Fajita Dave

That seems normal to me. Anytime you have a lighter touch you get more feel. You aren't forcibly holding the handlebars in place with a death grip and because you have that death grip you can't feel the vibrations and small movements that the road influences on the front tire. What your feeling is the tires grip and the bikes geometry at work by following the road and correcting itself. It does depend on what tires you have on, how they wear, and the bike your on too. On my GSX-R600 I don't feel any funny little jiggles unless theres a slick spot of pavement or gravel but I do get the feel of the front tire scrubbing on the asphalt as the load increases on the tire. On a friends SV650 the front tire does feel like it kind of wiggles a little through a lot of corners. It has a much lighter feel then my gsxr as well. I never really get the feeling that the road drops away from under my front tire though. I have felt it before with brand new tires before they got scuffed in but I just got on the throttle a bit and that leveled things out. That situation did feel like the front was sliding out a bit. I think this feel that you have now is why a lot of faster riders tend to wreck less then most slower riders. A rider with a tight grip can never really feel what the front tire is doing until it suddenly tucks and they go down. A rider with a light grip can feel when the edge of traction is getting close. Edit: Also anytime that I do start to tighten my grip which still happens once and a while I do notice that feel is gone. As soon as my grip tightens I don't feel that scrubbing of the front tire anymore or the front tire tracking by itself through the corner. Its a lot harder to accurately counter-steer and have accurate throttle control as well.

Haha I remember seeing that. I thought that was going to end very badly at 170+mph!

Haha I forgot where it was but I remember watching a video where the guy was talking about scraping his helmet along a few of the stone walls at 80+mph . A tight grip is never really a good idea on a motorcycle. A tight grip/forearms makes it much more difficult for accurate counter steering and especially smooth throttle control. A lot of the time a tight grip can also cause head shake which is the reason I used to get head shake a lot on my dirtbike when I first started riding at 9 years old. Its best to hold on with your lower body and be confident the steering damper will do its job. Riding inchs away from trees (and sometimes clipping them) at some pretty decent speeds is something I've gotten used to with the dirtbike but I don't think I could ever bring myself to going 100% through a corner thats surrounded with walls and hay bails!

Well it seems like Casey Stoner and the Ducati team don't understand how MotoGP tires worth either . http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/sport/sportresults/MotoGP/2010/June/jun0310-mugello-motogp-stoner-to-test-old-forks/

Comparing any equipment that we can get our hands on can't really compare to what the Moto GP guys have. Their tires are completely different from what we can get our hands on. Most of the tires that we can buy heat up quickly without even being ridden hard or loaded much. Thats what they are designed to do so you almost always have good grip from the very start. Moto GP tires are made to handle enormous loads and only build enough heat to get traction when heavily loaded. They also run very low tire pressures so the more they load a tire the larger the contact patch gets (which happens with our tires too but not to the same extent). I'm not a tire engineer so I can't really tell you why they need to load the tires so much to get any grip out of them and I could also be completely wrong. Still comparing their equipment to ours is like comparing apples to oranges. Paying more attention to how the AMA Superstock racers use their tires would be much more use full if your trying to learn more about it.

The RPMs will go up. The smaller the radius of a tire gets the more it lowers the gear ratio for acceleration. I've had my bike to the edge of the tire plenty of times but I never really noticed the RPMs going up. A friend of mine that goes to quite a few track days said he never noticed it either until leaning it over into the kinked straight away at VIR North from around 150-160mph. Speaking of the street teaching us bad habbits I caught myself starting to do one the other day . There is a corner very close to my house with a little but of a weird entry and I caught myself leaning into it while adding throttle. It didn't matter for the speed I was going but its a bad habbit to get into for a track day.

It wasn't entirely clear but if the RPMs are going up then you're accelerating. From my understanding the most stable point to add lean angle at is to maintain the exact speed your going. So if your going 60mph and holding 60mph its perfectly safe to add more lean angle. Just remeber if you keep leaning a motorcycle lower it will eventually let go. I have added lean angle and throttle on the street before but its usually just following traffic and not even remotely close to any kind of traction limits. Its when you have relatively high lean angles (the kind of lean angles you should only be finding on the track) that its an issue if you add throttle and more lean angle. Maybe a coach can go into more detail if thats not enough.

