water when I go trail riding with my dirtbike or while going for a long street ride on a hot day with my sportbike. It doesn't take very long to empty the 3/4 gallon of water. Eating better has really helped me but it does seem like its not quite enough after riding 3 laps around a difficult harescramble trail. Now that you mention it the one time I used a sports drink in my camelbak I did feel a lot better at the end of the ride.

I don't do anything special to prepair for street riding besides wear the right gear for the conditions. I haven't been on a road course yet but I think preperation for off road racing would be about the same. Heres my list of what I think is important to prepair for racing. 1. Nutrition. Poor nutrition can effect every aspect of what it takes to ride well. Your focus, strength and endurace can be drastically effected by what you eat. I have a habbit of not eating enough before a race paced trail ride off-road and I feel every bit of it sooner or later. It usually causes a headache for me and I can't keep focused. 2. Focus. If your not focused your visual skills could be pretty poor. If you don't have good visual skills you probably aren't hitting the fast lines that your trying to stay on. If you have a hard time staying focused on the right things while riding than you need to do whatever it takes to gain that focus before the race or track day. 3. Confidence. You need to be 100% confident in your ability and your machinery to reach your full potential. Second guessing yourself can cause hesitation which usually results in slower lap times and even crashs. Confidents helps you keep a clear head and make split second desitions. 4. Fitness is one of the last things I worry about. As long as you stay active and do some basic exercises cosistently you'll be much better off than if you didn't do any physical preperation. You don't need lots of strength you mostly need endurance which you get with cardio workouts like jogging and using more reps with less weight when/if you do any weight lifting.

Simpler is better . You are excellent at making things perfectly clear and easy to understand Steve! I've found every bit of information that you've posted so far very useful.

My dad wanted to get my sister and me a dirtbike when I was three years old. Unfortunately my mom said no. I lived very close to a professional motocross track and saw my first race there when I was 8. On the drive home I asked my dad if I could have a dirtbike. Next year when I was 9 I got my first dirtbike . It was a 1996 Yamaha RT100. I beat the living ###### out of that thing with its dual rear shocks and severe lack of power. So one year after that I got a used Honda CR80 which was a HUGE upgrade. It was a little big for me at first and it was way to small for me by the time I replaced it. I was 16 when I bought my 2001 CR250R which I still have now. Since I started riding at the age of 9 I rode at least once every single week for 9 years at a professional track until I moved here to Virginia. It was about four years before I met the right people to find off-road places to ride my dirtbike in this area. This past summer I've found plenty of places to ride. I'll be 24 years old soon and I'm thinking about racing next year. I've had my motorcycle license and gsx-r600 for about two and a half years now. It still hasn't seen any track days but I can guarantee you it will as soon as my bank account lets me. The street experience has been fun but I really need to get to the track.

The basics that you learn from the beginning are some of the most important things you'll ever learn to go fast. You need something to build off of and thats exactly what CSS level 1 is for regardless of your experience level (anywhere from brand new rider to expert). I think this page has pretty much all of the information you would need to know about the school. http://www.superbikeschool.com/curriculum/ I haven't been able to afford to take level 1 yet but their Twist of the Wrist 2 DVD has great information in it and a friend of mine has attended the school. I've been riding motocross since the age of 9 and I can say there was an improvement in my riding on and off-road from the things that CSS teaches just from watching the DVD and talking to my friend. Most of those improvements came from the basic things they teach in level 1. Of course there is loads more to learn when I do actually get to a class.

I'm definitely not a coach but it seems like you're running a little wide through most of those corners. That can really prevent you from getting on the throttle for a fast exit. You seemed to have an especially hard time entering turn 5 at :40 seconds. You charged into the corner pretty deep, had a hard time reaching the apex, and that prevented you from opening the throttle sooner. Its no where near 3.3 seconds worth of time but it might be a start. I could be completely wrong as well .

After the clutch comes in, you can shift. Or if not using the clutch, it will be right after you begin the blip, and the transmission is unweighted for a moment. CF I did say after you pull the clutch in. I guess the word "slightly" doesn't need to be there.

Down shift slightly after you pulled the clutch in. Than blip the throttle (the correct amount!) and let the clutch out.

I would LOVE to have more information on tires! I know the basics but thats about it. They have more grip when hot (but not to hot) and compounds/construction change how a tire warms up and performs in different situations but I don't know much more than that. I'd like to know: *What makes the rubber compounds different and what advantages or disadvantages those compounds have. For example the differences between track and street based tires. *How the construction is different and how that effects the overall performance of the tire. *What kind of surface temperatures would be considered optimal? Anyone can check their tires surface temp with a temp gun so that might help you adjust your tire pressure more accurately for the conditions. (If thats not a good idea I'd like to know why, besides that the tire will cool down a little when you pull in the pits) *How does ambient temperature effect your tire pressure choice? I'm sure there are plenty of other questions that I'm forgetting to mention!

