rchase

Mike. Thanks for posting your experience. It was a pleasure to read. Sounds like you will remember this experience for a long time. I have to agree with you about your complaint. I'm doing a lot of track days now because of the school. They should really have a disclaimer when you sign up. One on the tank of the school's bike too warning you to stay away from BMW dealerships. I ended up with two S1000RR's and it's all their fault! Or perhaps mine. There could be worse things. I really love the bikes and I also really enjoy my time on the track. The S1000RR is truly an amazing motorcycle. One of the things that's helped me a lot which I wish I discovered sooner was this forum. You can't believe the amazingly helpful advice you will get from coaches and fellow students here. Sometimes just the knowledge that riding problems are quite common makes them much easier to solve.

I have an obvious brand bias so I won't bother telling you which one I would pick. I can't help you on the suspension side of the question as I know pretty much nothing about the Ducati system. Perhaps other's might be of help. Some other things to consider beyond the suspension...... How will you use the bike? If it's going to be a road going bike one thing that's often overlooked about the BMW is how darn comfortable it is. This is not a strong point for Italian bikes in general and Ducati's are no exception. That can be fun at times of course but is hard to live with. I love the sensation of going a million miles an hour on my MV Agusta but it eventually wears me out. The BMW on the other hand is VERY easy to live with. Cruise control, heated grips and sane comfortable road manners are standard features. I rode the school bikes and was amazed at how approachable the power was and how easy they were to ride. The first time I took one on the road I was blown away at how manageable it was in traffic. You quite literally could tour on one. I have a friend with over 14K miles on her 2014 HP4. Another thing people overlook is the support for the platform. BMW sells an entire range of factory supported race parts that allow you to retain factory warranty coverage. Parts from rearsets to levers to exhausts and electronics upgrades are available from any BMW HP parts rated dealership. What's more interesting to me at least is BMW does not play the exclusivity game. Beyond the HP4 and DDC equipped bikes which you can't add on (more of a technical problem than anything else) any upgrade part is available for even the base model bike. No need to trade in for a performance upgrade only available on that "special model". One of my bikes has the race ECU that boosts the power and gives me DTC calibration based on a WSBK base map. You can connect a laptop and change the calibrations of any system on the bike with the optional Race Calibration Kit from DDC, DTC, Engine, ABS and many many other subsystems. Ride them both. Figure out the in's and outs of the technology and figure out which one works best for you. You could spend weeks researching and digging into the details about the bikes and that still really won't give you the same level of information that a 10 minute ride will.

That's a unique part of Nate's style. He often describes it in his riders meeting as "my head is attached to my wrist". As he rolls on he counteracts the bikes natural tendency to go wide with the hook turn technique. It makes sense as well because the head is the heaviest part of the body. He's even "tricked" me into doing it myself at the wrong moment sending my bike headed straight for the apex at low speed. When you mention almost running over the apex afterwards he comments back "it's really nice to know you can make the bike turn whenever you want it to isn't it." That "head attached to wrist" style comes from him racing heavy bikes not really meant for what he was using them for. I'm not sure what was up with the screeching myself. Nate often "backs it in" but perhaps he changed his mind at the last moment or had the ABS switched off. The purpose of me sharing this was just to show a style. I'm really hoping that others will share similar videos. It's always beneficial for us to see those unique quirks of other riders so we can perhaps try them for ourselves and see if they work for us. You know you all want to share some cool videos! And of course I need more interesting things to try so I can figure out what works for me.

That's pretty darn cool! Travel safe! Good luck with whatever track you end up at. No matter where it's the same awesome school and coaches.

Sounds like I'm going to need to work on my quick turn this year. What Hotfoot just mentioned about arm tension just struck a bit of a chord with me.

