Fajita Dave

You can't reach max lean angle with the brakes on. You can only reach max lean angle when both tires are evenly loaded so you can use all of the traction that both tires have available. If you can reach the edge of your tire with the front brake on that means your body position is probably very upright. If you had better body position you could turn MUCH sharper with less lean angle which would seem safer to me. The way to go faster through corners is to maintain speed or even accelerate. If your on the brakes while cornering than you can't lean as low which means you aren't maintaining as much speed as you can. So you end up going slower. I try not to out ride my sight lines either but I will on some corners. I usually end up staying at the same speed everywhere except for the very sharp turns. It has a lot to do with personal preference but I don't think trail braking is safer or faster.

On my 600 the throttle roll on isn't very smooth at certain RPM. Between 5 and 7k RPM it has a bit of a jolt when I get back on the throttle after I leaned into a corner. If I'm above that RPM its silky smooth when I roll back on the throttle. I know the 2006 GSXR600 had some serious issues with a jerky throttle when you rolled back into it (Harnois knows all about it). I think it has a lot to do with fuel mapping or carburetor setup. Maybe try a lower gear while going the same speed and see what happens. For the tipping into corners you might be holding pressure on the inside bar causing it to lean further. Try pressing on the bar to lean it and releasing as soon as your leaned over the desired amount. You might also be tensing up in general which can cause that sensation. I know it can be tough for you but try to stay relaxed and light on the handlebars.

Actually, reading Andy Abbott's book, Rossi says he's constantly talking to himself on the track...telling himself to brake earlier, get on the throttle sooner, etc. I think the difference is that he's really not THAT far off to begin with...but he still has the awareness to know what could be better. I am most certainly a Johnny-come-lately Rossi fan, as I only got into this sport two years ago...but I'm just in awe every time I watch him race ...even when he's not having the best of days. Thinking about how to change your reference points/racing line is different than paying attention to how to ride the motorcycle itself. I think SRs are usually caused by there being an overwhelming number of things (could only 2 different things before it becomes overwhelming) that a rider might need to deal with which causes them to freeze up or make mistakes. This isn't something Rossi needs to worry about which lets him be much more aggressive and comfortable with changing up racing lines to get faster or to make a pass. If your going to change your line its going to require some thought. The less you need to think about how to change your line (control the bike to get there) the more you can focus on simply which line you want to ride. Most riders need to think about how to put the bike where they want it, professional riders only need to think about where they want it and not how to get it there.

Yeah its one of the reasons why I like off-road a little more . Entry speed is still very important on the motocross track but not as important as it is on-road. I haven't had the opportunity to get to a track day on my sportbike yet either because I haven't had enough in the bank to pay for it. However I have road course experience in other vehicles which gave me a good perspective of it and tons of off-road experience which can be very similar at times. In go-carts you don't need to worry about how long it takes to actually get it to turn which makes it a little simpler. The direction changes are instant unlike motorcycles which take time. I learned a lot from a very knowledgeable friend that has loads of track day experience on his sportbike as well. My post probably made it sound more complicated than it really is. Diving into a wide/flat turn on the motocross track can be very similar to cornering on a road course and I never think about my entry speed. Its just something that I have a feel for which you develop with practice. I never actually know the exact speed that I'm going but I can feel the exact speed that I can enter the corner with. My first track day on the sportbike will most likely be with CSS but other bills need to take priority .

I'm pretty sure thats what the topic is about but its quite a bit different on a track compared to street riding. Your trying to get your corner entry within 1mph of your target speed (or better). If your going faster than intended that means your traveling more distance as you lean the bike into a corner, if you use the same lean rate this causes you to run a wider line. If your going in slower than your intended speed you'll apex the corner sooner which makes your exit wider preventing you from getting on the throttle. Your corner entry speed, turn in point, and turn in rates all need to be correct to run the line your trying to make. If one thing is off that changes your line. The faster you are the more important accuracy is which is why pros need to be within 1/2mph of their intended entry speeds. On the track your full throttle out of corners all the way into the next corner, you brake as late as you can for the next corner, you lean as quickly as you can, and you lean as low as you can. This means accuracy is extremely important. On the street your pretty much never driving into corners as fast as you can and your turn in rates are usually slow and conservative. This lets you easily adjust your lines as you go which would result in slower times at the track. Theres nothing wrong with riding that way at the track but you can be much faster if you set more aggressive lines which require more accuracy. You might be that accurate and it would be a great gift if you are! Its just hard to tell on the street.

