reading

Warning: The riding techniques contained in this book are intended for racing purposes only. The author and publisher accept no responsibility for any accidents resulting in bodily harm or property damage that might occur from the increased speeds and rider ability that may be gained by the use of this material. The author and publisher do not guarantee that readers will attain the same high degree of riding skills that others have by applying these techniques. Supplemental notes and endorsements by noted riders that have used these techniques should not be taken as any guarantee as to safety or competency that might be gained, but merely as personal experience. If expert assistance is required, the services of a state licensed agency should be sought.

Even though I have only been road racing for two out of the twelve years of my career, it seems as though I've been doing it all along. Everything goes so smoothly now. If there's a problem, I handle it right away. Things are going right — they must be. I find myself in the winner's circle at almost every race. Of course my dirt track racing helped but believe me, it wasn't always this easy.

My first time on the asphalt — for more than a couple of laps — was at the California Superbike School. It was a really good experience. I wasn't the fastest guy out there but it gave me the idea of what to do and, more importantly, that I did want to do it. Kawasaki had been helping me with my short track program. There are some great people down there who believed I had some promise, so they gave me a box stock racer and hired Keith Code to work with me for one year.

Here is the part that really surprised me: We spent days going over stuff that Keith had written down about racing. I thought we were going straight to the track but here I was actually looking up words in the dictionary and talking about riding. After we did get to the track the whole thing turned around and there I was, writing down everything that I was doing on the track. Keith made me think before we got to the track, while I was on the track and after I got off the bike.

I don't know if everyone can get into the winner's circle as fast as I did but I know now that being able to think about your riding is important. Get that part done first.

The information contained in this book is intended to be used by a rider to investigate and master the basic riding skills covered in each chapter. None of this information is magic. It had originally been developed during my first six years of training more than 2,500 riders and getting results that either improved lap times or increased rider confidence. This information worked when it was applied. Now, after 29 years and over 150,000 students, this material has stood the test of time. It still works.

There is a certain magic in using information that is understood and the best way to do it is one step at a time. Go over the information and really understand it, then go out and apply it, bit by bit. Mastering each point will establish a certainty that you can do it.

"The things that Keith goes over in his seminars and book are things I do all the time. You can learn the same things." — E.L.

I'm going to begin this book with a little confession. I've never really been all that interested in racing — I just wanted to ride. Throughout my racing career I regarded the other riders on the track as mostly just a nuisance. Many times they got in the way of the observations I was making about my riding, about how I could improve my riding and how that information could be presented to my students. I've always had just as much fun riding along by myself in a race as I have competing with other riders.

My reasoning for this is simple — no matter how many other riders are on the track, you must still rely on your own ability. The track is the ever-present challenge — not the other riders. This idea has been strengthened over the years through my observation that the most successful racers can go nearly as fast in practice as they do in the race. They use their understanding on the track when they please, without the pressure of competition forcing them to "go fast".

Riding fast on a motorcycle is a tremendously exhilarating and challenging game. This game has rules and barriers. There's something to win, something to lose and a purpose for each individual who plays the game. It demands your attention. The consequences of a major mistake can be severe — severe enough to make the game worth playing well. The purpose of this book is to describe the technology and the rules of riding fast in order to make every ride a "win" and to show you how to approach barriers with confidence and understanding to further your purpose in riding or racing, whatever it may be.

My overall approach to rider improvement is: To simplify the actions of riding by defining the basics and by investigating the decisions you must make to ride well.

Attention and where you spend it while riding a motorcycle, is a key element in how well you will function: Attention has its limits. Each person has a certain amount of it, which varies from individual to individual. You have a fixed amount of attention just as you have a fixed amount of money. Let's say you have a ten-dollar bill's worth of attention. If you spend five dollars of it on one aspect of riding, you have only five dollars left for all the other aspects. Spend nine and you have only one dollar left and so on.

"If your face shield leaks air, tape it up. The air won't come through and get your attention." — E.L.

When you first began to ride you probably spent nine dollars of your attention on how to let out the clutch without stalling. Now that you've ridden for years and thousands of miles, you probably spend only a nickel or dime on it. Riders tell me that some common movements, like shifting, have become "automatic". It's not true. They are simply spending less attention on it. Riding is like that. The more operations you reduce to the cost of a nickel or dime, the more of your ten-dollars worth of attention is left for the important operations of riding or racing.

You must make hundreds of decisions while riding just one lap of a racetrack or one stretch of road — especially when riding fast. Hundreds! If you understand enough about riding to have correctly decided how to handle 25 of those situations, you are probably a fair rider. The things that you do not understand are the things that will take up most of your attention. Whenever a situation arises that you do not understand, your attention will become fixed upon it. You often fear a situation when you cannot predict its outcome and panic costs $9.99 — you may even become overdrawn. The course of action you have already decided upon to handle a potential panic situation costs much less than this and leaves you plenty of attention to sort out your options.

