In one way, the MSF does riders a disservice in terms of track riding. When they teach you to swerve, they emphasize to move the bike under you rather than lean with it. DON'T DO THAT HERE!
On the racetrack you are not swerving. You are taking corners. Lean with the bike, don't lag behind it. On the street I see a lot of riders who lean their bikes over a lot in a turn, but are keeping their body quite upright. That uses up a lot of the bike's lean angle --they leave less reserve, and would touch down well before a good rider would.
When you start reaching your own personal tiltmeter, you'll find it very hard to lean your body more. The pavement gets closer as you lean, and it's intimidating to sense it nearer to you than you're accustomed. It's vital that you not start to lean the bike under you at that point, but keep your body leaning with the bike. That's an important basic technique I'll be watching for today.
Compare these two pictures, taken at TrackDoD 1...
First, a note about the corner: this is exiting Oak Tree at VIR. It's a very slow corner, and so at the point where these photos are taken the bike is accelerating onto the front straight. The bikes in both photos are travelling at roughly the same speed.
In this first picture, the rider is leaning the bike under him. He's looking through the corner well, and accelerating nicely through the corner, but by keeping his body more upright he's pushing the bike down into the ground. He's almost used up all the lean angle he has available -- he's cornering about as fast as he can, and has virtually no reserve of cornering clearance left.
photo by Mike Ragsdale
In this next picture, the two riders coming out of the corner are leaning more than the bike. Notice how much more ground clearance they have -- and compare the angle of the wheels to the ground in this picture and the previous one. Even though one of these bikes is a standard and the other a cruiser, when ridden this way they actually have more ground clearance than the sportbike shown above.
photo by Mike Ragsdale
This also shows how useless Joe Racer's guide to how fast a rider is by looking at the tires. The rider in the first picture has scrubbed his tires all the way to the edge, but he's going no faster than the riders in the second picture, who may still have unscuffed rubber at the outside of their tires.
From TrackDoD Novice Group Orientation
1 comment:
Usually, for those who one to maximise their lean angle just for showing off their egos when meet their friends. "Hi, look at my tyre! How skillful I'm compare to all of you". But, they're still not fast enough. So, it is useless or maybe others can share their opinions about this situation?
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