Fast Guy Question

Racing ATV's, the fast four-stroke guy got hung up with the fast two-stroke guy and I went inside and passed both of them. I never let them live it down that I passed both of them and led for a few hundred yards.

 

The level these guys run at is crazy. I was at Laguna Seca one year and watched Mat Mladin lay down a ton of laps. I had a great view of T3 and every lap the black streak off his front on corner entry and off his rear on corner exit just got darker and darker. He just layed down rubber on top of the rubber from the previous lap time after time. The precision was amazing. If he had more than a inch variance in his lines lap to lap I would have been surprised.

 

That's definitely me. My sh*t cannot be moving around much at all, especially the rear (it's weird, I'm much more comfortable pushing the front. Probably why almost all my crashes involve me falling on my face). I had been riding street bikes for 20+ years before I owned a dirt bike.

 

Interesting. Tyler wasn't at the level of top guys that race MA, but he was decent. Having said that, when he played baseball, which he quit doing to race, the coaches said he was very calm and coachable. When he was the starting pitcher, guys would screw up behind him and it never bothered him, he just kept right on trucking and remained calm.

There was another pitcher, who threw faster, but he could usually only last 1 or 2 innings before getting frustrated and really screwing stuff up. Tyler ended up getting a bunch of starts or would come in once this kid blew his top, because he was laid back.

 

Of course there are people who are naturally better. But I do think you can be coached to a pretty high level. Maybe not lap record level, but within a few seconds. Look at a fast club race, you'll see 5 guys within a few 10ths. Then there's usually 5-7 more within 2 seconds. Then on down. (At the bottom 1/4, you'll see me on my new R6.)

I think the key is that you have to put in ALOT OF WORK. I have been a student of this sport for nearly 20 years. I've read almost every book, watched every DVD, listened to every podcast, but I've only been to school once. Every lap on track you have to be FOCUSED and WORKING on something specific. If you're not, it's too easy to just ride around making the same mistakes. Sure, I've been racing for 20 years but maybe 100 laps out of 5,000 I've done in my career have been REALLY making changes. The rest of the time, I was just riding around repeating the same mistakes.

Some tracks I've been riding for years (Homestead), I did my PB back in 2011, never repeated it. Then places like Daytona I get faster every time I go, usually. Different bikes and how much you've been riding that month make a difference. But I was fastest before the 200, when the pressure was on and I was taking it very seriously.

At the end of the day, I believe you CAN be trained. Do you think every Pro Athlete was awesome as a kid? I bet a lot were, but the ones that rose to the top worked harder than anyone else.

There are three brothers racing at lap record pace in CCS Florida. The Silva brothers. One of them beat Eslick at Homestead two weeks ago. They are all various ages and train almost daily. Dirt bikes, flat track, minis, etc. I.e. they work hard.

What are the better odds, that they all are genetically gifted athletes? Or that they LEARNED to go fast?

 

My experience with a lot of sports as well. Though some of them may explode off the court/field/track afterwards. But think about it, life rarely goes according to plan. Those guys at high levels know this deep down inside and are already plotting how to compensate or switching to the next gameplan. They don't have time to be pissed off in the moment, just slows them down.

 

Ha ha. I work with him. We laugh about people asking him if he knows me and they ask me if I know him..... We chuckle and say "Never heard of him".... Ha ha

 

I simply don't think people can be coached into being "fast". They can improve, sure. Top riders, the ones with natural ability, can go to any track and be fast within a reasonably short time. You all know that is possible. If you struggle going to new tracks, odds are, you're probably pretty slow.

 

This

 

I kind of agree with this. The fast guys will start out fast and get faster over the weekend. The amount of faster is the question. The fast guys might be looking for 10th's already when they roll out. Most are still looking for seconds by the end of the weekend.

 

I filled in a couple of times for Shawn Higbee when he got injured racing and couldn't ride / develop the Buell 1125r. Riding two hour stints - putting miles on it at 90% pace and 100% throttle acceleration - trading off with Tripp Nobles. We did this for eight hours straight. The bikes had all the data acquisition for everything even gps track positioning. I thought I was being pretty consistent until the techs laid my data over Tripps and showed me what being consistent was suppose to look like. Tripps data didn't very much if any lap after lap after lap the entire two hours. It's was an eye opener for sure and very humbling. LOL.

 

Wow. That had to be a really cool experience.

 

I loved having data on the bike. Overlay the speed traces for a dozen laps and you can pick out the places where you were inconsistent. Look at the throttle and brakes traces to find out why and work on those specific areas. It's a huge benefit if you are looking to figure out how to improve the rider. Which is the single most beneficial part to improve on the bike at any time.

 

Back when JD was racing the R1 on the Factory Yamaha team in the AMA, they were getting help from overseas and they got their hands on some of Rossi's data. Jason said even he was amazed at how the lines for braking and throttle intersected.

Everyone also says "no coasting on the track, either brake or gas", which we all do for the most part (or try to do), but Rossi's data showed that he was using 100% of the available traction with either the gas or brakes (technically over, since both wheels were exceeding traction and sliding/spinning), every split second for the entire lap...over and over. There wasn't even a blip of a second over the entire lap when he wasn't either on the brakes or in the gas, as absolutely hard as either of the tires would allow.

 

Yeah it was. The first two things the techs told me were don't throw it away and when you come in, get off the bike and don't touch anything. LOL. I did realize that it's harder then I thought it would being the only bike out on track and keeping focused to ride and always give 100% throttle as after awhile your just riding in circles. But it was fun. It paid good too.

 

The thing about that you should really be amazed about is his ability to go right back to doing that after tossing one down the road hard. Knock the dust off, climb on the back up bike and go right back to beating on it.

 

Great kid and super nice mom. I wondered what had happened to him.

 

He buys stuff for a company. Sits at a desk. Ha ha.