I agree with Hotfoot on the 2 day camp. Just bring plenty of energy. You WILL be tired afterwards with all the extra riding. Barely enough time to go to the bathroom between on track and classroom sessions. I'm doing two of the one day's this year. I'll probably do a camp again next year. If you do end up at Barber let me know. I have a small group of friends that I do the school with every year and we have this tradition when it comes to taking Canadian racers out to dinner. I'm just making the tradition part up but it would be great to meet you and take you to dinner. I suppose we could make it a tradition. One thing is for sure. You are going to have a tough time choosing. There are a lot of amazing race tracks here in the states. P.S. If you have not experienced an S1000RR on a long straight you are missing out. Barber is a great track but one of the things I really miss is distorting time and space above 150mph on a super long straight. Trust me though. The corners and elevation changes make up for it.

Some photos of the museum too....

I'm pretty partial to Barber myself. Obviously a bit of location bias because it's in my back yard. Barber has a nice mix of slow technical stuff with areas where you can get moving pretty well. There's also lots of elevation changes which keeps things fun. Barber has amazingly manicured landscaping and a jaw dropping museum on site. There's a great hotel right across the street too. Some shots at Barber from my last few times at the school.

I think you are 100% right about the psychology. In a lot of ways suspension technology makes riders faster by psychology as well. Because riders don't get the input that scares them they go faster. I have a weird psychological problem as well. I love the wet. The reason for this is I can constantly sample how much grip I have and I know exactly where I stand. In the dry you have to add a LOT of speed in order to start feeling the limits of the traction. That speed makes a mistake way more costly. I have gotten around this by reassuring myself that there's an ocean of grip. I probably should take Hotfoot's suggestion and go get some cheap tires and do some skating around in the dry.

Ok. It's actually REALLY interesting when you play with the camera position in the video. If you point the camera straight down you can see the black mark he leaves on the track when he gets on the rear brake.

That's certainly a valid perspective. Do you have any examples you could share of "really" extreme body position that's on a standard production bike? Would be interesting to see and compare. What's interesting about this video is it's a 360 view video and you can "move" the point of view around a bit. It's quite interesting to play with that for a better look.

Yellowduck pretty much said exactly what I would have. Check out his response. For many years I had some irrational fears when it comes to traction. Sometimes it comes back when I'm feeling uneasy. It took a 2up ride to educate me on how much traction there is available out there. Way more than I could have ever imagined. It's also important to keep in mind that traction issues are progressive in nature. If you slowly increase your pace traction issues will start to present themselves in very harmless ways to let you know you are approaching the limits. A little slide here, a wiggle there all quite manageable if you stay calm. If you step WAY over the limit right away that's when the big problems come. If you are sensible though you aren't going to be surprised by a sudden lack of grip unless you are riding on cold tires. Tire warmers help a lot with this and for myself are a huge help to remove the doubt that I often have with grip. In racing my guess is its not very different. Use your practice sessions to slowly and progressively test the limits of traction until you know where you are at for the race. Get out there and ride at that limit or slightly below it and then also slowly ramp up the speed until you see the signs of traction issues. The most talented on the track know exactly where the limit is and often step over it when it suits them. Either to pass or to help steer the bike by using intentional rear end slides.

A very very good write up. Especially the part about the warmers. On a cold track even with warmers your tires cool at an alarming rate. You have the track itself pulling heat out of the tires but if there's a long straight you get wind chill on a cool day. Roebling Road is a good example of being cautious about traction on a cold day. There are only two left hand turns on the entire track. When tires start to cool it starts to become a problem. Riders come blasting down the straight at 170mph (with the wind blast cooling off their tires) and then go into a right hand turn. The grip they get on the right side gives them a false confidence for the upcoming left hand turn where their tires are sometimes too cold to maintain grip. The result is that the front end lets go instantly and they crash.

That's kind of interesting 13 seconds and indeed he does not even move. Here's the correct video.

In the dry I'm usually pretty far from limits of traction unless I make a mistake. Mostly due to my penchant for the stickiest tires I can get my hands on and warming them up to 180 degrees before I even go out. In the wet though it's a different story. I use feel rather than visual factors to judge traction. You can feel the little slides and squirms under power and that gives you a good idea of the grip level. The cool thing about feel is you can sample the traction limit each lap. During a rain storm the grip changes. At first the track gets pretty slick. The rain changes the track surface by washing away things embedded in it. It could improve or it could get worse depending on the surface. Rain can also cool the track and can affect traction that way too. I find that some visual information can be misleading There's a track that's a great example of this. Talledega GP in Alabama. In the only right hand turn on the track it's riddled with patched pavement that looks like it's trouble. It looks bad but there's tons of grip there. Some visual stuff is pretty useful. Is the track damp in sections? Are there tar snakes? Debris or sand? Another thing to think about is the ambient temp of the air and the track surface. It could be a nice warm sunny day but if the night before was super cold your first sessions are essentially on a cold track. It might as well still be the night time temperature outside. I'll often feel the pavement in the pit area to get a sense for its temperature. Is the sun heating it up? On the flip side of that did it burn your hand? Overheated tires can be as troublesome as cold ones. Hope this is helpful.

Nate Kern posted this video on Facebook and I wanted to share because it shows some interesting style characteristics of his riding. Nate for years raced boxers which had design related ground clearance issues so he uses a lot of body off the bike. What's interesting is how he prepositions mid corner in some cases for the next corner. It's filmed in 4K and was filmed at a COTA track day. Figured it might spark an interesting conversation.

LOL. I have the picture in my mind of one of those 1970's accidents where the driver screams and violently jerks the steering wheel. I'm also really glad I did not know they were bees at first as I would have had some of the same thoughts of being stung. I probably would have pitted in right away because of the risk. A sudden reaction from a painful sting is not exactly something you want at speed. That makes a lot of sense about being cautious. I tend to look at a lot of my caution as a flaw but in reality it was likely the best thing to do. Especially for a track day. The bee's did not seem to like my BMW's. They tended to find the Italian and Japanese bikes a lot more tasty. Perhaps with so many of their friends stuck to the front of my bike they were just afraid?

That had to be interesting to see. I think I probably would have been bracing for impact myself. Ah! That's an interesting idea on the long swabs. I'll have to order some of those. I did not try the bathroom grade ones as I figured they would bend and just make it worse. The gross thing is I wore that same helmet the rest of the day and even wore it again today without cleaning the vent.

The bees were a new thing for me. I have seen cones and turtles before and they don't bother me quite as much. I think the real distraction was not knowing what they were and seeing the swarm. I have a really difficult time turning off the inquisitive and curious part of my mind. Cones actually can make life interesting when they move and change the apex of a corner last minute. I have overheard riders complaining loudly about cones being clipped and ending up on the track surface. Personally I rather enjoy a last minute adaptation as it's quite rewarding being able to instantly learn a new line around and obstacle with no advanced notice and make it work. It's cheap training that could come in handy in the future. Those cones could easily be a fellow rider in the middle of the track. You would certainly want to be able to change your line last minute to avoid that. I finally got my leathers more or less cleaned off. Thank goodness for protective gear. The bee's pretty much liquefied on impact. Feeling that on bare skin would have hurt and been way more distracting. If anybody has ideas about how to clean out the clear plastic vents of a helmet I'm all ears.

