faffi

Hope he will do better than the British crasher they brought in earlier in the season.

From another forum:

That was what I suspected, but good to get confirmation - thanks

Great report, fossilfuel. As a follow-up to the question on riding position - if you want to pick/show the errors you make on your own, where would you place the camera(s)?

I have translated it - let me know if it is OK to read, or I can share a link to my document for those interested. Who leans that far? Where are the limits? And what are the differences between street bikes? We compare bikes around a skid pad: Supermoto, Naked Bike, Cruiser und Superbike. We have also discused with experts and tried qualifying tyres from WSBK to see how they differ from street legal sport tyres. Why do we lean? Without lean to counter the centrifugal forces, the bikes would simply fall over. Leaning against the forces the correct amount keeps the machine and rider in balance. For a given radius, the faster one rides, the more one must lean. Or for a given speed, the smaller the radius, the more one must lean. How far can we lean? Sport bikes are generally limited by grip, or friction. With good tyres on a good road we typically have a friction quotient of one µ. This means we can theoretically lean 45 degrees. If you lean further, or you try to slow down or accelerate, you will slide. However, we know it is possible to achieve greater angles of lean. How? Because very grippy tyres and a grainy road surface can interact like gears. That’s why in MotoP and WSBK we can now see bike lean angles as high as 62 degrees. With the rider hanging off we can even see combined lean angles beyond that. What is that- different lean values? Corner master Jorge Lorenzo show us the difference between bike lean and the third lean. Lean angle isn’t always lean angle Basically, we talk about three lean angles. The first one is the effective lean angle. This is a theoretical value and is calculated from the speed and the radius of the corner. This counts for every bike and every rider. But this theoretical value for effective lean angle is based upon infinitely narrow tyres. Now to reality. Imagine watching a vertical bike from behind. Pull a vertical line through the bike’s centre line, the tyre and to the ground. This is where the contact point is as well as the CoG. Now place the bike on its kickstand. Now we see that the contact point between tyre and road has moved to the side somewhat because the tyres are not infinitely narrow. The more we lean the bike, the further away we move the contact point away from the bike’s centre line. If we draw a line through the CoG and both the centre line as well as down to the contact patch, we create a triangle. The angle between them is the second lean. This is the added lean required to corner at the same speed as you would have been with infinitely narrow tyres. This also show that wider tyres require more lean narrower tyres. Lorenzo shows us the difference between the bike’s lean and the third lean. With his extreme hanging off the rider is leaned over far more than the bike. The combination of the two - bike and rider - gives the third angle of lean, the combined lean. Bei 62 degree bike lean we can get to an extreme combined value of 66 degrees. What can production bikes muster? We take 4 different bikes and try them on the skid pad sitting in line with the bike, pushing the bike down and hanging off. We then measure bike lean, calculate combined lean and measure cornering speed. What gives the greatest speed? Lean angle with the Husqvarna 701 The skid pad has a diameter of 55 metres. Upright lean is 47 degrees, speed 57 kph. In typical sumo-style, pushing the bike down while leaning out, we managed 57 degrees bike lean and a speed of 62 kph. The combined lean is 51 degrees. This is the biggest difference in the test (6 degrees), a result of a light bike, high CoG, high and wide bars, narrow seat, low set pegs. Final attempt is hanging off, and we get the exact same values of 62 kph and 51 degrees combined lean. The bike is only leaning 46 degrees. So the speed is the same, but pushing the bike down sumo-style bring some advantages; more bike control and easier to catch slides being the predominant. Ducati Diavel, Cruiser & Co. Unlike for sport bikes, cruisers are limited by dragging parts when it comes to possible lean angles. With 41 degrees, the pegs are in contact with the asphalt. This will be the same regardless of what style is used. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to compare cornering speeds between the various riding styles. Sitting up gives 50 kph, pushing down 47 kph and hanging off 53 kph. MotoGP bikes can actually accelerate harder when leaned over than in a straight line. While maximum acceleration on level ground is limited to about 1g, a MotoGP bike can accelerate at 1.2g when leaned over 45 degrees! For street bikes on public roads, 45 degrees means zeron grip left for acceleration. A modern street legal sport bike outfitted with racing tyre and circulating on a grippy race track can give up to 1g of acceleration when leaned over at 40 degrees. Cornering with the Honda Fireblade First we ride on the stock Bridgestone S20 “G” tyres. Hanging off gives 61 kph and 48 degrees of lean for the bike, combined 51 degrees. What difference does qualifying tyres make? WSBK Q-tyre, straight from the heaters, has tremendous grip and feedback. We do not give up until the Fireblade gets “floaty”, a sign we are nearing the limit. With the bike leaned over 53 degrees we reached 65 kph. Combined lean is 55 degrees with the rider hanging off. Why not faster? The asphalt was cold (less than 10C / 50F) and the asphalt not overly grippy. Add a slight negative camber and the limits were like that. But this was the same for all tyres. The problem for the Q-rubber was that they lost their heat rapidly, losing grip in the process. A Pirelli-technician explained that the racers don’t lean further on Qs, but they have more grip available for braking and acceleration. Enough to give about a second lower lap times. Two laps, though, and they are mostly gone. Cornering with the BMW S 1000 R Standard Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa allowed 59 km/h when hanging off, with 47 degree bike lean and 50 Grad combined lean was good, but better results were limited by grinding foot peg feelers and gear shift lever. Foto: www.factstudio.de Husqvarna Supermoto 701 Sitting straight made the rider feel uneasy, which limited lean and cornering speed. Foto: www.factstudio.de The Sumo-Stil made the rider feel at most comfortable. Sliding tyres and grinding parts set the limit. Foto: www.factstudio.de If the rider had been able to hang as well off as he was at pushing the bike down, he could have cornered faster. Foto: Archiv Tyre width and CoG Wider tyres demand more lean for any given corner speed. The same goes for lower CoG. The difference between the tall Husky 701 with relatively narrow tyres and the low Diavel with its ultra-wide tyres was 3 degrees when doing 50 kph around the skid pad; 38 for the 701 and 41 for the Diavel. Foto: 2snap Lateral acceleration and lean While 45 degrees of lean gives 1g, 60 degrees give 1.7g, which isn’t the same as going 1.7 times faster by any means. Foto: www.factstudio.de Ducati Diavel A good way to see what the different riding styles can bring. Foto: www.factstudio.de Looks weird, feels weird. Foto: www.factstudio.de Feels much better than pushing the bike down!Foto: Archiv Der Kammsche Kreis This shows how much grip is left to brake or accelerate or steer at various lean angles. If you are leaned over to use half the lateral acceleration, you have 85% grip left to other forces (green arrow). The red arrow indicate that you have only 10% grip left to do anything else than circulate. Grip through the gear effect. Mikrorauigkeit (red) [micro coarseness], with spikes between 0,001 and 0,1 Millimeter is especially useful in the wet, while Makrorauigkeit (green) [macro coarseness] between 0,1 und 10 Millimeter make the difference on dry roads. Foto: Archiv Contact patch with a 180/55 sport tyre with a racing profile at 48 degrees of lean. 38 square centimetres contact area. Typical contact patch is that of a credit card. Public roads are more slippery than tracks, particularly in the wet because the surface lack Microraugkeit. Cold rubber, especially with sport tyres, can cause the tyre to slide on top of the asphalt instead of forming around it. Hence sport rubber is worse than touring rubber below a certain tyre temperature. Karussell around Nürburgring is bumpy and can be taken with 58 degrees of lean. However, thanks to the sloping surface, the angle between the road and machine is just 33 degrees. Lean and speed The Fireblade on WSBK Q-tyres managed 55 degrees of lean and 65 kph. If we theoretically put Marquez on the same skidpad with a combined lean of 66 degrees, he would have circulated at 78 kph.

