Hotfoot
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Posts posted by Hotfoot
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That is an intelligent and well thought-out answer, thank you. I hear the advice "trust your tires" thrown around a lot at track days, and I was never quite sure what people could do with that advice - it's pretty vague. However, you have outlined a systematic approach to work toward the traction limits of your tires without triggering SRs and with good measurable feedback (data logger and traction control) to track your progress and give you additional info beyond just how the tires feel to you. Good job.
It's always scary to think about riding without maximum possible traction, but I'll say that I learned a LOT about traction riding on some tires that were over cooked and had gotten slippery. Once I felt that bit of slipping and knew the sensation, my fear of the unknowns of traction limits was greatly reduced; I had a much better idea of what to expect. I imagine that the riding you have done in the wet has prepared you well for recognizing it when you really do start pushing the limits of traction in the dry. With the technology you have in the bike and tires and your good riding technique, you will have to be riding really hard to start squirming or sliding the tires; some riders recommend doing some riding on downgraded (less race-oriented) tires, to create an opportunity to feel the tires move around more.
Have you read Keith's article, "The Bands of Traction"?
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At great risk of hijacking this thread, I am curious: When you plan to work on "Learning to trust your tires", what does that mean to you? How do you plan to approach that? Also - where did that idea come from, did someone tell you that you need to "trust your tires"?
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A question about camps in the fall - how soon do they tend to fill up? I'm going to do some additional classes in the fall but not sure yet if I'll do another CSS camp or Code RACE. Just wondering when I should jump on the reservation for fall ops.
CodeRace fills up really early.
Thanks! When it fills up do they sometimes add additional dates? This past year they offered a Code RACE in NJ which would be a lot closer for me and I thought I remembered some additional dates popping up on the schedule later in the year but maybe that was for the CSS camp/classes.
That does occasionally happen, but I'm not sure how predictable that will be. I think sometimes the racetracks have additional date open up and they contact the school. You could try calling the office to see if there is any plan for a NJ CodeRace. You can also check with the office to see if you can reserve a spot in CodeRace now, but possibly switch to another location if it occurs or to a 2 day camp - they can tell you if that is possible and how much advance notice they would need of a change.
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I was talking with my husband about the no-crashing thing - he races too and also does well in that regard - and he brought up another point. He mentioned that when he makes an error - like coming into a corner a little too fast, for example - he "owns" the mistake and adjusts his line, speed, etc. to focus on making it through the corner. He pointed out that he's seen riders make an error and go off line, but still attempt to make it without slowing down or changing what they are doing; they end up off the track or crashed, when they could have stood it up, scrubbed some speed, and still made the corner with just a little lost time.
Another thing that came up in the conversation was good passing decisions. He and I both plan carefully if we have to pass a rider that looks like they are pushing too hard, generally choosing to take an inside pass if possible, since if the other rider were to fall or run wide, we are much more likely to be away from where he'd go. This is mentioned in one of Keith's books, I think it's in Soft Science.
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What a nice compliment, Craig, thanks very much! This whole thread is awesome, thank you all for your kind words, I really do appreciate it very much.
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A question about camps in the fall - how soon do they tend to fill up? I'm going to do some additional classes in the fall but not sure yet if I'll do another CSS camp or Code RACE. Just wondering when I should jump on the reservation for fall ops.
CodeRace fills up really early.
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Mugget - regarding adding throttle and lean angle - don't take it as the kiss of death. Just think of it a something to be aware of, in that if you add both at the same time, especially rapidly, you are quickly adding load on the rear tire and you don't have a lot of time to feel out the traction. However, if you are nowhere near the lean angle limit, and you are rolling on slowly or not leaning the bike sharply, you may very well be able to do both and have enough feedback from the bike to know if you are approaching a traction limit.
It is absolutely possible to have a kink or series of corners where the second one is faster than the first so you never roll off.
If the kink you are dealing with seems like it could be done without a roll off, just work up to it gradually - make your roll-off less and less, bit by bit, as it sounds like you are already doing. Oftentimes in a high speed kink the limitation becomes whether you can get the bike TURNED enough, as you go through it faster and with less (or no) roll off. The bike becomes harder to turn when you don't roll off, plus the faster you are going the more effort it takes to get it steered.
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Laura I think you won with a very low crash record. What do you think makes it for competitive safe riding? Driving at 90% of one abilities? Focus on technique? Discipline?
Hm, that is in interesting question. It's true that I've never crashed or run off the track in a race.
I'd attribute that to a few things - first, a ton of education from CSS. I ride with very good technique and that translates to very good control of the bike and maximum stability and traction. Second, I pay a lot of attention to traction and if the tires aren't gripping well, I am more careful - less lean, more conservative on throttle and brakes, etc. A lot of crashes happen in poor traction conditions when riders don't realize traction has changed - like a day that has suddenly cooled down, or first lap on cold tires.
