Riding Tips

Keep in mind, free advice is usually worth what you pay for it, so with that in mind, here are some of my suggestions:

"The Pace"

I ride in a way many may think is slow, basically I only go as fast down the straight as I want to go into the next corner, and I try to leave my bike in one gear throughout the twisty road and use very little if any brake. Lame you say? wimpy-slow-lameduck-can't-find-the-shifter-cause-I-never-got-out-of-first you say? not exactly the fastest way to go hurtling the soft tissue that encompasses my mortal being through space for sure, but it is more challenging and does force me to be a better rider than the typical squeeze and squirt style of sport riding, and to me that is much more fun. Try this: go down your favorite roads using only the highest gear you can and keep your hand off the brake (600cc or 1000cc, doesn't matter) if you find your bike bogging off the corners, you are going too slow through them, pick up the corner speed! What you are learning is how to carry momentum, and the only way to do that is with skill, the motor doesn't help and the brakes obviously hurt. If you do find yourself on the racetrack, you already have the hard skills, the rest is easy, just add gas and brake dust.

Why would someone try this yellow-bellied-safety-vest-and-skirt-wearin-style? well, it is the safest because your speed down the straights is slower so there is more time to spot hazards (like wildlife,gravel, parked cars), your riding buddies can keep up even if they are less experienced than you, you get your report card in every corner, the residents on your favorite road never yell at you, you are relaxed so you may enjoy the ride more, you never overshoot a corner on the brakes, and once you get the hang of it, the size of your motor doesn't matter even a little bit.

Once you get the hang of it, you can actually move along at the same rate as the throttle jockies, without the throttle... and then you just add throttle.

Nick Ienatsch was probably the first to write about this style of riding back in the early '90s, (in motorcyclist magazine) but many of us were riding that way long before that.

Try to make one steering input per corner. After any speed adjustments you may need to make, (brake, gearchange) try to just give one quick shove on the bars to intiate the turn. If you have done it properly, your bike should track all the way to the exit without any further changes, if you find you need to make further changes then you did not gauge the corner accurately. Work on it, you'll get it!

DO NOT go faster through a corner than you can react to impending doom (potholes, animals, gravel, oil, chickens, even a guy doing pushups in the middle of the road , yes, I have had all of the above!!) If you find yourself hitting crap midcorner or being surprised, you need to slow down and pick your corners better. I have even heard of riding groups sending a rider ahead to set up little paper "debris" so they could practice avoiding unexpected abstacles as a group. Dumb hurts, and motorcycles don't say sorry!

Try not to keep the revs too high in the corner. With the revs high in the corner you risk spinning the rear tire and possibly a highside due to the increased presence of the motor (both forward thrust and backtorque) and the diminishing level of grip. The revs will also rise on their own due to the smaller radius of the side of the tire compared to the center. Plus, with the revs lower you get less force acting on your suspension, letting the bike actually work with the bumps. This is a huge advantage.

My corner usually goes like this: I brake(even just a little to get the fork to compress,thus steepening the rake) turn in, roll on the throttle smoothly to level the chassis,start rolling on more at the apex.. (note: you can regain traction for a drifting/sliding front tire by adding a small amount of throttle. Unlike dirtbikes, a streetbike can easily overcome front grip by transferring too much weight forward)

Use the rear brake to settle the chassis, especially right before you pull on the front brake. Using the rear brake will lower the bike slightly, if you do this right before you use the front brake, the bike will resist a nose wheelie.

Use your feet. Push on the outside peg, especially if it your riding on a wet surface. This stabilizes the bike significantly.

My theory on why: By pushing on the OUTSIDE peg you anchor yourself to the bike better, plus you subtract from the downward Vector by pushing across the lean centerline and add to the centripetal vector (by pushing on the inside peg you add to the downward vector. The added centripetal vector puts a bit more downforce on your tires...or something like that.

While on the subject of feet, keep your feet out of the way of the ground! I see this all the time.I know it's cool to drag your toes and that many put their toes under their shifter when cornering and hang their foot off the right peg, not good! The ground can grab your foot and drag it backward and sometimes under the bike! plus it can really hurt you! And still on the foot subject, I had to hold a guys leg together last year (the lower part was literally dangling by the skin and muscle) because he stuck his foot down on the pavement while he was doing 50kph(30mph), while wearing running shoes. The grip from running shoes is great while at running speeds, but too great at those speeds! Get proper armored boots! Not only do they protect from impact (in a fall at speed you feet turn into pendulems that break up all the little bones (I have experience in this, I broke most of my toes and metetarsals in a bike crash from not wearing armored boots)) but they have less friction in the soles so they don't grab.

Use your legs. Your legs give you a stable place to live on your motorcycle when going fast. Use your legs for all of your weight shifting (side to side, back to front) to keep your weight from finding its way onto the handlebars when you aren't trying to turn.Your legs also anchor you when you are pushing the bars when turning or braking.

Keep your weight off your bars. So many reasons for this, mainly that your bars can't tell if you are just leaning on them or if you really want to turn. It can also mean the difference between a tankslapper and a small headshake. I hear so many people talking about how so many of todays amazingly capable sportbikes are "slap happy" or "twitchy" this is all because of poor body positioning and having a tight hold on the bars. I hardly ever actually wrap my fingers all the way around the grips. To use a Hockey term, have "soft hands" Another basic truth: if you fight the bars, you add your bodyweight to them.If you are in a mild 'slapper and you grab on tight you will increase the magnitude of the 'slapper.

Keep your elbows bent. Bend your elbows and stick them out a few inches from your body (make them about a shoulder width and a half wide) Stiff arming your way around a corner doesn't work very well. Bending your elbows but keeping them near your body works a bit better, but a good power position is with the elbows up a bit and out.

Think about who is giving you advice.You can tell alot about a rider just by glancing at his tires :If he is telling you he is fast and his tires have "chicken strips", not only does he not know what fast is, his advice may get you into trouble. My little piece of advice in this matter: don't ride with these types. Normally they will go way too fast on straightaways, maybe do great wheelies, rip through residential areas, and may do silly antics to prove how gifted they are, this trouble will sooner or later find its way onto your seat.

Look where you want to go, and do not look at your buddy while he is ditch-surfing. Two words: target fixation! have you ever noticed that if you look at a rock in the road you always hit it? you train your body to automatically react to what your noggin says, so if your noggin is targeted on that rock, your finely honed body goes for that rock.

Look along way ahead. There is a term "riding the front wheel", this means that the person is looking at too short of a distance and cannot react to upcoming events and goes slower because of it. All you have to remember is: Look where you want to go, 30 seconds before you get there. This also cures "Tunnel Vision". If you do get a bit of tunnel vision (sometimes if you get going fast your vision seems to narrow until it feels like you are going through a tunnel) just look around a bit (but not at obstacles!

Think about your lines. There is a type of line that is called "classic racing" that is: (for a right hand turn,on the street)) go to the furthest left of the lane, turn in and be at the furthest point to the right of the lane at the apex, and then move to the left as the turn opens up at the other side. The problem with this is that there may be gravel, and that gravel will be built up in the center of the lane (between the car tracks) and the "classic" line cuts right across the gravel line while you are vulnerable (you may even be braking there!)

Also try to use a line that lets you see as far up the road as possible. Maybe go in very deep (nearer to the apex than the "classic line") and square the turn a bit with a quick turn then power out.

As you can see by the picasso-esqe image below, the "classic line" (the red line here) is faster because you carry more momentum, and works great on clean pavement but spends more time in the gravel and exits wide, and the "going deep" line (the blue line here) is much slower but spends less time in the gravel, exits tight and lets you see further down the road before you commit. In this instance the classic line rider either lowsides on the gravel and gets run over or exits into the car that is cutting over the line.Either way, the deep line rider gets home first!

Build error for eventualities into your lines. Don't go into a corner commited to a line that doesn't have any escape from potholes, gravel, big bumps, or any allowance for tire slippage. The "going deep" line is great for this, the classic line not so much.

Relax. Ya wanna know what will surely make you faster? really? it is so easy that most people miss it: relax, that's it, just relax. Make yourself think that you are going slow. Sometimes I even hum a tune with a repeating rythm that fits the timing of the pace of the road I am going down. It is funny, I'll catch guys that have reps as fast guys on the latest/greatest on their favorite roads while they are cutting and thrusting and I am just sitting behind them humming "the sun will come out,tomorrow dadadadeeda... tomorrow..." and wondering why they are working so hard. When we stop they are wide eyed and panting while I am nearly sleepy. It's not that I could simply just flick my wrist and dissapear into the sunset, just that I didn't have to work for it and that my mind was clear and available to deal with surprises while going at the same pace.

Do not compete! I have to say this again: Do not compete on the street! not only will you hurt people (hopefully just yourself) but you will look stupid! And once you do get that reputation as the fast guy that you have been risking yourself for, you have a target painted on your back! People will make up stories of your misfortune, when they see you on the backroads they will go at 150% of the pace they are really capable of to see how they stack up, and they sometimes will do just that: stack it up in the ditch! Then you find that you can't just ride around in the back of the group anymore because everyone wants to see you ride off in the distance. It's just silly! Take the low profile approach. (I've done both, the low profile is way more fun!)

What can Harley rider do that sportbike riders can't? ride in a group!

