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Hawt Motorcycle Talk

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  • 1to392831weretaken
    1to392831weretaken Member Posts: 7,696
    dflea said:

    Holy shit. Dude just climbed off - at 140. I swear, bike racers and rally car drivers have the biggest balls around. Oh yeah - and those squirrel suit lunatics. Huge nuts.

    When I braked at 160+ while leaned to avoid a collision, I knew it was going to be a bad time that was merely better than the alternative. Even though I barely feathered the brake lever, the rear end swapped four or five times. Nope. Not at that speed. Just measured on Google Maps, and I had a thousand feet of infield in which to get the bike stopped, so that seemed like the best bet. Nope. Street tires don't do shit on dirt, so it wasn't stopping. Dragging rear brake the whole time (front would have been suicidal), used all 1000 feet before crossing the track again, still at way too high of a speed. It was at this point Maverick would have been smarter than me and hopped off. I was stupid and still fought to save it. Was never going to shed that much speed. Before hitting the wall, I actually gave a thought to jumping up and seeing if I could clear the whole thing. I could see a tire wall with a grass berm behind it and that's it. Who knows, maybe there'd just be a field back there and I'd slide along unharmed? Was going fast enough to easily superman over it all. It briefly sounded better than hitting that wall. At the last second, I concluded the known bad of a soft(ish) tire wall was better than the possibly dead of blindly flying over a wall at 70 mph. So I climbed off.

    Self preservation will help you do insane things when the alternative is probable death. Vinales was just smart and experienced enough to make that choice a hell of a lot sooner than I did. He'd have followed that bike into the air fence and been a goner. I believe the last person to die at Pacific Raceways went out that same way: bike destroyed the air fence in T8, then he followed it into the wall, now with no air fence.
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  • dflea
    dflea Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 7,287 Swaye's Wigwam
    1to392831weretaken said:

    dflea said:

    Holy shit. Dude just climbed off - at 140. I swear, bike racers and rally car drivers have the biggest balls around. Oh yeah - and those squirrel suit lunatics. Huge nuts.

    When I braked at 160+ while leaned to avoid a collision, I knew it was going to be a bad time that was merely better than the alternative. Even though I barely feathered the brake lever, the rear end swapped four or five times. Nope. Not at that speed. Just measured on Google Maps, and I had a thousand feet of infield in which to get the bike stopped, so that seemed like the best bet. Nope. Street tires don't do shit on dirt, so it wasn't stopping. Dragging rear brake the whole time (front would have been suicidal), used all 1000 feet before crossing the track again, still at way too high of a speed. It was at this point Maverick would have been smarter than me and hopped off. I was stupid and still fought to save it. Was never going to shed that much speed. Before hitting the wall, I actually gave a thought to jumping up and seeing if I could clear the whole thing. I could see a tire wall with a grass berm behind it and that's it. Who knows, maybe there'd just be a field back there and I'd slide along unharmed? Was going fast enough to easily superman over it all. It briefly sounded better than hitting that wall. At the last second, I concluded the known bad of a soft(ish) tire wall was better than the possibly dead of blindly flying over a wall at 70 mph. So I climbed off.

    Self preservation will help you do insane things when the alternative is probable death. Vinales was just smart and experienced enough to make that choice a hell of a lot sooner than I did. He'd have followed that bike into the air fence and been a goner. I believe the last person to die at Pacific Raceways went out that same way: bike destroyed the air fence in T8, then he followed it into the wall, now with no air fence.
    csb

    You should be a little more careful next time. lol
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  • dflea
    dflea Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 7,287 Swaye's Wigwam
    1to392831weretaken said:

    dflea said:

    You should be a little more careful next time. lol

    This was way back in 2006, at my second ever track day. I am quite a bit more careful now, mostly due to the bikes being so amazing nowadays from an electronics standpoint but also because I'm just too old and stiff to do what I could do back then. Also, like mentioned above, riding technique has changed since back then, and I find deeper trail braking leaves a bigger safety margin if you get a corner wrong.

    To that last point, motorcycle geometry and handling compromises are pretty fascinating in general, and I could get into it if anybody's interested. Fun example, leaning to brake:

    Let's say you're running this 200/60 rear tire here:



    You're charging into a corner in 3rd gear, pretty high in the rev range--13,000 rpm for simplicity. Being straight up and down, your contact patch is right where those white stripes are running down the middle of the tire, the max circumference. Theoretically, a 200/60 has about an 83" circumference, but in practice it's actually bigger. When you're charging a corner straight up and down on the tallest part of the tire, that's about 125 mph with stock gearing on an R1 at 13,000 rpm.

    Now you lean over to the edge of the tire. No throttle change, consistent rpm. On the edge, the tire circumference is now about 63". In effect, without doing anything but cornering, you've seamlessly changed final drive ratio by nearly 25%! With zero braking or throttle reduction, your speed at the apex of the turn is down from ~125 mph to ~95 mph. Not something you have to think about in a car.

    Pretty cool, huh?
    Very cool. Very technical. Much moreso than dirt bikes. Both of them will fuck you up pretty good for making a mistake, though.
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  • 1to392831weretaken
    1to392831weretaken Member Posts: 7,696
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7NZ0zaJYbM

    It was so weird watching pros race on the same track I usually ride. I was hoping to attend, but COVID... These guys are hauling serious ass. I haven't ridden there (or anywhere) since they added that chicane at the end of the straight, but that thing has to add at least 10 seconds to a lap time. My fastest time ever there--working HARD--was a 1:50 (I believe on the high side of 1:50), and these guys are doing race laps at high 1:40 with an extra 10-second chicane!

    Awesome watching their lines and seeing how aggressive they are into downhill corners. A couple of times, I saw front wheels off the ground going into 8a, which is nuts!
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