Another possible factor is that I am very calm when racing and riding, which means I am very consistent and not prone to making errors.. I ride within my limits and if I feel like I am on the edge of disaster I slow down or fix the thing causing he fear - usually a visual skills problem. In racing I only ride as fast as I have to, to stay in front. I try to park my ego; if someone passes me, I don't lose my head and try to suddenly ride 20% faster! That has saved me numerous times since as often as not, if someone really blasts past me in a race, they blow the next corner.
I see a lot of riders - racers included - who ride just a little over their head and they make a lot of mistakes, or get exhausted and end up slowing down due to fatigue.
The best way to get faster safely is learn better technique - I personally don't believe that just "pushing harder" will get you anywhere fast.
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I'd think the key characteristics were:
- highly visible so you can spot at speed as you approach
- unmoving (i.e. a fixed pole, line, dot, etc. and not a cone. Or a tortoise—yes, I've heard a story about that).
Yes - exactly. Another characteristic is that it must be useful to you, identifying a place for you to turn, or shift, begin or end braking, etc., - or just to tell you that you are on your desired line.
It is a bonus if it is a permanent enough marker that it is likely to be there the next time you come back to the track; skid marks can be pretty good reference points but they can change between visits.
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At Vegas with the new pavement I ended up using a lot more reference points that were not directly on the pavement; things like ends of curbing, clumps of weeds at the edge of the track, etc. For example in Turn 1 my turn point (if I remember correctly) was in line with the end of the concrete curbing next to the track, and I knew I wanted to be a certain distance from the outside edge of the track (about a foot) so that allowed me to find and use a consistent turn area without having an actual mark right on the track.
In the big left-hand horsehoe turn I was using a particular green weedy plant next to the inside edge, because it was next to my desired turn area and I could see from far enough away to get lined up to it on approach, and it helped me judge how far away I was so I didn't roll off too early.
Sometimes you have to get creative and use something off the track, or a relative distance - like "about 10 feet before the end of the curbing" or "apex about 6 inches inside of the beginning of the third red stripe on the curb", or you can even use something farther in the distance - at Laguna and Barber there are sections that are uphill and some riders use distant telephone poles or fence poles to line up to the right area for the turn after the hill - because you can't see the turn itself until you crest the hill!
Since we are talking about reference points, what are some of the characteristics of a good reference point?
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If you are thinking of getting into racing, CodeRACE is a good way to start. You will learn race procedures, and get to practice starts, qualifying, and gridding up for a race, and run a race at the end of each day, and getting a ton of coaching all along the way. You will learn about passing, and as Kevin says above, close passing is allowed and you will experience it.
If you have already taken levels 1-3 of the school, and want to start racing, or are feeling constrained by the pace of other students or the polite passing rules of the regular school, you might want to attend CodeRACE. CodeRACE is a very relaxed format but the pace on track is typically quite fast and very focused on racing techniques, and would incorporate heavier braking, strategic selection of lines, and a lot of emphasis on lowering your lap time. There is a TON of riding and a TON of individual coaching, not very much classroom time, and as Kevin says most of the practice sessions are rather similar to a race organization practice session - except you have coaching to help you get faster!
CodeRACE is fun - it's fun for the coaches too - but if you want to improve your riding in a more relaxed, ride-at-your-own-pace way, Level 4 might be a better choice - but if you are thinking of club racing, CodeRACE is a great way to get started. CodeRACE was my first entrance into racing and I was very glad I did it - having that familiarity with start procedures, flag procedures, gridding, qualifying, close passing, etc. made my first club race a LOT less intimidating.
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It was a lot of effort and time investment to go after these championships, but I've concluded, after reading this comment...
I am awestruck.
... it was totally worth it.
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Since there is so much interest in this topic, I'll share a few stories about stock bike stability versus race bike handling: In setting up my race bike (the SuperSingle, not the BMW) I dropped the front (by lowering the triple clamp on the forks) by 5mm to make the bike turn in a little quicker/easier, and I liked the change. When Will came out to help me tune the suspension, he dropped it an ADDITIONAL 10 mm (which is a lot!) to see how I liked it. I rode it and it was noticeably unstable entering the corners, the front end shuddered on entry, so we went back up 5 mm and it was perfect. So it ultimately ended up 10 mm lower than where it was when I first got it, a pretty significant change. He also shortened the wheelbase by adjusting the rear wheel - it was adjusted out almost as far as possible, so he brought it forward and took a few links out of the chain to accommodate that - and that tightened up the handling too, particularly mid-corner.
On my previous bike (ZX6R), I had lowered the front about 5mm or so. When I tried going farther, I got headshake exiting corners.
Some years ago a friend brought over a Ducati 999. It had a cool elliptical steering head on it. I tried riding the bike and found it REALLY difficult to turn, so my husband and I played with it and turned the elliptical steering head to the steeper steering angle, and it handled great after that. The owner of the bike was unaware of that adjustability and was much happier after the change. As said by others above, most bikes are set up for good stability on the street, not for quick turning on the track.
Not everyone likes the bikes to steer so easily - my husband does not like riding my bikes, he finds them twitchy and hard to steer smoothly, and I feel like his bike requires too much effort to turn, so personal preference definitely plays a part.
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Also, as far as I know the later models (after the 2010/2011 models) did not need this modification.
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My husbands S1000rr had the link flipped also, on his 2010 model. My understanding is it changes the geometry a bit - the main reason it was done on his bike was to help keep the front wheel down under heavy acceleration. I'm told Jeremy Toye designed something (a special part) for the same purpose, you can see it on Lee's Cycle.
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Another thing to consider is the communication skills needed - both from the rider to communicate how the bike feels and the suspension tuner to be able to ask the right questions and be able to translate the answers into useful info.
I spent a little time with Will, the school mechanic, tuning the suspension and handling on one of my race bikes. It was a remarkably rewarding experience - Will was able to listen to my observations on the handling, make a few changes, and send me back out to ride, and in just a couple of sessions the bike felt MUCH better to me and my laptime dropped by a few seconds.
I was very impressed with how he could listen to my observations and know what to change, and he in turn was pleased with how specifically I could communicate what the bike was doing, it worked out really well.
As a comparison, I have also had the experience of taking a bike to a different suspension expert and having him not listen to a word I said and set up the bike for a completely different riding style that didn't work for me at all. I'm sure he was capable and knowledgeable but he neglected to consider my riding style, and the bike was stiff, unyielding and hard to steer - I think he set it up for someone who does very heavy trail braking with a ton of load on the front.
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Laura;
Just winning one series is an amazing accomplishment - three in one season is breathing rarified air my friend. Congratulations!
Kevin
Thanks, Kevin! It was a pretty big commitment but I did have fun with it.
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Congratulations Laura!
Not only is Laura one heck of a racer she's one heck of a Superbike School coach too! How many people on the race grid can go from full speed down to a first timer's pace and have the personality skills to coach?
Thanks, Robert, what a nice compliment!
California Superbike School was my first time riding on a race track, and at that time I certainly never imagined I'd end up racing and coaching... and neither did they, I'm sure! I'm having a heck of a good time doing it, though.
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Hey, thanks for noticing! And thanks for the congratulations.
I am Laura. I race with WERA, which is a national racing organization in the USA. You can find info at www.wera.com, and you can view my race record there, if you like - my race number is #641 Expert. The races are mixed men and women, but mostly men - the ratio of men to women is about 100 to 1. WERA does offer a women's class some years at some tracks but the attendance has not been all that good - but that might be partly because the class allows bikes up to 1000cc, which may keep some ladies from being willing to run in it, currently the pace in the women's race is very fast.
I race in the Expert classes. There are novice classes available; I started as a Novice on a 600c back in 2009 but ended up second in the points my first year so they bumped me to Expert.
Going for three championships this year gave me a whole new appreciation for the amount of effort and commitment required to run a whole race season; riding fast is important but just GETTING to all the races in good physical condition with a functional bike, and getting through alll the races with no DNFs or crashes, is a challenge in itself!
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A little on the lower side seems preferable to being on the higher side, per anecdotes.I have however not found concrete guidelines on how to choose pressures for the track.
You pretty much have to go to the manufacturers recommendation for track pressures, or ask the tire vendor (IF they are a track vendor / race supplier - if you ask at a regular shop they might only know street pressure recommendations.). Make sure you are getting track pressure not road riding pressures, and make sure you know if they are talking hot pressure (typically what you get for race tires) or cold pressure. Usually a google search for recommended track pressures for your model tire will turn up some recommendations.
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YellowDuck, this is how I do it - and I'm happy to get critical feedback if I could do this better:
I stab the brakes and start slowing the bike down at my breaking marker. Then as the bike slows I preload the shift lever enough so that when I blip the throttle, it snicks into the lower gear and because I'm on the throttle a bit, it matches revs (more or less) with the speed. The tranny is loaded initially by the engine braking and by preloading the shifter just prior to the blip, it's set to shift when the blip unloads it from the engine braking. It works like a charm on the S1000RR though as I said earlier in this thread, I'm still working on holding firm and consistent brake pressure when I blip. I'll sometimes release the brake a bit for the blip and I end up slowing more erratically than constantly. This doesn't happen every time for me but often enough that I was starting to think about going back to the clutch especially when I want to drop 3 - 4 gears like when coming off a long straight into a hairpin.
What I'm hearing Hotfoot say is to just keep working on my blipping technique until I iron out the occasional glitches I'm having. Have I got that right?
Wes
While what you are describing DOES work, the school mechanic Will, who knows these bikes extraordinarily well, says it is hard on the transmission to pre-load the sifter and he does not recommend it. So you might want to work towards getting the blip and shift into one motion that does not include preloading the lever, just for the sake of longevity of your transmission.
Sounds like you have the skill mostly under control, but if you are having trouble getting the braking while blipping consistent, I'd suggest finding a big safe parking lot area and breaking it down into steps for practice. Practice blipping and downshifting, without brakes, in a straight line. Then when consistent, move up to doing two downshifts per run, then three (if you have room). When that feels really comfortable and consistent, go back to one shift per run and add light braking, then more aggressive braking, then multiple shifts, or whatever gradient feels comfortable for you. I think you will get a lot more out of isolating the parts of this skill and practicing in a straight line with no other distractions than you can get trying to practice on a racetrack or road, with turns and traction and other riders, etc. to think about.
If you have the opportunity to come to a school you can have a coach work with you on this specific skill in an off-track drill.
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It is basically the same concept in the opposite way - you are taking the engine braking pressure off the gears. When you are slowing down using the brake, with throttle off (and the clutch NOT pulled in), the rear wheel is 'driving' the engine via the transmission which is putting pressure on the gears (in a DEcelerating direction). The drag from the engine is "engine braking". The engine is being forced to stay revved up by your rear wheel speed, NOT by the throttle. When you blip the throttle, you are giving the engine enough throttle to MATCH the rear wheel speed (instead of resisting it) so you relieve that pressure on the gears and the bike drops easily into the lower gear. If the bike lurches forward, the blip was too big or too late. And yes, the blip and shift are simultaneous - just a little blip is enough to relieve the rear wheel drag on the engine and allow the shift. The engine does not actually rev UP a significant amount, you are just adding enough throttle to stop the RPMs from being forcibly slowed DOWN so hard by the rear wheel. Exactly the same (in opposite direction) of what you do when you dip the throttle to upshift - you are just taking the pressure off the transmission so it can shift easily.
If, however, you were to pull in the clutch, you disengage the transmission so the engine speed can fall off rapidly (RPMs drop), so you have to do a bigger throttle blip to rev it back up to match the rear wheel speed of the lower gear, plus you are guessing at what the rpm should be to match the wheel speed. With clutchless, I find it easier to know how much of a blip is needed; I can only explain that by saying I have some sense of how much throttle it would take to go from decelerating (engine braking) to that point where you feel the chain start to engage to accelerate. With the clutch engaged the RPMs fall off fast and that changes how much blip will be required, especially if you are not super quick to pull and release the clutch, which can make it more difficult to judge.
Does that make sense?
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Please refer to Eirik's new thread "Coordination", and just count your blessings...
Speaking as one of the "nannies"....I am actually a bit skeptical about how many people who claim to be expert blippers / downshifters under braking can actually pull it off under truly high-effort near-threshold front braking. That is a pretty difficult trick. Sure, with moderate braking as on the street maybe you can be all fancy and rev-match your downshifts, nice and pretty. But what about when you have to bang out three downshifts quickly in the braking zone when you have come in a bit hot for a tight corner with the back wheel nearly in the air? Maybe you can do it...but I am skeptical that it is a common talent. There is a reason that most serious race bikes run slippers.
I find it to be a LOT easier to blip under heavy braking when using clutchless downshifts. When not using the clutch, there is less of a blip required and it is much quicker and you don't have to worry about how slowly/quickly to let out the clutch. I do routinely come down 2 or 3 gears under heavy braking into corners. However, due to a lot of good training from CSS on technique and visual skills, I am not in panic -braking mode, just very hard braking - enough to lighten or lift the bike wheel - but it does not feel frantic or rushed.
There is a video on the CSS website showing Will doing REALLY fast downshifts while braking, a good real-life example of how fast it can be.
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The Superbike School ran a suspension class once, I went to that and loved it. I can't remember who the suspension guru teacher was, but he was an expert. We got technical info in class, then we went out and rode and went through a suspension adjustment checksheet to feel out all the changes when adjusting front compression, front rebound, rear compression, rear rebound in various combinations. It was hugely educational, but it was years ago and I don't know of any plans to do it again.
Dave Moss has a ton of online videos, really great stuff, shows photos of tire wear symptoms and all kinds of other info.
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What Are Your Plans In The Off Season?
in School Questions/General Discussion
Posted
Our off season here is pretty short, but my plans are to make the SuperSingle easier to work on - it has a lot of odd fasteners and spacers and stacked washers to make all the bodywork and various parts and accessories fit. I want to streamline all that so that it is easier to remove fairings, wheels, timers, etc. without having to deal with a ton of little parts and having to use such a variety of different tools. It may require building some custom parts, but after racing it a whole season and taking the fairing off a thousand times, it certainly seems worth it to make that process faster and easier!