Oh, so you're serious when it's one of your chums but the rest of us can go feck ourselves? Gotcha, right-o.
I’m well aware of that thanks but I meant on my road bikes. I just never have done. But then I ent the greatest. The Rossi leg sticking out coming in to corners that’s now the craze with racers originated from motocross.
I have to agree with you George. The aero drag benefit is not the whole story, and will only contribute in part to the bigger picture. Obviously I'm not the Lorenzo equalling peer trackday god that some on this hallowed webrag are, but you're talking about two very different sets of people here, and several interlinking factors. To use the aero drag advantage you also have to bring into account rider frontal cross sectional area and bike specific CSA aero target attributes. Very different when you look at trackday hero on lumbering WSB's and MotoGP racing snakes. Yes there's the advantage of Aero drag to assist in braking. This is coupled with very different brakes to the TD/road set ups, carbon ceramic rotors or high alloy rotors with brembo white pad compounds which need to see an operating temperature of over 300deg before they even think of biting. As you point out sitting bolt upright on the bike sometimes isn't the best option, it can actually destabalise the vehicle, and the rider, especially if the blast is trying to take your crash helmet off at the same time. Your braking setup will modulate and react in a manner tuned around your riding style and chassis setup. these details and minutiae won't be present in the trackday paddock unless the bloke comes with his own support infrastructure. Lewis hamilton has a very different brake package to his teamate for example, set up to take into account his pechant for last minute braking and aggressive corner entry. So, the MotoGP rider for instance.. From a kinematic and ergonomic point of view, the bike is built around him, the minor details of the chassis are set up around him even down to the weight bias so as to handle with the characteristics and attributes he's comfortable with. He knows his braking setup completely, how much pressure, what modulation he needs for the feedback he required, the delay in initial bite response etc etc, he also knows the circuit enough and the machine well enough to know how much entry/ corner/ exit speed he requires. maybe he doesn't need to sit bolt upright due to his riding style, the bike's chassis attributes and more importantly because he knows just how much to lift himself to get enough resistance to slow down to the optimum state he needs to be approaching that corner. Anything more is wasted energy. You know yourself that coming into a corner you need to set yourself up in a certain manner to allow you to ride it efficiently and not spend as much time at lean than is necessary. Those guys know just how much to move by in order to attack that corner at maximum efficiency and capability, and hence the economy of movement - they're doing as much as they need to do and no more. Foggy was foggy, an utter bellend but a talented utter bellend. His style was totally different to Chili or Slight or Kocinski, especially Kocinski, plus the attributes of the bike was a very different animal. If the MotoGP rider is a Michelin star chef, then the average TD rider is a bloke who's good at making omelettes. The GP rider only uses as much effort as is necessary to complete the task - drawn from experience the like of which even if TD rider knew 10% of what the likes of rossi have forgotten they themselves would be TD royalty. I would sit bolt upright. I'm no riding god, and I wouldn't know the perfect throttle position or revs or ergonomic and kinematic optimum state for my body to be in to get round that corner, but on the ones I do, I know true economy of movement, I know what revs, how late to brake and how much lever pressure to feather in, and I know that I probably don't have to move a great deal, but just enough to position myself to hit it optimally and to catapult out of it and leave the guy behind me for dead. So yes I'm going to be the only bloke to side with you and say its not all about slowing down, there's more, and that more is very subtle and comes from the total knowledge in the self, one's machine and ability. Saying it's just about slowing down is like saying that the winglets on the GP bikes are all about downforce... er.. no. Don't be a cock. There is no way that team can make use of this thread. Even Merlin can't help them at the moment and he's a magician. It's also safe to note that he started his career on two stroke GP bikes, and many of the greats he would have raced with, against and been around started out in flat track racing and crossing. Any rider who started out in those arenas took a very different ergonomic attitude to their riding than those who only ever lived on road bikes.
