Ienatsch Tuesday

Racetrack Bike Placement

Mandatory Riders’ Meeting, Part 3.

June 29, 2021

Being on-line at the track has nothing to do with your Wi-Fi reception.Ducati

This Mandatory Riders’ Meeting series puts in writing what I would want to say to every trackday rider, especially new or returning riders. These articles focus on the single subjects I see causing most of the crashes, drama, and unhappiness and difficulties for riders venturing to the track.

Veteran trackday riders have learned these lessons, but often at an expense, sometimes quite literally. Many ex-riders learned these lessons but didn’t continue in the sport. It’s my opinion that proper rider coaching will jump students over potential pitfalls, by showing them the pitfall and then instructing them on how to avoid it. That belief has formed the YCRS curriculum and most of my writing.

Bike Placement

The subject for Part 3 isn’t only my observation but also based on the comment made by one of my senior instructors who runs a large trackway organization: “Less than 10 percent of the riders in the C Group [newest group at a trackway] are on-line during the entire lap.”

“On-line” means the bike is running the fastest and often safest path around the track. When we are off-line, we must often go slower or use more lean angle than when we are on-line. At lap-record pace this path narrows to a width of a few inches, but speed is not necessary to be on-line. It takes discipline and forethought. Speed is the byproduct of placing our bikes in the right place, but more importantly: Being on-line is safer.

Safety in Radius

All things being equal, the less lean angle we run the safer we are. In stand-alone corners, riders should work very hard at opening the radius as much as possible. In a right-hand corner, that means on the left-side white line at turn-in, knee over the inside curbing at the apex (the closest we come to the inside edge of the track), and out to the left white line at exit. Enter or exit tight/low, or run wide of the apex curbing, and we have tightened the radius, which means we must reduce our speed at the same lean angle or lean over further at the same speed. At some point, lean angle is finite and poor lines can’t be survived even with modern tires.

Riders understand this simple concept of opening radius as much as possible, a concept Mat Mladin put very clearly: “When you understand this sport, you realize it’s all about making straight lines,” but some new and even veteran riders struggle to hit these three points even in simple corners. This is not a skills problem, this is a mental focus problem, a discipline problem. The rider’s mind is not ahead of the bike so the bike is not guided correctly, leading to speed and safety issues.

Safety note: While it is faster and safer to use the entire track on the exit of a stand-alone (not linked) corner, slower riders or riders of small-displacement bikes may want to run an exit line that leaves a bit of track on the outside for any faster rider who is incorrectly passing on the outside of the corner at exit. An outside pass should be done before the slower rider apexes and begins to stand the bike up on the drive out, but due to incorrect instruction to “pass only on the outside,” it isn’t a terrible idea to leave a bit of room for faster riders with poor judgment. Safe passing will be addressed in this series soon.

Missing the apex requires you to hold lean angle longer.Robert Martin

Prioritizing Time at Speed

In combination corners, the perfect line is not as clear, but again we look to corner radius for some answers. Where is the bike traveling the fastest? A perfect example is turns 4 and 5 at New Jersey Motorsports Park’s Thunderbolt course. Turn 4 is an open-radius corner that funnels into a tighter turn 5. At first glance, one might think that sacrificing turn 4 to set up turn 5 is a smart move, but data acquisition and lap times show that maximizing turn 4 by running almost all its radius pays dividends because of the simple concept of “time at speed.” Where is the bike traveling the fastest in combination corners? Look to that measure to help fine-tune line choice.

Getting Better

The sooner a new rider can get on-line, the safer that new rider will be in several aspects. Safety is at the core of enjoyment. Line choice is at the core of safety. Here is how and why track riders must prioritize bike placement.

