Cornering Techniques
- Counter steer
- Brake before you tip into the corner and set your speed at entry
- Once you’ve set your corner entry speed, hold the throttle steady for the bike to be steady, planted and hold its line
- Avoid front brake in the corner as it will stand the bike up and run wide, if you have to, use rear brake
- Look through the corner at your exit, not at the ground
- Take the wider entry on corners so youcan see the apex and don’t commit to too tight a line to tighten give you more options e.g. if there’s gravel on the road
Emergency Braking
- Brush and bury the front brake – apply lightly, once it’s bitten, progressively squeeze it but not so hard you lock up the front
- Grip the tank with your legs
- Keep looking forward not down
- Don’t worry about changing down gears at the start, focus all you attention on getting the bike stopped using front brake
- A major reason for failing e-braking is locking up the rear. This happens because there’s so much weight going forward on the bike such that the contact patch for the rear tyre is minimal and will lock up easily. The rear brake adds a little bit of braking power, but really not a lot when the front brakes are being used very heavily so don’t get hung up on it to the detriment of using the front brake.
Braking
- Front (comprises the bulk of braking power): e-brake, general riding coming up to a corner, cover it at intersections. You should use your front brake often
- Rear: stability (e.g. riding slowly up to traffic lights while splitting waiting for them to go green), roundabout (helps to keep the revs up and so keep the bike stable), cover it while splitting traffic, o-turns. can be used in conjunction with front brake or can be used in isolation for stability
O-Turns
- MILO (Mirror, Indicate, Look Over)
- Set your speed slipping the clutch and using the throttle, then modulate it with the rear brake. Revs keeps the bike stable. Slightly higher revs is better than low revs.
- Look through the corner.
Body Position
How does moving off the bike help with cornering?:
- Lower centre of gravity, stability
- Can relate back to chicken strips – those with chicken strips may have poor body positioning and thus lean the bike more to attain the same speed as someone who is getting off the bike. Having no chicken strips is not necessarily a good thing if you have poor body position as you have no tyre left whereas someone getting off the bike is leaning the bike less and thus has more tyre to lean if you need to and can thus go faster without running out of tyre