Retarded Body Positioning

Soooo…yeah… everyone knows that I’m a total poser/camera whore. Everytime I’m riding and I see a camera, I immediately turn into a Ricky-Racer-Wannabe-Badass.

Anyways, I’d never had a photo taken of me in turn 7 at Thunderhill before. I’ve been telling Toe for a few months now “I really want a shot of my in turn 7…because, like, my body positioning is different through there. I feel like I have my outside elbow up really high to help control front end drifts…”

Ken Hill was following behind me recently with his NON GoPro HD camera *snickers* and shot about 1/2 a lap of me before blowing my proverbial doors off and checking-out on me… I was really surprised by what I saw in the video, to be honest. I’m carrying significantly more lean angle through 7 and 8 than I’d previously thought. I’m also nearly dragging elbow at apex of both turns. It’s not that I’m TRYING to…it’s that I’m hanging off the bike pretty far to try and minimize lean angle on the tires.

So anyways, to get back to retardation… Matt got a shot of me in turn 7 yesterday while at an open trackday…well, just as I was exiting turn 7, but still…all the signs are there…

weird body position turn 7 thunderhill

Aaaahhhhkk-waaard!

Every time I go through turn 7, I sit way up over the bike and my outside elbow points straight up to the sun. I don’t do that through any other turn…just that one.

When I’m posing for the camera, I look like this:
joe dragging elbow turn 2 thunderhill

And when I’m just riding around normally (not being a poser), I look like this:
joe dragging knee inde motorsports ranch

The thing is, when I’m going through turn 7, WFO throttle, I feel totally comfortable, and totally in control of that bike. Not like turn 11 where I find myself just trying to get slowed down enough not to screw that corner up, or turn 6 where I’m always apexing too early and just never feel exactly right and am nervous about getting on the gas…

I’ve always based my body positioning mostly on how to reduce lean angle. I focus a lot on footpegs, weight transfers, et cetera et cetera… I’ve spent YEARS working on it and listening to people much more experienced than myself… Logically, I KNOW that there’s different means to an end…they each have their pros and cons, for sure. Perfect example is Haga vs Bayliss. Both fast as hell, both completely different, both with merits, both with flaws..

Maybe there’s a little more to being retarded than we all thought, huh?

Facebook Comments

6 Comments

  1. I’ve still gone faster riding crossed up than with “Correct” body positioning. I say if it works, let it roll. You can correct it when it becomes a problem.

  2. Author

    i don’t worry about my suspension at all. dave moss set it up for me, then dialed it in for me. my suspenders work flawlessly around the track.

  3. Not that I have more experience here, but how much of your focus is directed towards suspension setup? Everything I’ve done on my own bike seems to be riding around my suspension geometry (and of course trying not to scrape pegs, shift lever, etc–different story there). My biggest strengths on the track are braking and turn-in whereas my problem is in corner exits. I am riding with what I believe is a poor rear suspension geometry.

    Is turn entry/exit as nice for you as the middle corner areas?

  4. At least you dont take a right hand turn in the middle of turn 2!

    1. One way to compoensate for the utiiitles low dividend growth is to reinvest the dividends as long as you don’t need the income. The coumpounding effect of those dividends will result in an actual growth of the paid dividends.When you reach the point where you need to income, you then simply stop reinvesting the dividends.

Leave a Reply to Kev Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *