faffi

Sorry not to be a lurker, but here goes Got my first motorcycle toy at the age of 2 - and I am still thinking and talking motorcycles, if not 24/7, at for least hours every day 44+ years later. If I should limit it to one thing that is the most important reason I ride AND the most enjoyable thing for me, it is (imagined) feeling of control. I like the feeling of being on the limit, which is probably why I like older bikes with lesser margins - I prefer the (imagined) feeling of being better than my motorcycle. Being able to use all the cornering clearance available. And all the grip (which I unfortunately only manage to do under braking with modern radials). I love it when I nail corner after corner, scraping pegs or whatever, on an unfamiliar road under total (imagined) control (not talking Rossi quality, by any means, of course). I also like that I can see more of the scenery than I can from the confines of a car. I love the way the centrifugal forces goes through my body instead of throwing me sideways during cornering. I like to ride with a few friends that keep a similar pace to me and see frequent stops for a chat as vital to having a great day on the road.

Yes, getting (as many as possible) SR under more control is probably the greatest benefit I could hope to obtain from a class - and would definitely enhance the safety of my rides.

I have been to the track. Once on my motorycle and twice driving go-karts. On the bike, a 250 on a go-kart track actually, the touring type tyres were sliding badly after 6 laps and after 7 or 8 I couldn't be bothered any more. Driving go-karts, my first flying lap was 1.5 seconds slower than my best lap after 30 minutes of driving. And by that point I was so bored I was ready to go home, only retained by the winner's trophy that waited in the end. All the others improved greatly throughout the day, some by 20 seconds. If we had gone on for longer, a lot of them would have been faster than me, since I didn't progress much worth mentioning. My "talent" is that I just know when to brake and when to turn in around slow speed corners in particular. So even on an unfamiliar road, I can hit maximum lean (that I can/will use on that particular bike) corner after corner. I know where I will come to stop even if I haven't been there before as well. On the road, especially an unfamiliar one, this gives me a huge advantage over most riders who are less certain and have to slowly get closer to their limits. I hardly ever think when I ride, it's just something I know. But the higher the speeds, the less certain and the less comfortable I am. I prefer roads that rarely allows speeds above 60-70 mph. On a track, however, you can only ride on instinct for so long. Just like on the road, I'm limited by my own sensation of safety (I do not want to fall off) and I don't go (much) faster on the track than I do on the road - provided it's a road with little or no traffic, good visibility and a clean surface (hopefully). I (think) I know how fast I can go without falling off, but I also feel it is so close to the absolute limit (which it most likely isn't in the least) that I wouldn't be comfortable going faster even if I repeated the corner over and over. There are places where practice helps. Particularly off-camber corners and blind corners as well as fast corners. And some corners are just weird, making me hold back on the road more than I know is safe simply because going faster makes me uneasy. So repeating them on a track would help my speed. However, and this is the important part, I do not WANT to think much when I ride. I ride for fun and not against the watch. It doesn't matter to me if I can go from A to B in 10 minutes or 9 min 30 sec. I just want to enjoy myself. So the main reason for me to attend a school would be to enhance my safety. For instance, learn to lean beyond my comfort zone (will help if I go in too fast and need more lean than I dare) and erase some of my bad habits that I'm guaranteed to have but perhaps don't know about. But the attraction of nailing a corner just a little better than last lap? Sorry, not for me. I'm happy if I can touch a peg or a boot or an engine cover (depending upon the bike) repeatedly on a serpentine, gnarly road. For me, that's Nirvana

The speed difference between the F1 and the bike was simply stunning

Oh, I didn't want to imply I could follow him - not by a long way! I think I could be much smoother around my slow lap, though

Sorry about the Madonna theme I watched this video http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/videos/haslam-rides-silverstone-arena_361/ and I wonder - does it make Haslam look like a novice? First, it seems to be well below race pace - which makes it less useful as information when it comes to showing off differences between SBK and F1 - and secondly he seems to be all over the place and messing up gearchanges and all sorts of things. It may be just me, but the lap seems a bit clumsy.

Going constantly on and off the throttle is poor technique, but quite common among road racers. They focus on other aspects of their riding than getting off the line. It has often surprised me how poorly many top rank racers are when it comes to starting well. Bogging, wheelying, spinning up - you can see it all even at the very highest level. Rossi and Pedrosa has worked very hard to improve their starts, and it shows, although they also have electronic help. Different drag racers will have slightly different styles. Here's Dale Walker describing how he lauches a Vmax. Note that you have far, far less torque on your VFR and simply must ride the clutch and use full throttle quite early to prevent bogging. Also note that what seems like a long time (wait for the exhaust note to drop before feeding on the throttle) actually happens very quickly. Still, Walker's word will be much more valuable than mine http://www.vmaxoutlaw.com/tech/launching.htm

That's what you need to do. And practice. Keep the revs around 10K and just as the clutch starts to bring the revs down minutely, use full throttle and manage the power with the clutch. The front should just be skimming the asphalt. You probably have to wait until your are doing about 50 mph on a 600 before the clutch is fully released.

I doubt I'd be able to get a knee down while the tyres were still on the ground, so I rely on my toes to guide me. Usually, this isn't a problem, but on my Daybird hybrid my toes doesn't hit the deck until the tyres are used virtually to their edges. This is a bit late for comfort, I prefer an earlier warning. The positive thing is that I ride more slowly because quite often, I feel insecure about how much speed I can keep through a corner since I lack my 'feet guides'. And when I get the swingarm and shock absorber fitted from the Daytona, the bike will ride higher still, making judgement even more difficult.

I would still imagine that steering requires grip, and the quicker the change of direction (meaning more steering input in a shorter amount of time) the more grip is required. That would indicate that at maximum lean, you need to be a little careful until you have raised the bike a little before applying all the force you need to achieve the change in direction you seek. Being smooth and delicate yet firm and forecful must be vital in order to ride like the champions. Which is probably why only a limited few ever gets to become champions

In a word, yes. Although the increased steering effort isn't the biggest problem - torque steering (or what they call it) is. The wider a tyre is, the more leverage bumps etc. has on the tyre, which goes to the steering, which affects the whole bike. This is because the patch of contact is further removed from the bike's centre line. So basically it will be more difficult to control the bike whenever the road isn't perfectly smooth (is it ever?) and the tendency to stand up will increase dramatically. Both Honda (with the early CBR900RR) and Suzuki (with a late GSX-R1100) tried to use 130mm wide fronts. It didn't work out very well. A magazine tested the GSX-R with 120 and 130 mm wide fronts and 180, 190 and 200 mm wide rears and found the 120/180 combo to work best but that the 190 rear gave a little better grip at racing speeds that probably would make racers willing to live with the reduced stability and increased steering effort. The 130 wide front only gave a minute improvement in braking, but was markedly worse at everything else. Cruisers can get away with super-wide tyres because they do not lean as far nor are they ridden nearly as hard. However, they are not fitted for performance (unless the load capacity advantage is required) but for styling.

I absolutely agree! I try to be smooth, particularly while leaned over as you can see with the stress marks sitting well away from the shoulders, although I will not claim to be a master. It was the incredible softness of the front tyre - no doubt a familiar sight to track junkies - that triggered me to post the pictures in the first place, and I also wanted to show that even if you have tyres from the same brand, they do not need to match in profile - whereas tyres from various makers can suit each other well. An Australian editor used to scrape the fairing lowers on his Fireblade. When he started to hang off, he rode faster and no longer had any ground clearance issues. Obviously, doing it right is more important than using lots of lean (although lean is fun - more fun than the actual speed for me). During my 30 years of riding, I have stumbled upon a very limited number of street bikes that have literally frazzles hanging from they tyres that are shredded to their very edges (and almost beyond). I don't know what speed and force is required for that, but I can envision Isle of Man-like speeds. Definitely far faster than me. But I've also met a few very smooth and quite fast riders that got away with very little wear and not a lot of lean.

Is this soft enough? Here you can see gravel embedded in the tyre just after I rolled over them to park This is with the gravel removed, dimples still clearly visible Rear Strada a much better match for the BT001 front than previous BT014, as you can see from virtually identical chicken strip of about 2mm - the 014 had zero strip while the front still had 6mm of virgin shoulder rubber Also clearly noticeable is that I just roll gently when I carry a bit of lean as there is no stress pattern on either shoulder. I lack the nerve, skill and stupidity - or all of them - in order to load the tyres heavily at half-respectable amounts of lean, despite that I know they are far from their ultimate limit.

There have been several highsides in the GP125 class over the years as well.

Nice video. One thing that became really apparent was how much the bike would slow by itself when you leaned in quickly and far. Moderate lean doesn't affect speed all that much, but as you go beyond 40 degrees (guesstimate) things slow down in a hurry.

It is definitely easier to slide the rear at high speed than at low speed.

Just bringing this topic up to life again. This is primarily directed towards the instructors, but feel free to voice your opinion whoever you are The most advanced and powerful bike available to the buying public today is the BMW S1000RR. If you consider those who participate on your school days, do you think they on average would be able to go faster around the track on this rocket (set to race mode) than let's say a Suzuki SV650? Or would the massive power overwhelm them? And to take it a bit further - what about the average rider in the general population, including scooter and cruiser riders, how do you think they would fare? Would the friendliness of the SV outweigh the power of the BMW or not?