I used three sets of BT016s on the street with my gsxr600 (my bike came with them on it). I was never able to make them slip from my experience. The front tire braking performance while cold was excellent. The front tire never even hinted at locking up while practicing emergency stops. The rear would come off the ground well before that point. I've gotten to the edge of the rear tire street riding (not on purpose but I was having a little to much fun ) and I've never felt either tires slip unless there was gravel or sand. The front tire does seem to be a little softer than the rear. It wears out about 1,000 miles before my rear tire does. With the current used track day tires that I'm riding on now I can't say the same. The front is a Dunlop GP and the rear is a Qualifier. The front will lock under heavy braking unless its pretty hot. I've felt it wiggle around a little searching for grip through corners until it got up to a decent temperature as well. Which I guess you should expect from a track tire while its cold. I haven't noticed any issues with the rear. I have to say the sharp profile on used track day tires after the sides have been worn down is excellent! Input required from the handlebars is so light and its perfectly neutral at any lean angle. The lean angle will simply stay where I put it with no pressure on the bars what so ever. I do know they use rubber compounds that will heat up easier/quicker for use on easy street riding. The BT016 is based primarily as a street tire so it should still have more grip than any touring tire while cold. Any tire thats designed mostly or even partially for street use should be designed to heat up very easily and give you good cold grip. However, you can't expect any tire to give you enough grip to put your knee down or scrape pegs while somewhat cold. Its a little hard to say without asking the manufacture directly though.

Good Day Mate, Thank you for the feedback. I currently have Bridgestone BT023's on the front and back, just want to get more sticky tires (can get a set of 003's or 016's for about $260 before installation). Sure, mileage would be less than on the 023s but more grip is ok with me. Cheers, Klaus If your not using the full potential of your current tires and still have 1" chicken strips than tires with more grip wont benefit you at all. Sticky tires are only useful when your current ones no longer offer enough grip for your pace. This would be an excellent article for you to read. http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=877 Don't worry about the chicken strips. When your knowledge and skill level gets better they will disappear on their own. Also there are a lot of slow riders out their with no chicken strips. Lower lean angles doesn't always mean higher corner speeds. The Twist of the Wrist II DVD has loads of great information in it. For $30 theres no reason not to buy it if your trying to improve.

<br /><br /><br /> I got used to it pretty quickly when I rode a friends 4 stroke. The first was a 250cc the suspension felt great for my weight on that bike. The second was a 450cc that was way to stiff for me so it was hard to compare for jumping. The engine braking definitely made the nose drop when I let off the throttle after I went air born. I got used to it quick though and either rolled off the throttle instead of chopping it or just launched a little nose high so it leveled out when the engine braking brought the nose down. The instant torque seemed to make the bike more responsive to using the throttle in the air. If you blipped the throttle the rear tire just drops out from under you especially on the 450cc. The funny thing about the stiff 450 suspension for me is that jumping was completely backwards. Normally on my bike with my fitted suspension if I lean back off the face of the jump the bike jumps nose high and vise versa if I lean forward (makes sense right?). However, on the 450 if I leaned back the nose dropped and if I leaned forward it jumped nose high! This was completely backwards to the other bikes I've ridden where the suspension was much better fitted to my weight. The only reasoning I can come up with is the suspension was so stiff it was unloading before I reached the end of the jump. So I had to preload the front suspension and use that rebound to get the bike to carry the front tire. It was very odd at first but it was fun after I got used to it.

There are times when you can't help tensing up on the handlebars just so you can hold on. So you wont avoid that completely but you can minimize it by squeezing the tank and holding yourself to the bike with your lower body. Riding in deep sand you can't avoid fighting the handlebars at times and that somewhat applies with mud too. Staying on the throttle and trying to keep the front tire light will prevent the front tire from being pushed around. Of course there is also terrain that you pretty much can't hold onto the tank at all but its almost entirely low speed type terrain so tense arms aren't a big deal. Sometimes you need to let the bike move around under you which means you can't hold on with your legs. If your not holding on with your legs than you need to hold on with your arms.

In slippery conditions you need to be using some of what CSS teaches otherwise you probably would have been falling fairly often. Explaining things can be difficult. I especially suck at it, something might seem so simple in my head but I would need to write a book to put it in words. I think what CSS teaches is how to optimize the use of the motorcycle. Motorcycles are all designed the same basic way and there are riding techniques that use that design to its full potential which is what Keith teaches. By using the riding style that you have you'll lose control long before you ever reach the true potential of the motorcycle your riding. Modern technology (especially tires) lets us get away with doing almost anything we want without crashing but that doesn't mean you are using everything it has to offer.