On the positive side, sorting out the actions of riding beforehand buys you the time and freedom to become creative with the activity of riding, just as having lots of change in your pocket allows you a certain freedom of movement. On the racetrack, that leftover attention allows you to experiment and to improve your riding ability.

High-performance riding and racing demand not only that you be able to perform the necessary actions but also that you be able to observe them. Making accurate observations of your performance is the key to being able to improve them. If you know what you have done — you know what can be changed. If you did not observe what you were doing, the changes become haphazard and inaccurate. Do you agree?

In the next chapters we'll look at the game and where the attention is being focused or spent. We'll investigate the barriers to riding well and put into action the steps you'll take to bring home a "win" every time.

And finally, let's not lose sight of the basic reason we started riding — it's fun and makes us feel good. Here's readily available freedom and all it takes is A Twist of the Wrist.

"I might only use one-tenth of a cent on some things that cost another rider $5.00, but you spend something on everything you do on a race track. The better you get, the less most things cost." — E.L.

Before launching into anything heavy, let's agree that the rider is the person controlling the motorcycle, not a passenger. The rider works the brakes and clutch, the throttle and steering. He determines whether the bike goes around the turn fast or or slow, smooth or rough, up or down, and is the only individual who decides what action to take, carries it out, then decides how well it all worked.

It almost sounds too simple, but it's true: What you do is what happens; what you don't do — doesn't happen. Motorcycles don't do anything by themselves. They don't win races or lose them; they don't make mistakes or do anything right. Everything that happens during a ride depends solely on the rider.

Have you ever seen a new rider on the track or road struggling to operate his machine? The basic control operation, the track and who he is in relation to these are a mystery to him. He honestly feels he is being taken for a ride. If you've had those feelings, fine; even expert riders have felt this way at times.

There is an actual technology to riding. People are not born as good or bad riders — riding skill is learned. A rider is a person who can lap a racetrack or ride down the road, fast or slow, and know what he did and how to change it.

Riders invariably have their favorite sections of road, the parts that flow together into a dance where everything happens just the way it's supposed to with no surprises. On the street or track, you know which ones they are — but you want to know why they're so comfortable. How much should you know about the road you ride? Which aspects are important and which are not? Why are some sections of road harder to ride than others?

First, some background. Highways are constructed so that motorists can travel from Point A to Point B very easily. The highway engineers are very thoughtful; they want to see you make it in one piece. The turns are often gently banked. Decreasing-radius corners are rare. Seldom is there a hairpin at the end of a straight stretch of road. Off-camber turns are avoided whenever possible. Corners are constructed in a predictable and straightforward manner.

A racetrack is another sort of beast. Not much of anything is done for your convenience. The designers have purposely constructed a course that will continue to create changing situations for the rider to fool and challenge him. Hairpins are put into the most difficult sections, usually after the fastest straight. S-turns or chicanes often have a slower exit than entry. Corners may baffle you with several camber and radius changes to break your flow and force you into unusual situations. And always, the faster the turns are negotiated, the more difficult they become. There are, however, only five major changes that can be designed into an asphalt road. Have you noticed this?

1. Changes in Camber: A piece of road can have a positive camber banking, or it can have "off" or negative camber which means the inside of the road is higher than the outside or the road can be flat. A turn may be designed with any combination of these cambers.

2. Changes in Radius: A single turn may be a constant radius, as in a perfect half circle. It may decrease in radius, tightening up toward the end or it may have an increasing radius, opening up at the end. Or it may be a combination of all three.

3. Series of Turns: In a series of interdependent turns, the line you take through the initial part of the turn will be partly determined by where you want to exit to set up for the next turn. A series of turns can have any or all of the camber and radius changes listed above.

4. Uphill, Downhill and Crested Track Changes: Elevation can be added at any point to any type of turn or change in a road or track.

5. Straight Sections: These are sections where little or no turning is required. Increases or decreases in elevation may be added.

These are the five major changes that can be engineered into a piece of asphalt. With the addition of bumpy sections, which were not planned by the designers, you have all the possible situations. In order to understand a road or track, you must understand its characteristics. Each of these changes has a direct influence on you and your bike's progress through the corner. In order to ride quickly and safely, you must understand how these changes affect you and how you can best handle them.

Banked turns are comfortable for most riders. Understanding them allows you to take the full advantages they offer.

Most everyone is comfortable riding a section of road that has some banking or positive camber. The banking has the effect of holding you up by creating a "wall" to push against with your tires. The bank also slows your bike down even more when you enter the turn because of the increased resistance created by this wall. Gravity is working for you, pulling you and the machine down the wall, counteracting the outward-bound cornering forces. Some examples?

It is very difficult to see the banking while you're riding on it. You may not notice a slight bank at all, unless you looked at the turn before you rode it. On the high banks at Daytona, after riding several laps on the outside tri-oval in a record attempt, the banked sections actually appeared flat to me and the pit area looked tilted at a 20-degree angle. It is easy to be deceived by even a small amount of banking because you're leaned over and don't have a straight view of the road. Also, the banking becomes less noticeable as you increase your speed.