I figured I would share an unusual and somewhat amusing experience that taught me how costly distractions are. This Saturday I was riding at the Talledega Grand Prix in Alabama and was having a great time. It was coldish and windy and I was riding my street bike on the track. The wind and the noise from the bikes upset a large hive of bees from a neighboring farm that started swarming the track and paddock. I went out on the track unaware of the swarming bees and was having a great day. I exited the bowl turn onto the back straight and got into the power on my RR. It's a short straight so you are only going between 100 and 140mph depending on how motivated you are. I never ride "all out" but I was probably somewhere in the middle of the speed range for the straight. All of a sudden I see a a sea of black objects and I'm being pelted with them. I slowed my roll on and approached the Farmhouse turn complex and was distracted and went through slower than I normally do. The next lap was much the same. I mentally prepared myself for the sea of weird wet splattering objects (had not figured out they were bees until I got back to the paddock). The distraction was still there and despite my attempt to ignore them It was taking my attention away from the quickly approaching Farmhouse turn complex. I eventually was able to tune them out a bit but I was going slower than I had been previously which "bugged" me (pun intended). I was finally able to also tuck a lot more aggressively than needed under the screen that avoided some of the more distracting impacts but it was not really a true fix. When I returned to the paddock I talked to some of the other riders and looked at my bike and discovered they were bees. Here are some amusing photos. My leathers took the brunt of the impacts but I was eager to clean off and did not get photos of them. Does anybody have any tips to ignoring distractions like this? As well. Share your amusing on track distractions. Just the knowledge of strange things you can encounter that you aren't expecting is not only fun to talk about but can mentally prepare us all.

I have a similar problem with one of my bikes. I do exactly as Hotfoot is suggesting. One gear higher generally does not affect acceleration that much and makes the bike a lot more manageable as a result. Using a higher gear has little effect as Hotfoot mentioned (I have compared data as well). For a rider that's not as used to wheelies you can experience multiple SR's and unintentionally roll out or slow your roll on. That can negatively affect your speed. Even a moment's hesitation can be a few bike lengths. Shifting and braking could take part of your attention and potentially slow you down. If you have wheelie control take a moment to learn about the system and how it works. Most importantly figure out a way to completely trust it if you can. I find that some situations short shifting does well but in others it does not. There's a track that has a hairpin followed by an uphill section and a crest that makes my bike wheelie in 2nd gear on the crest of the hill. Putting the bike in 3rd gear keeps the wheel down but the hill and the short area of acceleration have a bit more of an affect on the speed. Making the conscious decision that it's ok to let the bike do it's thing and understanding exactly where it's going to happen makes things a lot more manageable for me. Of course as well seeing the faster riders who bravely shift down to 1st gear and wheelie all the way up that hill helps me a bit with that. They have done essentially the same thing in a different gear. They made the decision that's the way they approach that corner and they trust their wheelie control and let the bike do it's thing. Once you know what to expect it's honestly a bit of naughty fun you look forward to each lap.

Ok. You learn something new every day. I did not realize there was a BMW HP lever guard. I could only find the one for the 2015+ bikes. Is there one for the older bikes? Lever guards are swell and all but I have this strange obsession to collect ALL of the HP parts regardless if I need them or not. Sold. To the crazy guy in the BMW Motorsport Shirt.

Very cool, Please do report back and let us know how you like them. While ABS helps a bit with locked wheels there's still the "extra thrill" caused by unintended braking which is not helpful if someone gets too close. I have thought about them myself for my track bike but I'm still on the fence about them.

Just an observation. An active ABS system on an S1000RR makes a lever guard a bit less useful. One other thing worth thinking about. Lever guards can have unintended consequences in crashes as a member of our forum found out the hard way. Just like frame sliders however some people won't ride without them. Personal choice is a wonderful thing! I agree with the bar weight sentiment. A few pounds extra on either bar is not going to make much of a difference when it comes to overcoming the gyroscopic effect of the front wheel. The bike itself by design will keep that front wheel aligned with the rear unless you actively input force to change that. Gravity is pulling the extra weight straight down rather in the direction needed to affect steering. Of course theory and actual practice can be quite different. I'm curious like Cobie is.

I have a friend at the track that love's his Held suit. I think their lack of popularity is more of a function of a lack of marketing more than anything else. Their gloves aren't really heavily marketed either. You won't find Held gloves at the local Cycle Gear. If you want a pair you usually have to contact a specialty retailer and know your size. The gloves are good enough so they sell themselves. The suits probably will to once the market gets to know them better. I should probably try a Held suit sometime myself but I already have too many suits as it is. Their gloves are amazing. I can only imagine the suits are at the same level of comfort and protection.