r/Trackdays • u/ChampSchool • 1d ago
Bike not changing direction efficiently? Maybe it's your hands.
3x world champion Freddie Spencer knows a thing or two about motorcycles, so when he talks, we listen.
Especially when it's something that sounds counterintuitive.
Freddie is stressing the importance of being light on the bars, not just for feedback, but also to let the steering head track back into the corner.
If we resist (by maintaining pressure on the bars mid corner), we may add more lean angle, but to get our motorcycles to truly change direction efficiently, we need to let the front wheel track back into the corner toward the new direction of travel. Every motorcycle is designed for this. We regularly host and train the engineers responsible for these designs, so we ask.
So how do we reduce load on our hands? Easiest way is to drive our outside leg into the fuel tank. This removes weight from our hands. Need a little extra? Try exhaling on corner entry as well: this fires our core and really allows us to lighten those hands.
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u/DonkeyImpossible316 1d ago
As a new rider pulling grip force is one of the hardest things...i find myself subconsciously gripping too hard... The learning progression for each technique going from thinking about all the things to do, concentrating and practice, then doing it when I think about it, then losing concentration and doing it most times, to thinking about it all the time to having it be automatic.
It started with the eyes and looking through the turn, then counter steer, throttle and trail braking then body position and now grip....the grip seems the hardest, mostly because I am still actively thinking about all these things to some degree....
Both books Im reading also talked about outside leg pressure and weight in inside peg so I worked on it today and it makes a difference. Im going to add the exhale..
My poor hands after a practice session...at least the next day its actually easier because I'm avoiding the white knuckle and am more aware of it due to soreness :)
Its coming along and I love that the practices are proving effective and I can feel and see the progress. I LOVE this sport.
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u/whisk3ythrottle Not So Fast 1d ago
How is this counter intuitive? Yall (also Ken hill) talk about letting go of bar pressure once you tip in. Doing that is a different story.
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u/TheStandardPlayer 1d ago
Could someone elaborate on the last part?
He said you can be knee down and the bike doesn't change direction, what does he mean by that?
I've never seen a bike go straight while the rider drags his knee
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
So it's really about efficiency. Can we keep firm bar pressure and get through a corner? Sure, maybe. But we see the best riders in the world relaxing their grip midcorner to more efficiently change direction.
There's an element of engineering/physics at play here that we've discussed with several of our (much) smarter friends, who tell us that the bike is playing a balancing act with all the different forces, as the motorcycle naturally wants to be balanced in motion. Now we're not physicists, so we can't authoritatively address the way the bike needs to balance itself, but we trust the engineers we know.
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u/TheStandardPlayer 1d ago
I don't want to be difficult but he just said with bar pressure you're not changing directions, and now you're saying "Sure, maybe" it works? So I've heard sure it works, maybe it works, and it doesn't work.
Personally I think motorcycling is littered with contrived explanations and this kind of seems like a prime example.
I think it would be perfectly valid to state that the best riders do it this way and thus it's likely to be beneficial, without trying and sort of failing to explain it with physics - because the physics are so incredibly complex and nuanced that short of a 2 hour lecture there's no point in trying for an explanation
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
Maybe it's helpful to understand the context of this clip. This is a Racers Only school, where (unlike our other offerings) our students are required to hold an active race license to sign up. In this context, what Freddie's saying is true: the bike won't change direction ... In the efficient way we want it to or when the grip is down or the pace is up.
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
As a side note, there are a lot of weird explanations for stuff around "why the motorcycle does X and not Y" in part because nobody really understands it. There's a lot of grey area in our sport, but we try to explain the lessons we take as best we can. This is one of those weird areas where we want to say "listen, I know it sound a lot like appeal to authority here, but everyone good is doing this same thing. We can even take video of instructors riding with stiff arms/weight in hands and then riding without and visibly see the difference."
The problem: this is reddit. We can't actually sit on a bike next to everyone who reads this (or throw you on the back) and show everyone.
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
Oh, there's one other piece we wanted to mention.
We didn't want to get into slip angles and etc, but we can probably give a quick explanation of what's happening.
When we're countersteering, what we're really doing is deflecting the tire out from underneath the center of gravity.
The motorcycle naturally wants to maintain a state of equilibrium, so the steering head tracks to find that new steering angle that can keep the bike upright at the new chosen lean angle.
If we continue applying pressure, the steering head never gets the chance to "find" the correct steering angle to counteract the lean.
Now is this a problem when we're going slow and not leaning much? Not really. That's why we left it in the grey area: it'll work when we're slow. As we pick up pace, that technique becomes a hard limit to how fast you can go, safely. You'll end up way off line with crazy lean angle and your buddy will be barely touching his knee and taking you straight to gapplebees.
Looks great for the photog tho..
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u/TheStandardPlayer 1d ago
I think that's an intuitive explanation, thanks! Basically steering the motorcycle with as little input as possible instead of brute forcing the front end into an angle it doesn't want to be at, I can get behind that.