Andrew, Just so I'm clear, what is your exact question here: that you can/can't use more throttle at steeper lean angles, or is it holding the line? CF Let me try to paint a clearer picture. Both riders enter a long sweeping corner using the same racing line. Rider A enters with moderate lean angle and holds the throttle at a steady 20%. Rider B enters with severe lean angle and holds the throttle steady at 20%. Given that Rider B is using the same throttle position (20%) as Rider A, I would imagine that Rider B's line would tighten up as Rider B is at a steeper lean angle. Therefore Rider B needs to use more throttle to hold his line, say 30% throttle. So that leads to the conclusion that you need to use more throttle at a steeper lean angle to hold the same line. Or am I missing something here? Thats not really the way to look at it because its relative to how fast you enter the corner. Try not to get actual corner speed mixed up with how much throttle input you have. Your corner speed and lean angle is set at the entrance of the corner. Your throttle input is applied from around the apex and should be steadily increased throughout the exit of the corner. Bottom line is IF you need to increase your lean angle as you get on the throttle you made a mistake earlier in the corner. All your doing is trying to fix one mistake with another mistake. Edit: Opps I forgot to read page 2, someone already covered that

I think adjusting to what each student needs to focus on individually is extremely important. Even though you are teaching all of the students basically the same thing you have to analize what each student needs to work on most before they can make it to the next step. This brings up the next thing that sometimes holding some information from a student can be a good thing when the situation calls for it. Sometimes things can get more difficult when you give someone to much information or to many things to work on. So letting the riders skill evolve on its own while they practice before telling them what the next step is can be very important.

I did have a few sloppy clutchless down shifts that felt like they wouldn't be good for the transmission. Whether it did any abnormal damage or not I can't say. Now that I'm thinking about it I've never heard of someone breaking a transmission on a modern sportbike and I've met quite a few people who would be more than capable of doing so if these trannys were weak in any way. I did have one weird thing happen on the street. I did a clutchless dowshift to 3rd at fairly low rpms and it automatically slipped into 2nd a few seconds later just before I was going to shift anyway. I didn't even bump the lever but it was a nice smooth shift.

Its just the opposite of clutchless upshifting. Decelerating puts load on the transmission (just like accelerating does) which on most bikes is enough to lock it in gear so you can't shift it. This means you need to slightly increase the throttle (a quick blip very similar to clutched downshifting) to unload the transmission which makes it easy to slide into the next gear.

It took some adjustment but I found clutchless downshifting pretty easy. Its almost the same as clutched downshifting only you leave the clutch out of it. When you blip the throttle load is taken off of the transmission, when the transmission is unloaded then its easy to click the shift lever into the lower gear. It takes some adjustment to get the blip right and timing right but once you figure that out it feels just like a clutched downshift. When you get the timing right between the blip and shift it wont do any kind of damage to the transmission what so ever because at the moment you shift there is no strain on the transmission. Personally on-road I like downshifting with the clutch, off-road I shift everywhere without the clutch. Its just personal preferance.

I like your wifes reaction to that lowside . The corner entry looks a little difficult with the track dropping away like that. I'm glad your ok, you took hard tumble for a lowside. Maybe its a good thing you didn't race in Unlimited GP. You might have been caught up in the red flag.

I'm with Bullet on this one. Just because you are uncomfortable with something doesn't mean you should avoid it, quite the opposite actually. If something like this can create a mistake just because you're head isn't tilted in just the right position then its something you need to fix and not make a habbit of. Being comfortable in uncomfortable situations is one of the things that makes the pros as good as they are, it also helps a lot with being more consistant and catching other mistakes/changes easier. (Heres another compaison with my motocross experience ). On tight hare-scramble trails I've been in some extremly disorienting positions which I did have a hard time with at first. I've riden through steeply banked berms (like one of the pictures posted) with trees flying by my head only 2ft away all viewed at about a 45 degree angle. The trees block the horizon so all I can see is the berm which looks like level ground to me and trees that are all sideways. After getting used to that from a young age I noticed that odd things like that didn't bother me anymore. I could be completly sideways and still accuratly see what I'm doing without being caught off guard or disoriented. Now orientation of my surroundings takes 0% of my attention span and its automatically understood regardless of how my head is tilted. So I can use that attention for look at referance points or paying attention to throttle control. If you are most comfortable with your eyes level to the horizon then by all means do it, but you shouldn't be uncomfortable with your head being in line with the bike either.