No free launch. Not a particularly useful skill for the street rider, but when was roadracing I found that I had crap for launch so I started dragracing with my roadracer. I found that it is fun to do as many things with a bike as is possible and I had a blast. This is what works for me: I put both feet down, (a tip from Colin Edwards) put my chest on the tank to put some weight down in front, slide my hiney back as far as it will go to put weight on the rear for traction (basically just getting my weight low and over both tires) get the revs up to the torque peak (different from the hp peak and usually much lower rpm) and hold steady throttle, when the flag (or light) drops I keep the throttle steady at the torque peak and just feed in the clutch as quickly as I can without letting the tire get more than a couple inches off the ground.

Slip slidin in the rain. Rippin in the rain can be tons of fun, a great learning experience, or just terrifying. I myself, really enjoy riding in the rain.For me it is a great builder of concentration and smooth bike control. Here are a few rain riding tips:

Use a taller gear than you would usually use. This will smooth out any power spikes that may threaten wheelspin and lessen the forces on your rear suspension so your rear will be more supple. The main drawback with this is that if you muck up and your tire does spin up wildly, it will spin faster than it would in a lower gear because with a taller gear ratio the tire goes around faster with every engine rpm than if in a lower gear.

Budget a little slide into your lines, just in case.

Keep a couple of fingers over the clutch. Rain tends to make the road slicker, when the road is slick you may spin the tire. When your tire is spinning you don't want to just chop the throttle because the backtorque may keep the back tire sliding, but if you pull in the clutch you can stop the spinning without the backtorque.

If you have the time, soften up the suspension (mainly the damping settings) because you will not be going as fast as you would in dry conditions so the forces are less.What I mean is: if you are in a turn at dry speed and your suspension is perfect and the tire rolls over the bump with no upward movement of the chassis and rider (tire goes up and down but the bike doesn't) and the tire never leaves the ground, then it rains and you ride over the same bump at less speed and less downforce without changing anything then your suspension won't compress as much (since it is set for higher downforce) and will bump the chassis up and lift the tire off the ground and you will have a loss of traction.

Work on the little things like using your feet more, using the rear brake a bit more, concentrate on making smooth inputs, make as few inputs as possible, see how gradual you can brake and roll on the gas. In the rain it's the abrupt things that get you in trouble. This stuff pays off when you are on the limit of traction in the dry as well!

Oh shoot, you overshot! The classic straight black line that paints a dark line from just before the apex off to the nearest ditch is the sportrider's billboard saying: "A newbie overshot here" and since there is no way to save face if you happen to have your bike in a heap at the end of that black mark, I'll mention a few things that have helped me when I put myself in that situation.

#1 is keep cool. It is funny how many times you see somebody lock up the back tire in panic over a corner that is no harder than the ones he just did just because the little scary fairy woke up and yelled "too fast!!!" at just the wrong time.

Use target fixation to your benefit. Look where you want to go and don't freak out at the other distractions.

Practice trail braking from time to time as preventative medicine.

Don't chop the throttle, you will need every bit of front tire traction, so a sudden weight transfer isn't very good. Plus, if you chop and turn at high rpm you may wash out the front AND the rear!

Put the bike up as verticle as possible to put as much tread on the ground if you run across painted lines or crud on the road while trying to brake and turn as absolutely hard as possible.

Keep in mind that your bike is far more capable than you are, so in emergency, just lean it and trust your machine!

If there is no way to stay on the road, look for something soft to land on (cattle do not count) If you have done all you can with braking and turning then you have scrubbed a huge amount of speed and hopefully changed your tragectory to nearly parallel to the exit of the turn so most of the stuff like poles and trees are passing by parallel to you instead of getting closer, or if a rock wall, you will get a glancing blow instead of a flat splat

Here is a bad case scenario:

OOPs! too fast, roll off, brake super hard while still verticle, letting off to trail braking as the bike turns into the corner, rider leans way off the inside, still not going to stay in lane, just stand the bike up to get more tread on the ground over the painted line and lean it back down, hopefully get it turned before going into the ditch, get back into lane, check back to see if your buddy saw it, pull over and make up something about crap on your tire, buy everybody lunch ( a good no crash/overshoot rule for riding buddies)

A worse case scenario:

The overshooting rider did everything he could, but he still ended up making his V twin a V four! oncoming traffic is your worst problem if overshooting badly.

Knee draggin for braggin.The idea behind hanging off and dragging knee is to keep your center of gravity towards the inside of the turn. The advantages of all this are that you can go faster around the corner by using less lean angle (so then you just go faster so you end up using it all anyway) and your knee works as a feeler to tell you your lean angle (so you know when you are about to drag parts on the ground) My body position goes like this:

Elbows bent, torso leaning slightly forward, head level with the ground, body shifted only one cheek of my sculpted buttocks to the side of the bike on the inside of the corner, I relax the inside leg and just let it hang down and if I am over far enough it just drags on the ground. Hold yourself in position with your outside elbow on the tank and your outside leg on the side of the bike and footpeg (keep your weight off your hands!)

