supernouht

in both pictures those guys are going very fast around a tight corner, so there are heavy g forces pressing them into the bike as they go around the corner, they don't really need to hold on at all other than to steer

What's that about only thinking you're going in too fast dave?? What you did souds about like what happened to me, only when I stood it up I didn't have a nice run out, I hit curb.

I'm not sure i COMPLETLY understand what your problem is here, but when entering a corner you first countersteer to get the bike leaned over, but once the bike is leaned over and you have some G forces holding you at an angle if you make small steering adjustments with the bars the bike will steer like a car more and not countersteer, but if you make more sudden larger movements it will go back to affecting your lean angle and countersteer again....what i am saying is bikes don't alwayse countersteer and they're not supposed to.....for instance try walking your bike, while you are holding it upright it will have 0 countersteer...so it could be that what you are experiencing is normal and you just have to get used to it...are you a new rider?

What's the big deal about leaning the bike over anyway? I have an NSR250 and was hitting the edges of my boots on the road within the first week of gettin gmy learners permit, later I learned that if i moved my body off the bike to the inside before a corner I could turn more sharply without having to lean the bike over so far. It's all about turning the bike, who cares if it's leaned over far if it's going where you want it to? Though if you really just want to make your footpeg touch the ground try not hanging off the bike at all, just steer it with the bars and don't use your bodyweight at all and the first time you come into a sharp corner with a little speed you'll findout real fast how far you are capable of making the bike lean! You can get to the edge of your tire effortlessly this way. Good luck!

This hill however was much too steep and twisty for no brakes though, you just pick up too much speed and must slow down or crash after a couple corners, also my bike is small and light and does not noticably lose speed simply by turning. My leg is almost completly healed by the way, all the scabs are off...my ankle is just a tiny bit swollen still.

well i think basically if you're comming into a high speed corner you wanna get your head, shoulders and butt over to the inside before the turn (low speed tight corners you can stay upright and lean the bike under you) however you can get your body mass over to the inside most quickly and comfortably for YOU i think is the right way....everyone moves a little different you know? in my opinion it should just come naturally if you know basically what you're suppose to do ....also keep your spine parallel to the bike if you can, good luck

Hi guys, I know this thread is a little old but I had some thoughts to share on it that a couple people hinted at but didn't really get into. I read this article and thought about it for a little while and I totally agree with most of you that say this information is totally useless on a modern sportbike on a racetrack, BUT I think most of the information in that article could be usefull if you are riding a big heavy bike a with sloppy suspention where the back end is so heavy that it's going to want to swing around the front end when you apply the front brake only, also the same goes if you are riding on the street in the rain or snow or dirt when it's real slippery and you're trying not to fall while still trying to go at an enjoyable pace, and so with that being said, this information could MAYBE be a big advantage to you if you are at the track racing one day and it starts to rain unexpectedly, maybe you could use this and go though the turns a little more smoothly and with a little more speed than most of the other riders and win???

hahaha oh thenks jef4y, i was actually wondering if i was spelling that right as i was writing it

Well all the 500cc motogp guys slide the back to some degree Mcoy just a little more so. you don't run wide as long as your front tire still has traction, and it makes the the bike turn sharper (because you're turning with the back wheel and not just the front, so it's like rotating the whole bike a little) and yes it can make you highside, you'll see highsides a lot in 500cc. Kenny Roberts Sr. was the first to do this kind of riding in the gp's, he started being a dirt circle track racer and those guys don't even have a front brake, they just tail slide all the way around a corner with the bike drifting completly sideways while holding the bike upright by dragging their foot on the ground , watch a dirt track race and you'll get it, so when he moved into road racing he thought it was slow not to slide in the corners at all so he started doing it, but then he wasn't as stable because he couldn't drag his foot on the ground on the road bike, so he wrapped his knee in tape and started dragging his knee to hold the bike up while sliding ok, now i THINK that the operations for initiating a rear slide go something like this but don't take my word for it heh! you come into the corner maybe a little more to the inside than you normally would and tou use your rear brake a little extra just to kinda get the back loose at first and you turn the bike a little sharper than you normally would and you stay on the gas all the way through while grinding your knee slider into the road if necessairy .....but like don't try this you'll kill yourself!!!! Kenny Roberts actually has a school called the K.R.T.C. where he teaches people how to do this and he starts them out on dirtbikes on a circle track Ithink that the biggest advantage to sliding the rear is when you have to pass someone on the inside of a corner, it may or may not be the fastest way around the track, but when that nice outside real estate is taken by the guy you want to pass you can sometimes get by him on the inside this way i've only actually done a version of this once myself, but it was on the outside, i had just passed a car on the outside comming into a right hand corner and i passed him by just braking way later into the corner so then i found myself deep in the corner still going quite fast and i had to turn like yesterday so i got on both brakes hard and turned it in while still on the gas a little (because that car was still running up my backside)and the back end just came out a bit, but it was no problem i just kept the throttle steady backing off just a hair when the back wanted to drift out and made it through the corner quite quickly...anyone watching probably would have been impressed, but it was really just an f-up heh