I don't think it has anything to do with how fit they are before they start the race. As a casual track rider you might get to 10 laps or less if you're pushing to go as fast as you can before your arms are nothing short of finished for the day. There is noway you'd be able to pick the bike up yourself if you wrecked. Now take 30 seconds off your lap times and imagine how the pros feel after a few laps. I think practicing that slow and tight riding could really help working on the visual aspects of track riding. You need to turn your head far to see where you're going on those tight turns so it should feel fairly natural when you get to the track. It could also help a lot with learning to stay loose on the handlebars. You wont be at high speeds to make you nervous and tense up. Once you get in the habbit of staying loose on the bars at low speed it should transfer over to higher speeds a little bit.

My '08 GSXR600 has a mode select on it (forgot exactly what they called it). It allows you to choose between three different power settings basically. A is 100%, B calms down the throttle response but you still get 100% on top end, and C reduces the power all together. I'm not sure by how much but it is signifigantly less power on C. I'm sure its still more then 50hp but this lets you bump up the power while your still riding if you feel you could use more.

I guess its just a difference in what you call sliding. Sliding to me is when the tires are past any useful point of slip like Gary Mccoy rides . I still don't understand how he could run fast lap times with the rear tire 2ft out of line through a corner. Tire slip to me would be within that useful 10% stuman mentioned.

Keep in mind sliding will slow you down! You need to stay on the edge of sliding to use all of the availible grip. Once the tires are sliding they lose grip. For me when a tire starts sliding while leaned in a corner it just feels like its falling out from under me. I can't really think of any other way to describe it. Off-road the slides are much bigger and depending on the surface grip increases with the slide because the tire digs in more so its very easy to feel. On-road the more you slide the more grip you lose which does vary from tire to tire like Eirik said. Rear tire slides are so much easier to feel and correct then front slides. The rear of the bike really does just feel like it just starts falling out from under you. In that situation just hold the throttle steady or possibly let off the throttle just slightly and pick the bike up so your closer to the center of the tire. That should get the slide under control in a nice controled way. If you chop the throttle with the rear end sliding out of line from the motorcycle it will try to snap back straight which can result in a high-side. Sense my on-road experience is a bit limited I'll leave it at that. Keith wrote an artical that goes into way more detail then I could and its easier to understand :-p. Along with a lot of information that I don't know enough about. Here is the link http://forums.superbikeschool.com/index.php?showtopic=877

Low traction and sliding is something I'm very familure with because of my off-road backround. My sportbike does react quite a bit differently to slides but the feel is the same and you need to use the same inputs to correct it. The only way to know you are using all of the availible traction is to get the tires on the very edge of sliding, however, to make that useful is a bit more complicated. In order to use all of the availible grip you need to find the traction limits first. To safely find those traction limits you need to slowly increase your pace and load on the tires until they start to slide. If you don't slowly work you're way up to it you may push straight past that traction limit and you will wreck, like Jaybird said you need to sneak up on the limit. It is CRITICAL to be smooth and consistant. If you suddenly overload a tire you will suddenly lose traction and possibly crash. Riding those traction limits throughout a corner like the pros requires you to feel what the tires are doing and know what inputs to make on the brake, throttle, and lean angle to maintain control of the bike. I'm sure there is something in this paragraph that could be added or adjusted by someone more experience to doing this on-road then I am. Using all of the availible traction still doesn't mean you'll get going fast. To drop lap times having the right braking points, turn in points, on throttle points, pick up points, along with possibly other referance points that as a whole make up your racing lines are way more important that just using all of the availible traction the bike has. Only after having a fast basic racing line will pushing traction limits really lower your lap times. I have never tried these kinds of things on my sportbike because I can't afford to wreck it but I have had a few accidental slides on it. I am always riding on the traction limits of my dirtbike but its much easier to save both the front or rear slides on the dirtbike. My CR250R has also proven to be almost bullet proof as well . I have wrecked on my dirtbike way to many times to keep track of and most of them were because of front end slides. If you suddenly push past your traction limits you will suddenly wreck like I said before and you wont learn a single thing because of it. When you slowly search for that limit you can find it very easily when you try it again and learn how to control the situation.

I find it MUCH harder to get my gsxr600 leaned into a corner while on the brakes. 85% of the bikes weight is on the front tire, I don't understand how it could possiby turn easier. It also feels like the bike turns much sharper on the throttle comaired to being on the bakes but I haven't messed around with trail braking a street bike much.

It would be nice to have a bunch of telemetry to study like the MotoGP guys have but I think in the end it all comes down to rider feel anyway. Even if you see what the telemetry says you can get away with its still up to you to make it happen which is much easier said then done. All pro racers are already driving by what the tires tell them they can do, grip is the only thing thats limiting them. They just have enough practice to feel how far any given tire will let them go. Good telemetry might boost somes learning curve or build some confidence but I don't think it would be to practical compaired to just riding.