Always design your approach so you can use the banking to your best advantage. At the point where the banking begins to flatten out, go low in the bank, close to the inside of the track. This gives you and your bike the maximum holding advantage that the banking has to offer before your bike begins to swing outward on the flatter section from the forces generated by acceleration.

"On a banked track you don't enter low and come out high." — E.L.

In a turn, your bike and you are just like the weight you swing around your head on a rubber band. The faster you swing it, the heavier the weight becomes from centrifugal force and the more it tries to swing to the outside. The banking "holds" you in until you move onto the flatter section of road that follows.

You can go into banked turns faster than it seems you can when you size up the turn and look at it from past experience. The banking will fool you initially and you will probably go into it much too slowly.

Also, when you are exiting a banked section of road to a flatter surface, you must straighten the bike since it will drag more easily when the banking is gone. The banking gives you more ground clearance than does a flat section of track. Example: If you are in a banked section and are leaned over to the pegs, you must lean the bike over even more in relation to the track surface to keep that degree of turning radius when the bank is gone. If the bank is 10 degrees, you must lean the bike over at least 10 more degrees to keep that turning radius on the flatter road surface.

I have known riders who could run lap times on racetracks that were very close to record times and who had raced that same course 30 or 40 times, who finally discovered that one section of track was banked — that was why they could go so fast in that part. After knowing, they went even quicker. If you don't discover track angles, you might be getting away with riding maneuvers you feel you shouldn't be without even knowing why. Once you discover the reasons behind your abilities, you can begin to use the track to your advantage. Will this improve your riding?

I don't know any riders who regard off-camber turns as their favorites. These turns leave less room for error and definitely do not inspire confidence.

A turn that begins with a bank and ends off-camber demands the most changes and adjustments in lean angles. In order to continue around it, the bike must be leaned over farther. The effect is much the same as going from a banked to a flat surface. Gravity is now working against you, pulling you and your bike to the outside. You lose ground clearance. Therefore, you set up off-camber turns so that you are in the off-camber situation as short a time as possible — just the opposite strategy as for a banked turn. Use straight lines on the parts of the track that are off-camber because you don't want to be committed to your maximum lean angle going into an off-camber section.

As speed increases, force generated by the bike/ rider combination widens the cornering arc. The exit line will change as the speed goes up.

An effective alternative is to set up so that your greatest leaning occurs in the middle of the off-camber section. It has been called "squaring off" a turn. It refers to the type of turn handling that allows you to straighten out the negative camber as much as possible. Basically, you enter as vertically as possible, then make the major steering change and exit as straight as possible.

Riders tend to see the basic turn more clearly because it is more obvious than the camber change. This is one of the deceptive tricks of the racetrack designer. The rider is sucked into the turn because he is basing his riding tactics on what the turn looks like instead of taking into account the changes in camber that can so seriously affect him. He must realize that gravity is now pulling the bike in the opposite direction of his intended turn and the tendency of the bike to go toward the outside in an off-camber turn is dramatic. Will this help?

Turns with no negative or positive camber — flat turns — will not increase or decrease the lean angle necessary to negotiate them at a constant radius or constant speed. Turn Two at Daytona is a great example of a basically flat turn with no radius changes and most fast riders prefer to ride it on the inside. In turns of this kind, the fastest way through is the straightest line — the inside line is also the shortest distance around the turn. In a flat turn there is no attempt to fool the rider unless a radius change is put in for variation. These turns commit the rider to his maximum lean angle and maximum speed for the longest period of time. Since you're going to be riding around the inside at max speed and max lean sooner or later, you may as well get down to it at the beginning.

Designers change the radius of a turn to put an additional twist in the action. Here are the basic kinds of radii and how to handle them on the track.

A constant-radius (CR) turn neither increases (widens) nor decreases (tightens) as you go through it. As mentioned above, if it is a fairly long constant-radius (CR) turn with no camber changes, you will eventually wind up on the inside of the turn for most of it. If it is a short hairpin, you may have other options as to how to set up the entry and exit. In a really tight hairpin you must make an abrupt turning change — it should be done at the point at which you feel most confident about getting your line.

If a constant-radius turn has camber changes, it can act as a decreasing-radius (DR) or as an increasing-radius (IR) turn. For example, if the turn is banked on the entry and flattens out on the exit it will have exactly the same effect on your bike as the decreasing radius. If it is flat on the entry and banked on the exit, it acts as an increasing-radius. It is very common for amateurs — and professionals as well — to ride the turns the way they appear at speed and not the way they really are. It is very easy to have your attention stuck to the radius of a turn so you don't see the camber changes. Thus, knowing the location of the camber changes will help you greatly in a turn. Where does this apply?

Usually easy to ride, the increasing radius turn can be made difficult with camber changes.