A1- You would know if your sense of speed has improved by being able to accurately judge how fast your entering a corner instead of relying entirely on braking points. A2- More confidence on corner entry that you aren't going in to hot without wasting to much time going slow. A3- Maybe? A4- I think there are a lot of senses and knowledge that are needed to accurately judge speed. Visual can be very deceiving depending on your surroundings but if your familiar with that specific part of the track you can accurately compare how fast your going to the laps you did previously. Personally I use the sound of the engine RPM and what gear I'm in to estimate how fast I'm going. You'd be surprised how accurate you can get with that. I also use how fast the wind speed is to gauge my speed. If you can use all three of these together accurately I would think your estimation of speed would be extremely good.

I forgot about the stress levels they have to deal with sometimes. Especially when I was young there was no such thing as stress while I was on the track but when your trying to win a championship or keep your ride for next year that changes things. Still for many of them I don't think SRs exist. Just because they changed their line causing them to run off the track could have been decided by their place on the track and at the time they didn't see any other ways out. It doesn't mean they panicked, it just means they thought that was their only option at the time. In MotoGP and WSBK I never see anyone alter their line because someone wrecked in front of them unless they are actually going to collide. I guess we'll never really know unless we talk to one of them . Either way they wont have any survival reaction issues while pushing a little harder or changing their line to make a pass like the original topic is about. When most of us have to alter our lines in a way we aren't comfortable with usually SRs kick in but if you want to make passes you can't be afraid to alter your lines.

Thanks, that makes it so much easier to understand! I always have a hard time finding the words to explain something like that. I'm guessing the graph assumes its also the same radius turn? If you took an 80mph turn at 50° lean angle it would just be a wider turn compared to 50mph.

I'm pretty sure pros don't have SRs. I'm extremely comfortable on the motocross track with my dirtbike. After having some very good competition along with many years of racing at the track every single weekend the SRs just went away for me completely. When I was focused the only thing that took any attention is the line I was choosing to run so if anything extra came up I had plenty of attention span left to use and deal with it calmly. The feel and 2nd nature reactions that I developed after so many years took care of the rest. That feel, confidence, and a clear head eliminated the SRs especially after you realize you can save pretty much every mistake that you make if you just relax and ride instead of freezing up. I'm sure Rossi is on a completely different level of focus that I've never experienced and has a perfectly clear head no matter whats going on. I still have no idea how he keeps his heart rate around 130bpm. On the sportbike its a whole different experience for me. There are a lot more things to pay attention to and mistakes are much less forgiving. Once I get to a certain pace it takes up all of my attention span to get things done right and there are other things I know that I should be paying attention to as well. When your trying to do so many things at once its so easy to get overwhelmed and SRs start to occur. For me just the braking sequence was a lot to handle at first which includes in this order: slide off the seat to setup for corner, sit up (and not get blown off the bike), roll off the throttle, start squeezing the brake, down shifting smoothly, and keeping the rear end under control all before reaching my turn in point! It just seemed like a lot to do at a very high speed and it took up most of my attention span for a while. Especially when you compare it to what I do on my dirtbike which consists of: downshift once or twice (sometimes in the air), drive it into the berm/rut, whack open the throttle and ride out of the corner. It just seems so simple doesn't it? Crash, the only way to get to that Zen like calmness that Rossi has is practice and being 100% confident in yourself and your machine. I'm sure he doesn't need to remind himself to keep his arms relaxed or to make sure hes using the correct visual techniques. All of that probably just happens for him automatically along with the other hundred things that hes doing on that bike down to the smallest detail. Once you get to that point your going to be calm and you'll have loads of attention to put on planning your next pass 5 turns or a lap before your actually going to make it. You can think about managing your pace, and your place on the racetrack along with where your competitors are. You can pay attention to your competitors strengths and weaknesses and plan your pass to exploit his weakness. This lets him adjust his lines to execute a pass at corner exit even though they haven't even made it to corner entry yet or vise versa.

A few times the counter-steer was pretty easy to spot. It was always while you were making a faster change in lean angle which would require more input. When your rolling slowly from a 0 degree lean angle to a 25 or 30 degree lean angle you aren't going to see much counter-steer because it doesn't take much. If you make quick lean angle changes or especially quick transitions from left to right you'll see a huge counter-steer input. Also as the motorcycle starts to turn that means the front wheel is pointing in that direction. You might still be counter-steering but the wheel is still pointing in the direction of the turn which is going to make the input very hard to see.

Did you mean the HP2? The HP2 has carbon fiber body work which I'm sure is a huge chunk of change. This sounds expensive too "MotoGP-inspired cockpit that computes lap times and other racing data." I have no idea what kind of market that bike is aimed at. I have to admit if I had the extra money I'd probably buy one though .

I've never looked heavily into the used bike market but it seems like if the bike isn't street legal the price drops dramatically. If you made it street legal again you'd probably get more than enough money back to make it worth your time. If you sell the after market parts somewhat cheap separately you'll still come away with more money in the bank compared to selling the bike as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an extra $2,000 if you sold the bike stock and the other parts separate. All of my info is just from looking around at used bikes online (stock bikes and track bikes). It would probably be a good idea to wait for someone who has actually bought / sold their used bikes to answer.

Physics says that is impossible. A motorcycle uses a specific lean angle because that is the point where the cornering G and the gravity trying to pull the bike to the ground meet and balance each other out. For a 1G turn the motorcycle might be slightly off of a 45 degree lean angle depending on body position but it can't be off my much. For example if you had a cornering force of 0.5G and you were at a 45 degree lean angle the force of gravity would pull the bike to the ground because there isn't enough cornering forces to hold it up. At any decent amount of speed (I guess about 20mph+) a motorcycle's lean angle is determined by its cornering G and unless you can defy physics nothing will change that. A motorcycle doesn't turn because its leaning it turns because thats where the front tire is pointing. If the front tire is making the motorcycle follow a 1G turn it will be leaning at 45 degrees and if its 2G the motorcycle will be leaning at 60 degrees. The only time you can change that is at very low speeds where your body weight can counter act it but even then the front tire will be pointing on the exact radius of the turn, if it wasn't then the front tire would need to be skidding.

Well I could be wrong but from my understanding the way the suspension is compressed has nothing to do with your turning radius what so ever. Your turning radius is determined by where the front tire is pointing regardless of how the suspension is compressed. Your lean angle is also determined by where the front tire is pointing. If the front tire has you pointed in a 1G turn that means your lean angle will be 45 degrees.

That depends entirely on the riders inputs (unless the surface is inconsistent). If you gradually work up to the traction limits in a controlled way then the tires will just start to slip. If you suddenly add throttle or chop the throttle you suddenly overload one of the tires and they suddenly slip out from under you which can result in a high side. You pretty much answered your own question with the last paragraph. Most high sides are caused by someone adding to much throttle to quickly or adding throttle + lean angle at the same time. The same applies for cars as well but its a little harder to high side one of those . As far as drifting wider goes as the tires slip that isn't always the case within certain limits. When the rear of a car or motorcycle slips slightly outside it points the vehicle in the direction of the corner which can actually tighten the line slightly. There is a point where you will start drifting wide though. If you watch Moto GP or GT cars racing you'll notice the rear end is pretty much always sliding slightly exiting corners.

Seems to work for me . Right until the point where I forget to brake.

Well your tires only have so much grip available at any given time, it doesn't matter how much grip they have at any certain point as long as you can use all of it without going over the limit. If your using 50% for trail braking and 50% for cornering you can't turn as tight as if you were using 100% for cornering. Would you rather use your grip for maintaining corner speed or slowing down? Cobie, the articles that I've seen riders (primarily Casey Stoner) saying the need to keep the front tire loaded to make them grip were all from reporters talking to the rider and posting them on sites like MotoMatters.com. I'm not sure which site I've seen it on either because its been a pretty long time sense I've seen any riders comment on it but for all I know they could just be making excuses.