And, I have seen slipper clutches not work (meaning the rear did lock up, bounce around). I did screw up a downshift a little bit while doing some "spirited" riding on the street and the rear end kicked out a little bit when I downshifted to 2nd. I'm pretty sure my 08" GSXR600 has a slipper clutch on it stock. It didn't lock but it was fairly close to it. It let me back it into the corner a little bit by accident. I backed my dirtbike into many corners but doing it on a sportbike was a completely different experience which I hope I don't do again soon! I wasn't to far off matching the RPMs either. It was probably about 2,000rpm lower then I needed when I let the clutch out. It could have been more, its not something I was paying to much attention to at the time.

Agreed that this is a good question and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is unsure of low-speed countersteering. I recall reading something Keith wrote about stability speed, etc but I don't have my books (in storage-arghhhhghh). What am I missing here? Toss me a bone man. Well, I don't have a bone to toss you. I think it's down to your own observation now. You can try it with 1/10th scale model motorcycles and feel how the motorcycle moves in your fingers, you can try it on your bicycle, you can try it on your motorcycle. Does anything happen prior to the front wheel turning in the direction of the turn? You could also get the Twist II DVD, it shows counter-steering in detail there. Its funny how you mentioned the model motorcycle. I have an 1/8th scale RC motorcycle that is built with mostly the same geometry as a full size sportbike (with small adjustments to the triple clams). Sense the rider weight doesn't move around or push the bike in any way all lean angle/cornering adjustments need to be made by counter-steering alone. Once I reach the desired lean angle I have to let go of the steering wheel and it maintains whatever lean angle that I set it to last with no steering inputs what so ever. If I want it to turn sharper then I simply have to counter-steer to make it lean lower and again release the steering input when the lean angle is reached. Its very fun to experiment with this thing because there is no rider inputs or any rider "feel" to get in the way of how the motorcycle works. Almost like a small version of the No BS bike . I can drive this motorcycle anywhere from 3mph to 40mph and counter-steering works the same exact way. There are no variables that a rider can create to get in the way of how it works. Fajita Dave's experiment is enough for me to consider the myth "busted". Haha well it proves the basics anyway. I think the weight placement of cargo and a passenger in the OPs case made things a bit awkward at low speeds. Harnois explained how the bike reacts to that pretty well though.

Agreed that this is a good question and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is unsure of low-speed countersteering. I recall reading something Keith wrote about stability speed, etc but I don't have my books (in storage-arghhhhghh). What am I missing here? Toss me a bone man. Well, I don't have a bone to toss you. I think it's down to your own observation now. You can try it with 1/10th scale model motorcycles and feel how the motorcycle moves in your fingers, you can try it on your bicycle, you can try it on your motorcycle. Does anything happen prior to the front wheel turning in the direction of the turn? You could also get the Twist II DVD, it shows counter-steering in detail there. Its funny how you mentioned the model motorcycle. I have an 1/8th scale RC motorcycle that is built with mostly the same geometry as a full size sportbike (with small adjustments to the triple clams). Sense the rider weight doesn't move around or push the bike in any way all lean angle/cornering adjustments need to be made by counter-steering alone. Once I reach the desired lean angle I have to let go of the steering wheel and it maintains whatever lean angle that I set it to last with no steering inputs what so ever. If I want it to turn sharper then I simply have to counter-steer to make it lean lower and again release the steering input when the lean angle is reached. Its very fun to experiment with this thing because there is no rider inputs or any rider "feel" to get in the way of how the motorcycle works. Almost like a small version of the No BS bike . I can drive this motorcycle anywhere from 3mph to 40mph and counter-steering works the same exact way. There are no variables that a rider can create to get in the way of how it works.

I think I'd like to see the 125cc class replaced with 250cc four strokes. Kawasaki already has one and from what I've seen they can get around 50hp out of it. Once you get a factory team on that engine that has much better materials available they can probably boost that to 60 or 70hp. It would be a blast riding such a light motorcycle around. Khb you seem to understand the math and physics involved to know the limits of these engines so I hate to disagree with you but I think they can get a lot more then 15,500rpm out of even a 1000cc engine. If F1 teams can get 18,000rpm out of a 2.4 liter, eight cylinder engine with reliable performance then the MotoGP teams shouldn't have a problem getting that out of 1 liter, four cylinder engines. I am curious to see what switching back to 1000cc bikes will do for the racing. World Superbike on their 1000cc bikes had much closer and more exciting racing then MotoGP did last year.