The Quick-Turn and Quick-Lean
Aug 12th, 2008 by Leo
What would you say to faster and quicker turns that were also safer and fun?
The easy part of riding is going straight…fast. The hard part is turning… The natural inclination for most people is to make as gradual a turn as possible (see the “lazy turn”). This makes us feel safer for some reason, and you don’t have to get the bike leaned over as far (or so we think). The problem with this is that you drive into turns leaned over without being able to see what’s around the bend. There could be a car double parked, or a truck, or someone crossing the street right around the bend. This is why EVERYONE unanimously recommends later turns: you should be able to see down the street before you lean your bike over. But this means quicker turns which means you need greater control over your bike and more accuracy and confidence in your ability to steer. The benefits to this are: you can see what you’re driving into before you get there, and you spend less time leaned over which means you have more time to brake or gas giving you more control. This not only makes sense riding on the street, it actually makes sense on the track too because the earlier you straighten out the earlier you can get on the throttle.
But these quicker turns mean you need to lean over farther don’t you?
Not necessarily. Not if you combine them with quick-leans. Now this part isn’t quite as relevant to the street because you shouldn’t be going fast enough to really NEED this, but less lean angle is always desirable: less lean angle means you have more room for slides without crashing, less lean angle means more stability. So how do you make quicker turns without more lean angle? The trick is to get to your lean angle quicker. Most lazy turns consist of a gradual lean where the lean angle increases as you approach the middle of your turn. You can probably do the same turn quicker and with less of a maximum lean angle if you could snap to your desired lean angle quickly rather than gradually approaching it.
So for instance if a turn normally takes you 5 seconds to negotiate, being leaned over the whole time but only reaching the maximum lean angle for one second – you can probably make the same turn in 2 seconds or less by just hitting your “maximum” lean angle. By “maximum” I don’t mean the maximum that your bike is capable of, I mean the maximum lean that you would have employed for the lazy turn.
So there you have it, less time leaned over, less lean angle, or both with added safety and control. Cheers!
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