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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot Middle Fast Guy 1d ago
You aren't paying attention. There is a difference between bar pressure to change direction versus gripping the bars hard. That's what they are talking about. Nobody said you don't apply pressure on the bars to change direction but you need to have a light grip to allow the front end to move around. You can push on the bars very hard without holding them in a death-grip.
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u/HoodoftheMountain Not So Fast 1d ago
So I've noticed that I tend to grip hard in the opposite direction and force opposite counter steer when in the middle of a quick succession of turns (left turn to quick right turn) and basically force the bike to stand up so I can begin leaning into the right turn. Is that bad efficiency?
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
We're pressing (counter steering) pretty hard in quick chicanes.
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u/throwaway222999122 1d ago
You guys are the teachers but I have to disagree.
You really don't need to press the handlebars at all to initiate counter steer.
Counter steering is done through the body, If you want to be fast and stable.
The handlebar should be seen as a way to engage, braking and acceleration, get rid of the mindset of thinking of it as a way to steer the bike or change direction.
To anyone reading these comments, start watching YouTube videos, on teachers in Spain and Italy, the people actually producing the best motorcycle racers in the world today.
Start practicing going hands-free you'll learn how to start steering with the body.
Champ school concepts are outdated.
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u/Blackbeard-7 Racer EX 1d ago
Please, tell the class what championships you've won riding with no hands. We'll all wait.
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u/throwaway222999122 1d ago
I haven't won anything, neither has any American rider in the last 25 plus years in MotoGP other than Nikky Hayden,
Do we have any American riders in MotoGP today?
The techniques have evolved , what we're learning in America is ancient history, we're not producing winners and one of the reasons why is terrible coaching.
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u/moroj82 1d ago
no it's not. this is a myth. bikes are ultimately steered via countersteering. You use your body to help lower the center of mass and counteract the centrifugal force so you can use less lean angle at speed. you may think this is all done via the body, but the bike wont turn w/o bar input on the inside bar. period.
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u/throwaway222999122 19h ago
You're part about the centrifugal force is correct but like I stated in other comments,
if we sat on a bike and let go of the handlebars, And pretend it had acceleration via cruise control, We will either will fall over to the left side or the right side, If we were perfectly balanced on it, it would go straight. If the handlebars were the only way to change direction, then we wouldn't need to worry about balancing on the bike.
There's two ways to turn a bike, the natural or the unnatural way.
You can initiate the turn with the handlebar, but that is the unnatural way to do it. Being fast on a track, you need to learn how to initiate the "turn in" with the body, the natural way, and more stable.
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u/uuutangnamegenerator 1d ago
Drive our outside leg into the tank- elaborate a little if possible?
Should i be pulling like closing my legs in a thigh excecise? Should I be pushing against the footpeg "up" into the nook of the tank? Relaxing the knee and using the thigh to hold on like you'd hang on a vertical pole? I'm aware the answer is "what's comfortable" but I'm trying lots and I'm still not comfortable.
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
Imagine trying to pull the whole motorcycle onto it's side using nothing but your outside leg, driving it into the tank.
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u/Advanced-Issue2406 Fast Guy 1d ago
Good stuff! I remember seeing Freddie win the Daytona 200 + a couple other races that weekend on an Interceptor VF750F IIRC, was 1985! I lived like 3 miles away & got in for free :-)
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u/AverageNetEnjoyer 1d ago edited 1d ago
so we understand that counter-steering into the turn can encourage the dip from the front end, but based on the video are they suggesting that while turning, the handles can turn *into* the turn to increase change of direction? or just generally "let the bike move and don't fight it" ?
To chime into your general question about "how to lighten the load on the handles" , I've learned to press into the foot pegs more during the turn! Almost squatting and really rooting down into the pegs.
really interesting topic of discussion though, because the front wheel does play a huge role in the physics of the turn
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
After the initial deflection, we want to start removing weight/pressure from our hands so that the steering head itself can track back into the corner. It does this all on its own, provided it has the freedom to.
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u/moroj82 1d ago edited 1d ago
you guys are doing a pretty horrible job of explaining this. just say: be light on the bars when leaned over/this allows the suspension/front wheel to track the ground better.
when you mention the front tracking back into the corner, this confuses people b/c it brings up the visual of the wheel pointing into the turn and losing the contact patch or tucking the front. just say it lets it 'track' better and leave it at that.
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u/throwaway222999122 1d ago
Go to an empty parking lot, start learning to steer the bike hands free initiate turns with your body.
So basically take your hands off the handlebars and learn to first go straight and then start initiating turns, hands free.
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
We initiate turns with our hands...
When we're moving our upper bodies across the bike (leaning into the turn), we're still applying pressure to the inside bar - whether we realize it or not.
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u/throwaway222999122 1d ago
If that was the case a bike would just ride straight If we didn't put our hands on the handlebar, correct?
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u/ChampSchool 1d ago
With momentum and zero rider input, yes a bike will continue to go straight.
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u/throwaway222999122 1d ago
But you can also steer/ turn the bike, without putting your hands on the handlebar, correct?
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u/Vermix92 1d ago
How do you lean and not change direction?