Even though I have heard GP riders say they need to keep the front tire loaded otherwise it lets go I'm still having a hard time understanding how that would work. For example the tire has enough grip when loaded 80% or 100% but it slips at 90% (to the point they might wreck). I could definitely see them losing the front end while accelerating and leaned over because the front tire is barely on the ground. I'm probably just misinterpreting what I've heard even though I don't seem to be the only one. They are probably saying they need to keep it heavily loaded otherwise it doesn't stay up to its best operating temperature. If they don't load it, tire temps drop and they lose grip. That would make MUCH more sense. Ben Spies seems to be pretty open talking about his Moto GP experience, anyone have his phone number?

Moto GP tires are designed for high loads and they only run about 15 psi in their tires. So they need to be ridden much differently then the tires we can get out hands on. A few years ago I do remember hearing a rider comment how much load they needed to keep on the tires otherwise they had no grip. DOT tires are designed to have grip at all times even when fairly cold. Moto GP tires are designed to handle maximum loads for many laps at a time and nothing less. So they are two opposite ends of the spectrum. I've never ridden a Moto GP bike but thats the way it seems to me from the information I've gathered.

With a sportbike on a good surface 100% of the braking force can be handled by the front tire. I've never practiced trail braking on-road so I don't have any solid experience with that but your stopping power is reduced the lower the lean angles get. The front tire can only handle so much load for braking and cornering at the same time. Even though I never touch the rear brake on my sportbike unless traction is terrible I can see how the rear brake might help with trail braking on the track. While trail braking with front brake only the front tire has to handle two different forces that require grip at the same time so you need to balance the braking and cornering otherwise you over load the front tire and wreck. Mean while entering a corner the rear isn't doing a whole lot and has a lot more grip available to use. So if you balance the front brake, rear brake, and lean angle just right you should be able to use 100% of both tires available grip for trail braking and cornering instead of making the front tire do most of the work on its own. Letting you trail brake heavier and still have a decent amount of traction for cornering. Of course your still asking the tires to handle braking and cornering so you still wont be able to reach the bikes maximum lean angle. For low traction surfaces or accidental off-road use on a street bike the rear brake can help you stop quicker in a straight line. When traction is low the front tire will lock up at some point. When the front tire locks up you no longer have control over which direction the motorcycle is going and will find yourself on the ground very fast. You can lock the rear tire if you want to and you can still maintain control of the motorcycle. So to get your max braking force you need to find the point just before the front tire locks up and use the rear brake for the rest. Keeping the rear tire rolling would be best but if it locks its not a big deal as long as your going in a straight line. I do have lots of experience trail braking off-road on a dirtbike. I never really thought about it much until now but I did use the front and rear brake most of the time I was trail braking. The more I leaned the bike over the more I let off the front brake and the more I applied the rear. After I learned this (and didn't think much of it until now) I could brake much later and much deeper into the corner compared to using the front brake only. I was using the grip available from both tires for braking and cornering instead of only braking with the front. It really helped out with diving under someone to make a block pass . As always with off-road it depended HEAVILY on the surface. Sometimes with straight line braking I could lift the rear off the ground and use front brake only, other times I could barely pull the front brake before the front tire locked so I had to use the rear. For any surfaces in between you'd use both front and rear to get the shortest straight line braking distance. The margin for error off-road is so much larger then it is on-road so it didn't seem all that difficult to learn at the time. I would imagine that a sportbike on the track would throw you off quick if you got the braking balance wrong.

Its kind of hard to explain. Think of it this way, when you use the front brake all of the motorcycles weight is being pushed onto the front tire. Just like if your trying to push a pencil across a desk by the eraser it can try to turn on its own (which would be washing out the front tire on a motorcycle). If you use the rear brake its pulling the bike to a stop and all of the weight is hanging from the rear tire keeping the bike stable even if the rear tire locks up.

Getting the rear end to stay up a little higher mid corner would be easily solved with a different spring rate, pre-load, or damping settings. Using the rear brake for that just seems kind of complicated when all you need to do it put a little more pre-load on the suspension. There might be 0.03 seconds a lap that can be gained if you use the rear brake correctly but even then you wont be using it while on the throttle when the right suspension setup will fix the issue. For people at our level there would be MUCH easier ways to make faster lap times . I did learn the rear brake + throttle techique for low speed manuvering but I found you can get the same results without using the brake. If the tight U-turn is up hill then you don't need the rear brake. If the turn is down hill then you can just drag the rear brake with no throttle. Its its level you should be able to do it either way.

