The Art of Hanging Off Your Bike by Nick Ienatsch

I quoted this on the way down to serve you some tire knowledge, but I saw as I moved down the page that Dave handled that.

Except that Rossi probably could not have spontaneously developed the current riding style while coming up in the 90s. The generation that did it grew up on much better tires. By the time tires evolved to such unfathomable levels of side grip, Rossi was a young adult with a riding style that worked for him and had no need to reinvent the wheel. Until the Marquez generation showed up in MotoGP.

That there was a time when GP racers didn't drag their knees either. Then tires got good enough to do that and guys like Kenny Roberts tried it.


Disclaimer: the above opinion is not based on any kind of verifiable research and should be accepted on the strength of my awesomeness alone.

 

That's what I'm getting at. Better body position means the bike is more upright, hence NOT leaned over too far and no ending up on the sun.

 

I used to move my butt while braking. Ken Hill got on me hard about it and when it was finally fixed corner entry just felt so much smoother. Def important for a good smooth fast corner entry

I still have a problem w getting lazy and grinding parts. Thankfully it's not pegs, but toes and bodywork aren't uncommon for me at the end of a full length race. Grip and laptimes don't always suffer, but I know I'm wasting grip. Plenty to work on as always.

 

Then I'll refer you to post 22 as well

 

If you're saying but they don't lean the bikes as far as they used to, then I disagree. They may not spend as much time at max lean angle, but I don't believe the bikes are more upright at the apex of the corner.

 

No. What I'm saying is that if those guys had better body position, they would not have had to use so much of their available lean angle and could have gone faster through a given corner.

 

If the guys back then had better tires, they would have gone faster through a given corner.

The guy with the acknowledged fastest corner speeds right now (Lorenzo) is not one of the guys with the most radical body positions.

 

Sure they would have, but the tech didn't exist. However, there was nothing preventing them from shifting their body position, and if they had, they ALSO could have gone faster.

It's not rocket surgery. Speed is limited by traction, traction is limited by lean angle. Lean angle can be reduced with proper body position, increasing traction and therefore speed.

 

I've been passed by guys who looks like they're riding a damn horse and I've passed guys who want to be Marquez. Figure out what works for you. There's no universal answer just basic fundamentals that need to be tailored to each rider

 

So Lawson, Gardner, Spencer, Schwantz, Rainey, Doohan et. al. were doing it wrong?
I think it probably had more to do with the tires and bikes of the era. Point and shoot seemed like the faster way around the track on the 500's.

 

No they weren't doing it "wrong", they just didn't know any better. They looked at the guys before the and improved the technique and went faster. The next generation perfected it further and went even faster. And so on. That's how things work. Geez, some of you guys can be pretty fucking obtuse some times.

 

Good thing they used better science to launch rockets into space.

 

Go ahead and make your jokes, but I guarantee you that if Lawson, Rainey, and the others knew you could hang off like guys do now, they'd have done it, and they would have gone faster as a result. Hell, they might have even dangled a leg!

 

That's without a doubt my favorite photo from that era.

 

This is another personal favorite. Black stripe being laid down by the front tire and smoke off of the knee puck.

 

i really don't think much is worth looking at here.. sure, the dotted line on the right has more lean. But the photos aren't taken at the same lean angle. look at the pavement, look at the rumble strip, etc.

 

The bikes arent more upright, but they are carrying more corner speed. That is essentially what Rossi was getting at when he was talking about how he needed to improve his own BP.

Proper BP reduces the required lean angle of the bike for any given speed+radius. So if you look at the distance between the end of the clip-on or bodywork and the pavement between an "old school" rider and somebody with modern fundamentally sound BP, they might be the same (meaning the bikes are at the same lean angle, just as close to the ground). The difference is that the guy with good BP is carrying several more MPH.

In other words, as it relates to the old pictures on the first page, anybody can get away with poor BP. They can manage to get around the track just fine. The difference is that they wont be as fast. Somebody with that old school BP simply cant carry the same apex speed as somebody with good BP. Lean angle is finite, and when you run out of it, you crash. It would be physically impossible to carry modern apex speeds with that old school BP.

 

Permission to use this as my signature line? It would help me out alot!

 

I really hate comparing still photos in these types of discussions, because who knows exactly what is going on. Somebody could still be setting up, trailing the brakes, might be off pace, could be changing their line to make a pass, they might be a few feet different in the corner so it might look different, so on and so forth.

Pictures dont always tell the whole story.