This is my specialty . If you don't have a steering damper (which I doubt you do if its 2000) you do need to stay loose on the bars especially transition from accelerating to braking otherwise you might get a lot of head shake. Suspension settings can have a big effect on how stable the front end is. Jumping can be tricky at times. Don't make any sudden changes in speed while going off the face of a jump. You can accelerate hard or even decelerate off a jump but if theres a sudden change in speed it will change how the suspension is loaded which then changes how the bike launches. For starting out your best way to approach it is to smoothly accelerate off the face of the jump. Just like throttle control rule #1, it keeps the bike very stable. Some jumps will make the front end drop, others will make the front end try to carry. It pretty much all has to do with how the suspension loads and unloads up the face of the jump so suspension setups can have a drastic effect. Make sure your pre-load is set correctly. Starting out just slowly increase your speed every time you hit the same jump. This will get you a better feel for how the bike is reacting to where your body position is and how the suspension is working with it. Be careful of short jumps with steep transitions. Once the front tire is off the ground the rear suspension will unload. Basically it will spring the rear tire off the ground and throw you forward (which is probably what you just did ). I have so much time on motocross tracks from a very young age so I really don't think about what I'm doing on it anymore. It all just seems to happen automatically. I can tell you it made my transition to street MUCH easier. Hitting patches of sand, gravel, and pretty much any other low traction situations never concerned me at all. I instinctively put the throttle where I needed it and I've never had more than a small wiggle. I'm absolutely comfortable with the front tire locking under hard braking (which I just did today practicing my emergency stops) and I owe it to my off-road experience. I definitely think the off-road experience will make you much more comfortable getting close to the traction limits with the bike moving around while on the road course. A friend of mine is learning how to ride off-road now as well. I've been trying to pay attention to the things I don't think about anymore so I might be able to help him learn. The more I pay attention to it the more it resembles the kind of things CSS teaches in the school. What they teach is made to work with how motorcycles are designed so it works on all motorcycles/terrain and not just sportbikes on a road course. I think most of it just involves getting comfortable with the terrain and low traction. Other than that for the most part it works the same way every motorcycle does. There are some added skills you'll need to learn, like riding through rock gardens and climbing over logs.

That is completely false. Your lean angle is simply the point where gravity and cornering Gs cancel each other out. Gravity is always pulling us to the earth at 1G so if you make a turn at 1G than your lean angle will be 45 degrees for every single motorcycle with any combination of tires and any wheel base. Read the article that Harnois posted and it will explain it much better than I can. This is also how counter-steering works. If your holding a lean angle to the right and turn the handlebars to the right than what happens? The motorcycle stands up. When you turn the handlebars right your turning sharper, if you turn sharper your corner G is higher and this stands the motorcycle up. You can't defy physics.

While trying to go as fast as possible would it be more ideal to be accelerating or braking? On the street I've been practicing the 2-step a lot. Its been getting me to let off the brakes sooner, turn in later and look further ahead. I've been carrying more speed into corners without even realizing it but it feels like I'm going much slower than before. Your riding based on what you see, if your visual skills are better than your riding will probably get better to.

Where exactly is your apex anyway? Is it halfway through the corner, early, or late? If try to brake later I usually start turning in slightly sooner and this makes my apex sooner. It feels like I'm entering the corner faster but it forces me to run wide on exit which is much slower overall.

Eirik especially after reading Twist of the Wrist II have you ever considered that the issues with some bikes you've ridden to be nothing more than the way you were riding it? There are ways you can ride that will prevent the suspension from working as well as it was designed to work. If your preventing the suspension/geometry of the bike from working to its full potential than it might not ride very well. I have ridden a lot of motorcycles (mostly off-road) and I have never ridden one that felt like it might turn around and bite me at any moment unless I was the one causing the issue. For example like tense arms causing a tank slapper or the many ways to make the front tire wash out and low-side. I have ridden motorcycles that I didn't like and some that are very confidence inspiring but I don't think any should ever feel unstable unless something is wrong with either the bike or the rider. Maybe I just misunderstood what you said about some of the bikes you didn't feel comfortable on like the CX500?

Leaning off will help any any speed and any lean angle. From my understanding when you lean off all your doing is making your body weight pull the motorcycle to the ground. When gravity is trying to pull the bike to the ground more that forces the motorcycle to turn sharper (otherwise it would simply fall over). Thats why motorcycles turn sharper when you lean lower, they need to in order to stay upright. When you hang off the inside of the bike your basically leaning lower without actually leaning the bike lower. There will still be a point when the tires are going to run out of traction and depending on conditions that might even be before the tire gets to the edge. You'll probably be safe reaching the edge of the tire as long as you have smooth throttle control, a relaxed grip, and your not braking. I'm not sure why your front tire is getting closer to the edge of the tire but the tire profiles can be drastically different on certain model tires. It might just be the way Avon designed the tires. I know getting a little over the edge is ok on the rear tire when its at a high temperature but I'd be extremely cautious about doing that on the front tire. It looks like they have a pretty good profile on them so you should have plenty of rubber to use without going over the edge if your body position is good.