I think a lot of it has to do with overall being smoother. If you clamp on the brakes trying to brake late, get to aggressive with the trail braking, and roll on the throttle heavy trying to rocket out of corners not only do you end up going slower but you have a very vague feel of the traction limits. Instead of easing up on the tires limits and feeling what you have left you normally just go straight past what the tires can handle and wreck instead. He might have had a hard time adjusting to the tires in MotoGP too. Its been nice having Ben Spies do so well because he talks a lot about his experiences and switching from AMA to SBK and now to MotoGP in such a short time he knows a lot of detailed differences about the bikes. I know he said the single biggest difference is the tires and they are very hard to feel the limits of their traction until the last 1/4 of the race or so. It seems like they either grip or they don't and there isn't much in between so maybe Depuniet is finally getting used to that.

I have tons of reasons why I ride and they wont necessarily be in order of importance . One reason is just because its what I've done my whole life. I started riding motocross when I was 9 so from the very start it was all about performance and riding fast with no speed limits to worry about. Before I got my first motorcycle I always rode my bicycle as much as possible. I love the equipment, the suspension on my dirtbike is nothing short of amazing. The sportbikes are very high tech, well developed machines and the power output of these small engines is almost beyond belief. I am more partial to off-road then on-road. Until I moved to where I live now I always had a professional motocross track to go to every weekend. When my skill level really started to get pretty high I loved the precise riding I could accomplish on such a non-precise, beat up dirt surface. Nothing compares to controlled slides out of corners just before launching yourself 20ft in the air over a 75ft triple jump or sliding the front tire while trail braking into a sharp corner after a long straight away keeping it at the very edge of washing out. In the trails there are seemingly impossible obstacles the conquer like fallen trees that you need to make it over or extremely steep hills that you need to climb with your handlebars missing trees by inches. It just makes for a very thrilling and fulfilling experience. On the sportbike I haven't been able to feel the full effect of what the bike and myself are capable of yet. I planned on taking it to track days when I bought it but I haven't quite been able to afford it at the moment. Still I love the amounts of performance I've gotten out of it so far and is a big reason why I ride it. 98% of the time I keep it very low key on the street and even while riding a bit more spirited I always keep a decent safety margin. When I do let loose a little the brutal power of my 600 past 10k rpm is so much fun along with the sound at its 16,000rpm redline. The braking potential is way beyond anything my dirtbike is capable of off-road and it took me a long time before I found its limits when the rear tire starts lifting off the ground. The lean angles that the bike is capable of just doesn't seem physically possible and there is still a 1/4 inch of untouched rubber on the sides of my tires (which I don't think I'll have a problem using at the track ). The bike makes all of this seem absolutely effortless. Aside from the performance of most motorcycles and what I can do or try to do with them there are so many other things worth riding them for. They can be very relaxing when you ride easy. They open up the world and let you travel great distances while putting you in the environment the entire way for adventure. Motorcycles are so much more practical for commuting and a dual sport with the right equipment can hold as much cargo as some car trunks I've seen. I also feel more comfortable on a motorcycle then I do in any car. So even if I'm not riding a motorcycle for the enjoyment it just makes more sense to use a vehicle that I feel more comfortable riding, gets 45+mpg, and at anytime your riding it has the potential to be more fun then driving any car on earth. I'm sure there are many more reasons that I just haven't thought of at the moment but I think those are enough for now.

It might have something to do with how much load is put on the tire to. If you have a wider tire with the same amount of weight and air pressure you can actually get less grip. The wider tire will hold the weight up more so the tire wont be pushed into the ground as much which creates a smaller contact patch. You could lower the tire pressure to fix that but you still need to deal with everything Eirik mentioned. There is always a point of efficiency and I guess the manufactures found it with the 120. Besides on most corners the faster way around is to get off the brakes earlier and on the throttle sooner. So even if the wider front tire did offer more grip for trail braking it wouldn't really pay out in lap times.