I am not actually dissing hanging off - it will make it possible to corner a bit faster. It will not gain you many seconds per lap, but it will gain maybe 2-3 on average for a top rank rider (me speculating here). Of course, even if it's just a tenth it's worth while. However, I think there are far more important aspects for riders to learn than hanging off. If someone goes faster than before with considerable less lean when the rider start hanging off, it does not (me making a statement) have nearly as much to do with the riding position as with the rider having improved other things (see MOTORRAD figures for what hanging off brings). Also, for street riding, hanging off has disadvantages that, for me at least, outweigh any benefit of leaning a bit less; it is tiring, it usually means you cannot see as far around a corner, and it can make it harder to change direction for something unexpected. But I'm sure there are those finding it worth while. Anyway, it all boil down to this; I believe hanging off is credited for more than it can actually deliver. It is no doubt an important tool for the expert rider, but again I think there are a lot of things that can help much more when it comes to riding safe and fast. Here's a video of Mike Hailwood racing a Ducati. It's fun to watch him going quicker through the esses, despite having a chopperesque amount of wheelbase, rake and trail. The Ducati also made substantially less power than the Kawasaki and Honda that came 2nd and 3rd. It would be very interesting to hear what the coaches think is the main reason why Mike goes that quick compared to the competition, as I do not have a clue.

I have posted it twice already, but here we go again

As I mentioned, hanging off is useful if you are going really fast because it will give you 2-3 degrees extra "lean" (more cornering speed), but I also believe that hanging off brings far less than being able to steer correctly. Combine the two, as you must to win races at the top level, and you will go as fast as you can

Having just re-read the "Lowering the body" topicI am going to present a few statements that will go against popular belief. Fortunately, I have not much scientific knowledge or evidence to support my statements, so there will be plenty of chances to debate against me. Still, I think I am right Let me start with a few examples: Mike Hailwood never did hang off in any way, but had superior cornering speed. Mick Doohan leaned out with his torso and hung his butt off to the inside, fully crossed up - the bike was leaning, his body hardly at all. He won tons of races and championships. Back in the 1960s, riders lapped IoM at over 100 mph on barely modified street bikes with little horsepower, little cornering clearance, poor brakes and even worse tyres. And to top it off the roads were in much worse condition than now. Only a few per cent of all riders in the world could go that fast on a BMW S1000RR today. In the late 1980s, a Performance Bikes test rider decked out the FZR750RR enough to lift the tyres and crash. He was hanging off. Another test rider previously went around the same corner at a higher speed, barely hanging off, nothing scraping. So, to my claims: Hanging off makes only a small difference in how far the bike must lean for any given cornering speed (this has been proved by MOTORRAD and others) Hanging off has no impact on safety Leaning out has no impact on safety Proper steering techniques is the primary tool need to go fast and is little impacted by rider positioning Only when you are looking for the last percentile does hanging off bring much of value Why do I believe this? Simply by observation and personal experience. How can a Superbike rider on slick tyres in pouring rain, bike almost upright through the corners, short-shifting to avoid spinning up, still circulate faster around a track than most street riders doing a track day in the dry, despite the latter dragging knees, braking hard and using a lot of revs and throttle? It can only come from the way the pros change direction and the lines they take. Same with the riders of the 50s and 60s - take a look at old movies, and they barely lean off vertical, never hanging off. But they sure lapped rapidly! In 1999, with both legs shot, having to be lifted onto the bike and get help pulling the clutch due to a damaged hand, riding for the first time in months after his career-ending crash, on a bike set-up for Criville and with the engine tune changed since Doohan last rode, not knowing the tyres, not being able to do much with his body from injuries - and on the second lap Mick was only 4 seconds off pole, just cruising around. Finally, look at a motoGP rider playing around, wheelying, barely hanging off, just having fun - and still riding within 10 seconds of the lap record. Clearly, there are things far more important than body position going on. Instead, I believe that using "proper" body positioning can help many riders into steering correctly. So it's not the body position that allow the bike to corner a lot faster, and they are not magically gaining acres of cornering clearance due to hanging off, but the rider may now being able to do the right things. Sit still on the bike and do the very same steering, and corner speed will be similar. Chicken strip widths as well, as hanging off alone only gain you 2-3 degrees. Finally, my own experiences. I tend to use relatively much lean, but it depend on the bike I'm riding. I recently rode a KTM 950 Super Enduro, and barely had to lean in order to keep a decent cornering speed. Same, strangely, with an old Z1 I recently rode - the chicken strips on the narrow tyres are immense, but cornering speed is pretty respectable. With my current FZ-07, I have no chicken strips on the rear tyre and just a hint on the front, but I do no go much faster. I cannot tell why. I sit upright most of the time. If I can see far ahead, I may lean my torso a little inwards. If visibility is poor, I hang out - or sit crossed up, as you say - in order to see further around the corner. Never have any of this caused me any grip issues. Perhaps I'm lacking experience - I've only been riding since 1980. Maybe the bike will bite me one day for my stupidity. So why do people lose the rear or the front and crash when they sit "wrong"? Either because they give the bike the wrong steering inputs or use either throttle or brakes wrong. Or all of them. The bike does not care how the weight is placed, just what that weight is doing, ie what moments/forces it sends through the bike. So there you have it, long rant over I honestly believe, had he lived and been in his prime today, Hailwood would have wiped the floor with all of you if you were all riding let's say BMW S1000RR with all gadgets turned off, you hanging off trying to play Marques, Mike sitting classically upright. Hotfoot being the possible exception. Could he have gone slightly faster if he learned to hang off properly? Sure. But his way of controlling the bike would be more important than what you gain by hanging off.

The article stated it was to warm the tyres, and also that it does not work. Due to the cold tyres, throttle application together with leaning, the traction control - adjusting the throttle position only - could not react quickly enough to save it. The article suggest a car-type system applying the rear brake could perhaps have saved the rider. For warming up the tyres, the article suggested alternating between acceleration and braking. This will flex the carcass and as a result of internal friction the tyre will warm up quickly, and not just the surface, but the whole tyre.

Nobody care to have a go at question #1?

Spot on according to the explanation given by the magazine. Despite being an experienced racer, he did not take into account the fresh tyres - probably because he had gotten away with similar actions before. Since I know the answer to your first question since it was given in the article, I will let others have a go. Question number two; I would say either maintain throttle or gently roll off a bit, depending on how quick and big the slide was, and ride it out - power will (unless you have applied tons of throttle) taper off and allowing the tyre to regain traction smoothly and under control. Personally, I chop the throttle in panic every time By shear luck I have managed to not be tossed off yet. When the front goes, or both tyres slide, I notice I tense up but somehow I manage not to do anything with the throttle. This is not due to me being excellent or staying calm, it's just something that has stuck in my reflexes since I was a kid and used to bicycle a lot in snow and on ice. Later, I have also ridden motorcycles through 3 full winters. This has teached me to be generally smooth without ever thinking about what I did.

I would like to hear what you think caused the low speed crash here

Of course you do. Not. IMO no current superbike make any sense for road riding; seating position, power, suspension and gearing are made for a different environment. A track. YMMV.

https://www.redbull.com/int-en/motogp-repsol-honda-team-f1-red-bull-racing-2015

If you go Suzuki there is power to be had

I believe the wider tyre is to spread the load, and hence prolong wear and prevent overheating. A narrow tyre can probably overheat within seconds if you try to load it with 200 hp. A good comparison is the Moto3 vs MotoGP; the former have much higher cornering speeds and much smaller tyres, but also far less power.

As I understand it, you can lean the bike further if your leaning out than if you're leaning into the corner. Not sure if you remember the statistics I posted with what hanging off vs sitting up vs leaning out meant on various bikes, but the motard cornered at least as fast with the rider leaning out and pushing the bike down as with hanging off. The bike was leaned over far more when the rider was hanging out.