Proper bike placement minimizes lean angle at whatever pace you choose; less lean angle, or maximum lean angle for less time, allows more braking and accelerating. The best coaches can run perfect lines at slow speeds simply by running less lean angle.
Being on-line makes us much, much more predictable to faster traffic approaching us for an overtake; there are few things more dangerous than a wildly-off-line rider. Everyone says it’s the faster rider’s responsibility to make a safe pass and that’s true, but wildly divergent lines and speeds can make passing extremely dangerous. Faster riders are rarely caught out by the differences in speed, but by the differences in line.
The C Group often (almost always) has coaches or control riders to assist in everything from lead/follow to off-bike instruction; new riders must realize that these coaches are placing their bikes on the fastest and safest line, providing a path to safe and quick riding. New riders, or any riders struggling in the sport, must realize that this lead/follow coaching is key to your survival and enjoyment. Follow them with the intent of mimicking their lines when you are on your own. That said, trackway organizations must make certain that all coaches are on-line or new riders will be cheated and eventually be hurt.
New riders must observe the A Group in the corners that are challenging them. The A Group riders are providing a free clinic in line choice, so ride, drive, or walk to observe where the experts’ bikes are being placed. If the tracks you run are MotoAmerica tracks, mimic the bike placement of the podium finishers.
Get more serious about your riding by making notes on track maps after your sessions. Consult with your coach and mark turn-in points and apexes; let them help you with lines on paper in combination corners. This will create a plan for your next session, rather than simply riding around and making the same mistakes.
Reduce your speed by a few percentage points and get the line right. We don’t learn much at 100 percent, so a little less speed—especially at corner entry—goes a long way in helping perfect the line your coach drew on paper and then showed you in the first session. Get the line right and speed comes easily.
Don’t waste your warm-up lap or cool-down lap, those two laps can be responsible for huge learning. The reduced speed allows us to fine-tune the spots we are struggling with.

Missing the apex makes the rider slower.Robert Martin

Become much more critical of your line mistakes. For top riders, a missed apex is running wide of the curbing by a few inches. A great thought for good apexes is to put your knee over the inside curbing. If roadracing champions don’t turn in from the white line or exit out to the white line in stand-alone corners, they know that’s a major fail.
If you are studying tracks on your own, determine the corner’s apex and turn-in area by first determining where you want your bike at the exit. If you want the bike to exit the corner low or tight in order to set up a more important corner, then you’ll see that a late apex is best. If you want the bike to run wide off the corner as you might when entering the first half of a double-apex corner, you’ll see that an earlier apex is ideal and necessary.
Determining your apex by where your bike should be at the exit also helps to correct errant lines. Many street riders arrive at the track thinking a late apex is best, but they find themselves low (and slow) off some corners because their turn-in point was too late (and sharp, or slow), creating a late apex and a low exit. More importantly, this late turn-in to get a too-late apex puts these riders across the exit line of faster riders. Can you say, “midcorner collision”? Choose your apex based on where your bike should exit.
Study our ChampSchool video on speed and cornering radius (Radius Equals MPH). If the link between speed and radius is not clear in your mind, apexes will always be a struggle. Consistent and exact speed reduction into corners relies on trail-braking, so if that’s not a clear concept to you, get going on your homework.
Line improvement begins with the eyes. We’ve got to look at our turn-in areas, at the apexes, at the exits…looking sooner and sooner the faster we go. Many new riders are simply late with the eyes, especially when moving their eyes from the apex to the exit.
Line improvement stresses intense concentration, more intense than most new riders realize. If our minds aren’t ahead of the bike, relentlessly thinking about what’s next, our line choice will be sloppy, lazy, abrupt, and dangerous to ourselves and others.
A sign that new riders are not focused enough is if they run poor lines immediately after their coach waves them by. We must prioritize bike placement over speed, but those two are often switched. Attempting to “go fast” without precise bike placement will always end in a crash, so let’s be clear: Proper bike placement makes adding speed easy. Our students who focus on bike placement may not immediately be the fastest, but they will eventually be the fastest and safest.
As we go faster, be careful of exact turn-in points or exact braking markers because those two points will be too late as we carry more speed toward the same corner. Riding point-to-point is not what the great riders do, because increased speed means earlier braking and earlier turn-ins, especially when you realize that our turn-in rate is as adjustable as a turn-in point.
Watch the track management of the best riders in the world, but watch with a critical eye and for your improvement. Are they missing apexes? Are they turning in low, exiting tight? No, because that would make them slower and less safe…and unemployed.
Know for a fact that poor lines contribute directly to crashes and slow lap times. Know that improving the percentage of C Group riders who are on-line is extremely straightforward but requires concerted effort as early as possible in their riding careers. Make bike placement a priority at your first or next trackway.

More next Week!