Knee dragging seems to be a mark of achievement for sportriders, but it doesn't really mean anything (if you are flexible enough you can drag your knee while going in a straight line!) There are plenty of guys out there that feel they need to hang wayy off and try to force their knee down just so they can brag over coffee about their exploits and have the scuffed knee skid to prove it but here is the kicker: you can tell by the angle of the scraping what they are really doing, if the scraping goes from the top of the skid down they are reaching, if it goes more from side to side and is more worn on the rear of the skid than the front then they are really leaning over. (so now I can see that anyone who reads this will start wearing their skids sideways)

Hanging too far off isn't any good, not only is your body in the way if you do try to lean the bike over but also if you hit a big bump while you are out there in the breeze you might just fall off your nice shiny bike.

A tuck is not a duck! Just in case you find yourself in a 200+ kph wind and your engine isn't pushing you forward fast enough (for..whatever reason) you may want to look at your aerodynamics. I see tons of street guys in these, ahem, high wind conditions just hunching up on the tank hoping that they can make themselves smaller than the windshield. The better way is to slide your hiney back on the seat so your body is more parallel to the ground while your chest is on the tank with your legs gainst the side of the bike and your elbows touching the sides of the tank. If you want to go even a bit further in making a smooth air splitting missile lift your bum up a couple of inches, this is sometimes good for another 200 rpms worth of efficiency.

Here is a little story about me, (History lesson)
When I was just getting the hang of going fast, I used to be a loudmouth about my "abilities" and would basically accept any challenge handed out by anybody, anytime.
I thought I was pretty quick, and nobody that I rode with could keep me in view for more than a few turns so I must have it figured out. I basically would use full throttle out of every turn, then mega brakes into the next, and I would push hard enough in the middle of the turn to drift both tires, I thought to myself that I must be a 2 wheeled god! but then it happened...
One day an early 80s era BMW actually passed my in a technical section, I couldn't believe it! how was that possible? that bike had half the power and clearance (although he was grinding the heads on the ground) as I had on my Race rep and yet this guy was getting away! I talked to the older gent when we stopped (Thankfully, the race rep had the straights covered) and he said that with his old beemer with its steel tube frame and skinny tires he couldn't do "all that fancy riding" that I was doing, so he just had to "keep her slow and steady", then he complimented me on how fast my bike was. (This guy had obviously been around the block and here he was looking at this red faced squid kid and was nice enough to leave it on a positive note) To my credit, I humbly asked to follow him and learn what I could from him, and I learned more following that 65 horsepower 550 pound behemoth on those skinny little tires that afternoon than I had in all the riding up to that point.

My point is; your bike has abilities well beyond what any of us can fathom if ridden correctly, but if it is ridden badly it is a slow assed piece of wobbling, sliding crap. Think about how I was riding to the "limitations" of my bike while the guy on the clapped out old tech bike was calmly sitting behind me riding to the strengths of his. Now think about what would have happened if we switched bikes? (I probably would have taken up knitting)

I shut down the loudmouth that day, because that day I was offered a glimpse into what I still had to learn.

Every year I listen to some new hotshot praising themselves with stories of sliding tires, scraping pegs, lack of chicken strips, etc. and I always take a second to relive that moment when that old guy on that old beemer rode passed me as if I was just turning into the church parking lot and I say to myself "That squid is me"

Take me to the home page

Nicky Hayden started racing when he was very very young. After racing a RS125 in wera before racing a GSXR600 for hyper cycle. He went from there to the Honda satellite team ERION Racing where he won the formula Xtreme title, then he went to the factory Honda team where he won a AMA 600 supersport and a superbike title. From there he went to the Honda Motogp repsol team where he won the 2006 MotoGP championship despite finishing the final race with a broken shoulder and a bent surgical plate on his collarbone from when his TEAMMATE crashed them both out of the second to last race while Hayden was leading the championship against Valentino Rossi.

Nicky Hayden is also a very good dirt racer, having won almost all types of flat track or TT races held in the U.S. At this time he is only a mile flat track win from being one of the very few "Grand Slam" winners in U.S. history. Not bad for a guy that makes a living on pavement!

Nicky Hayden has two very fast brothers: Tommy and Roger.Both have won Races in AMA pro racing. Tommy won the 2004 600 supersport championship with roger a close second.Tommy also nearly won the 2004 1000cc superstock championship,where Roger also was a contender.