There doesn't seem to be any need for rapid change of direction, nor is there any braking - at least not for the winning bike, which doesn't have any brakes. Speed on the straights is about 90 mph, with about 60 mph through the corners. Still, I do not know whether this environment favour the winning bike in particular, other than that it has been set up for left hand turns exclusively, but it appears to be. It is also likely that the winning rider has more experience with this kind of racing. Still, I found it interesting that it can even be done, it was cool to watch. On another note, you can also see supermotards (on regular tracks), where the rider is leaning out, matching the corner speed of a road racer where the rider is hanging off/in. So there seems to be more ways that can lead to Rome. Or fast cornering

Duh Yes, but how can a bike with the rider leaning out corner, riding on really narrow tyres, corner faster than a rider hanging off on modern machine with, wide radials? Yes, wider tyres demand more lean for the same corner speed, but the grip and combined lean should give the road racer an advantage that it doesn't have.

So not a single comment as to why this is possible?

You can even ride crossed-up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEYEn_fpv-4

I still think the benefit of hanging off is portrayed as far too beneficial in that pohot-comparison. A little time ago I posted this I have included the original content further below for your convenience. But what we see here is that hanging out will reduce the combined lean about 3 degrees, and hanging off will gain about 3 degrees, giving a difference of 6 degrees in bike lean between the two. So the difference in those pictures should be 6 degrees, not 16. Also worth noting is that the motard will corner equally fast with the rider leaning out and sticking a leg out as by hanging off. The German test I refer to were done during constant cornering speeds to erase issues like turn-in that can create big variations depending on the technique used. in other words, hanging off alone doesn't make a huge impact. It matters, but I am positive other issues carry more importantance, like quick turn-in, throttle and brake control and more. On the road, when visibility is limited, hanging off will give you a significantly reduced observation of the road ahead compared to hanging off, for instance, meaning one have to ride according to the conditions on public roads more than anything. ORIGINAL POST Slowest and fastest: Ducati Diavel, rider pushing bike down, bike lean 41 degrees, combined lean 38, corner speed 47 kph Marq Marques on his MotoGP bike, hanging off, bike lean 62 , combined lean 66, speed 78 kph Honda Fireblade, rider sitting straight, bike and combined lean 45, speed 55 kph Honda Fireblade, rider pushing bike down, bike lean 46, combined lean 43, speed 53 kph Honda Fireblade, rider hanging off, bike lean 48, combined 51, speed 61 kph Honda FIreblade, Pirelli SBK Qualifier, hanging off, bike 51, combined 53, speed 65 kph Husqvarna 701 Supermoto, rider pushing bike down, bike lean 57, combined 51, speed 62 kph Husqvarna 701 Supermoto, rider sitting straight, bike and combined lean 47, speed 57 kph Husqvarna 701 Supermoto, rider hanging off, bike lean 46, combined 51, speed 62 kph

Ah, my mistake - I thought this was about motorcycles Even at my age (53) and not too great a shape, I can do 45-60 min at 178 bpm on a stepping machine. Max bpm for me is 190. I cannot reach the heart rate on a bicycle because my legs gets full of lactic acid well before my heart rate gets up there. Again, though, max heart rate can vary a lot between individuals and doesn't really say anything about the shape you are in. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate Maximum heart rate[edit] The maximum heart rate (HRmax) is the highest heart rate an individual can achieve without severe problems through exercise stress,[16][17] and generally decreases with age. Since HRmax varies by individual, the most accurate way of measuring any single person's HRmax is via a cardiac stress test. In this test, a person is subjected to controlled physiologic stress (generally by treadmill) while being monitored by an ECG. The intensity of exercise is periodically increased until certain changes in heart function are detected on the ECG monitor, at which point the subject is directed to stop. Typical duration of the test ranges ten to twenty minutes.

I just mentioned COTA since it was the most recent race, but if you are a motogp.com member and watch races from the 90s and compare them with races of today, it seems like the bikes currently seems closer to the ragged edge. In 1992 the 500GP bikes probably had around 190 hp and weighed just 130 kg, so power-to-weight was in the ballpark.