Wow this is a very interesting topic for me, It has never once occured to me to not use my rear brake, I almost always use both brakes when comming into a corner, trailbraking I usually don't use it much if at all however, but slowing down for a turn, yes definatly every time, 2 breaks will slow you down faster than one, just as long as your rear tire isn't off the ground heh! It helps to extend your arms and move as much weight to the back of the bike as possible...it's real easy to give that rear brake too much pressure though! I currently ride an NSR250 but my first bike was a 125cc yamaha flatracker from the 70's that had no front brake (wasn't designed for one).

corvette95, I am probably less experienced than most of you here but I think I have some quick viewpoints that might help? The answer to the question, "when do you get back on the gas" is what you said..."as soon as you can" It sounds to me like the difference here is that these fast guys you're talking about are carrying more speed into the corner than you are and braking later, so since they are braking later the "as soon as you can" happens alot later because they are busey braking. The fastest tecnique to use changes depending on the corner and what kind of bike/tires you have and how slippery the track is that day. But keep 2 things in mind, I gather from your name that you probably started out racing cars and then went to motorcycles...most motorcycles don't actually hold a corner at a much higher speed than your corvette will, but they WILL accelorate a hell of a lot faster and probably brake a lot faster?, so the fastest line in your car is going to be different than the fastest line on your bike usually, and the second thing to keep in mind is that even though we spend the most time studying corners than anything else, we want to spend the LEAST time actually doing them ie in and out of that corner as fast as you can so you can start going fast again...this is more true the bigger your bike is. Hmm that wasn't as quick as i thought heh goodnight

What really?? That kinda seems like cheating to me almost... I'm just imagining how easy it would be to ride a bike like that, I guess that's why i've been seeing less crashes in the moto gp lately even though they're going like 30mph faster than they were with the 2 strokes? Personally I think if they're going to allow 990cc 4 strokes, they should allow for a bigger displacemt 2-stroke, like a 700 or 750, then they might actually be competitive again? Oh well not like it relly matters I guess, I'm just a 2-stroke fan, I have a yamaha 125cc 2-stroke flat tracker and an nsr250 2-stroke streetbike.

I think he's asking how to know how much to turn the bike, and how far to lean it over in a corner? Well, experienced racers use their knee to feel the ground (and sometimes to hold the bike up) in a corner so that they do not lean over too far and lose the tire, but this is usually not advisable for the street (man you could hit one of those little reflective dots with your knee! Ouch!) other than that I can't think of anything usefull to tell you to know how far to lean it, it really depends on the type of corner and your bike and what kind of tires you have, I guess it's just an experience thing, start out slow and keep doing it till you have an intuitive feel for how far you should lean the bike. Sounds like you should take the level 1 suberbike school course!

Hmm interesting observation M1combat, I hadn't thought of the G forces on your body like that, personally I don't give much thought to which peg I am putting the most weight on in a corner, I just use them to hold my feet heh! Actually as you said about Valantino Rossi, if I actually wanted to I could probably take both feet off the pegs mid corner and hold myself on the bike with my legs alone and not have it affect my ability to hold the corner much if at all. As I originally said, I think it's a mute point, the pegs are just there so you have somewhere to put your feet.

actually i do have something usefull to say...well i think i do at least! sometimes this happens to me, i'll space out and won't slow down enough for a corner which is a little frightening the first few times you do it, and there are 2 ways that a beginner can handle it basically, either push on the inside bar a little more (countersteer) and just lean more and get the bike to turn more sharply than you are usually comfortable with forcing your bike to do.....the other is just to give up and start using the brakes while you stand the bike up and run off the outside of the corner and stop.....well i've done the first thing a few times and it's worked and by bike DID turn sharper than it seemed like it could!!! and this was a great confidence builder!...i've done the second thing once and it sucked, i ran to the outside and slid in the dirt and hit a curb and messed up my bike and my knee and my jacket, if i were in the situation again i would have just tried to turn sharper and stuck with it, so unless the outside of a corner just has a really nice flat runout when you can ride and not fall i'd say yes countersteer and lean more and turn charper and maybe you'll surprise yourself with what you can do! as for the "countersteering" thing i've noticed that on my bike which has light steering, i will turn the bars the oppostite way i want to turn and for like 1/8th of a second it will start going the way i turned, then it becomes off balance and leans over the opposte way i turned the bars and the lean will make the bike turn, now once i am actually leaned over and turning as long as i am making small movements my bike will actually turn the direction that i turn the bars (like a car as in not countersteering!) but if i make more agressive movements while leaned over it will change the lean angle of the bike and overpower any non countersteering movements i am making andthereby switch back to a state of countersteering .....pay close attention next time you ride and you may see what i am talking about.....i've never ridden a bike with a sidecar, but i imagine that sidecar motorcycles have little or no countersteering action going on because they don't lean! so if this is true that means that if you are not affectiong your lean angle a bike will steer like a car.....except that it does affect your lean angle heh....but sometimes it doesn't....like when you're going 5mph it will steer like a car because you're not leaning ....it's really a weird thing! it's amazing how our brains just get used to this complicated action and we don't even realise what we are doing!! but if we fully understand it i belive we can command a greater and more confident controll over the bike, good day -David