In a word: No. Don't know how you can say the V-Strom has style, either, but taste is like your arse; split Or are you talking about the SV1000, the the Suzuki xloser to a Monster than a Multistrada? Regardless, these bikes are not race bikes. Track days? Sure. But not race. Even 10 years ago, the GSX-R inspired TL1000R failed to make much of an impression, and the SV is even less sophisticated. Much better road bike than most race reps you care to mention, but not suited for winning races.

I think Lorenzo just got a tyre that wasn't quite optimal. We have seen this for years in F1, where tyre changes have been mandatory, that a car suddenly goes slower or faster after a tyre change and that the drivers talks about presumably identical tyres acting a little differently. Although I regard Rossi as the greatest rider of all times, I do think the Jorge is able to match Rossi these days on pace and also regarding setup. Thinking that nobody can get it right without help from Valentino is doing them unjust, I think. But as you said, the next weeks and probably months will tell. Rossi's accident, however, did remind me of Doohan in 1999. Doohan had struggled with pace for the initial two races due to the factory having moved the fuel tank a few mm (without informing Mick) which made the bike "impossible to ride properly". Once sorted, Doohan wanted to put the record straight in Catalunya and was clearly fastest through practice - until he tried too hard, made a mistake and touched the still damp and slippery rumble strip. The rest is history. Rossi performed under pari for two races due to a shoulder injury and wanted to state an example. Like Doohan, not only to show they are still fast, but to regain that important mental edge. And like Doohan, Rossi tried just a little too hard and messed up. Should Jorge become champion this year, it will be deserved. Not only did Rossi make his own mistake (unlike Capirossi in 2006, when he was in with a very good chance of taking the title), but he was leading the title chase at the time of the accident. Furthermore, he has pushed Rossi far more than any former teammate during the previous 2 seasons, showing he has the speed required to go neck and neck with the very greatest.

Did a 350+ km (220 mi.) ride together with a friend today, and for the first 110 km I only touched the brakes twice - to stop for red lights. Otherwise, I focussed on matching my road speed to the conditions - be that small roundabouts or hairpins or traffic - with nothing but the throttle hand a a little bit of gearbox use. For the remaining 2/3 of the ride, I still did my very best to stay off the brakes, but some hills were too steep with several really tight 180 (or more) hairpins, requiring a light touch of brake here and there. And one section was simply too nice to waste not using a bit of brake. But not once did I brake beyond gentle. My friend had the same goal, but kept rushing the corners and as a result exiting on the back foot. He still learned a lot today, though, and managed to build up a lot of confidence he lost during a spill he had late in 2008. Without the use of the brakes, it was harder to get the entrance speed just right for obtaining my own maximum cornering speed, which just added to the relaxation and safety margin. I still got rid of most of the remainder of the chicken strips on the front tyre, and that without a hint of drama. I do prefer to use the brakes lightly when approaching slow/sharp corners, however so that I do not have to start slowing quite so early, and also to better find the exact entry speed. I know it is cheating, but some cheating is good, I reckon Although I have tried to ride smoothly more often than not during my 30 years of road riding, I have never taken it to this level before. This kind of relaxing pace made a lot of sence - and was great fun! I can get used to this!

For brisk street riding, these lads will use what I consider to be the safest riding style. Or posibly the safest riding style, period, since they basically cannot risk falling off. The majority do not hang off much and generally keep their torsos more over the fuel tank that what you typically see on pure race tracks. My guess is that they want to have a fairly strong grip on their bikes over the jumps and bumps, and probably also to be able to see as far as possible through the mostly blind corners. So, what do you reckon - do they choose this way of riding out of necessity, safety, control or speed? What would be the main issues on a pure race track against this way of riding and why?

Finally - an explanation that made sense It's not the big bangs or closely set firing pulses that give the extra grip, but the smoothness of the crank rotation! Excempt from the July 2010 Cycle World issue, by Kevin Cameron:

A relaxing ride where you just sit back and enjoy the scenery can be very satisfying. For excitement, I go to roads out in Nowhere with very little traffic and just wind it open.

Sometimes one can wonder how much that last effort really brings. Did anybody see Vettel race in F1 earlier this year when his brakes more or less went away? He was braking really early, just coasting into corners, yet he was only a couple of seconds per lap off his ultimate lap time. Really makes you think about being smooth. On a similar note, German magazine MOTORRAD used to ride timed laps around the old Nurburgring back in the 70s and early 80s. A lap took about 11 minutes, give or take a bit depending upon model. When they tested the BMW R80, the difference in lap time between using all the gears and doing the whole lap in 5th gear was only 20 seconds. Most punters that are far removed from the pace of DuHamel and Rossi would probably circulate quicker with their bikes left in one gear than using the gears, not the least because it will free up brain capacity that can be used on reading the track and tyres etc. instead of minute throttle control and matching rpm.

Only thing I can think of is that they typically run very low pressure initially that increases as the tyres warms up, making the "walk" less and keep their profile better and also reduce friction (not grip).