INTRODUCTION:

I'm constantly meeting people at the track who are really good riders, in an effort to ride faster they are constantly attending track days, practice and test days.

From my perspective and frustratingly I notice that there improvements are or have plateaued, in other words there progression via the lap times has stopped reducing yet they have a way to go before they can reach the leaders of the pack.

In many instances they ask themselves. Why are the leaders of the pack that much faster? and they just keep on pushing harder, often resulting with crashes that dents confidence, injures riders and breaks bikes.

Often when I ask what adjustments they are testing the answer that comes back is " nothing, I bought a new shock but haven't changed anything since I've had the bike". "Not even the clickers" I ask. "Nope same settings that arrived with the shock"

In this case the shock came built for the specific bike/rider and from a fantastic supplier so he was lucky.

So I'm going to write a few articles via this web site and hopefully help some keen racers and maybe raise my own service work.

I need to state that in some instances or all instances, you may not agree with me, that's fine but just go and do your own thing,

The topic is so intense, to the extent that at the higher levels of competition riders have race engineers who have mastered the complexities and can avoid getting bogged down with progression. If you spoke with these engineers I imagine they would admit to sometimes still losing there way a little but experience has taught them how to return to base camp.

However at our levels we just go to the track and blast around, having fun, We must be competitive and progressive people or we wouldn't do it. We travel on our bikes at speeds that make calculations of all the parameters immediate, which in turn accelerates our confidence and competitive nature.

Many will trawl the internet for bike information and riding techniques, some will attend rider race training, a huge benefit to all racers. I have known many hugely successful racers who constantly have rider training. If you like it is like a professional golfers swing, the golfers are constantly monitoring the process from A-Z.

However there are many that don't, they often don't know where to start, it is these people that I hope will benefit from my writings.

CAUTION:

Always stay focused on the fact that as your speed increases or lap times decrease, so will the need to adjust bike settings, suspension and rider position. If when you go to the track day you are not trying changes to set up but simply putting fuel in the bike, checking tyre pressures and maintaining things like brakes and tyres then you are never going to improve or catch those front runners, An inadequacy in your suspension set up may (when compared to a faster rider) presently not be an inadequacy. So learn not to jump from pillar to post, dont change something simply because Joe has and he is faster than me. Go to the track day with a plan, don't go with the intention of lowering lap times, these will come down as you improve the setup which in turn will give you later braking points, easier turn in under braking, faster mid corner speed, getting on the gas earlier through better traction and steering and higher straight line speeds.

We love to race, and I think we all would love to race at the front.

It is my intention to write articles that give conclusions without leaving the reader wondering what to do next, as mentioned the process is complex and one is constantly making trade-offs between the front of the bike (STEERING) and the rear of the bike, ACCELERATION.

So in conclusion hopefully I can write is such a way and with progression that the reader will gain an understanding and master some of the complexities.

First thing the rider (Racer) needs is a note book, there are some simple headings you can include and these I will cover and give examples with my first article. At first you may find this notebook a waste of time, please persevere, it will give great reward and often when you become lost in the myriad of settings you will have a reference of which you can return to.

Try to avoid simply scribbling notes as these a month later can lose there meaning or be lost in translation.

Regards Leigh Paulin.

FIRST ARTICLE STILL TO COME: we will include the following.

1) Starting a note book.

2) Simple headings or records.

3) A short and simple overview of possible handling scenarios with suggestions of symptoms and corrections. The intention is to give you a quick reference page for the track and to lay the foundation for better understanding of dynamics..

USING THE NOTEBOOK

Okay off to the shop to geet my notebook, wait, “Notebook” make it more of a book than a soft covered notebook. Hopefully it will last you for years so it needs to be sturdy and large enough to record a days racing on one page. Often there may be more than one bike so the book may need sectioning so think about a hard covered book. Some use a clip board with specific sheets that they staple into a book form etc.

Now you need to have various headings and room to write info and make notes. Items to consider are following but with experience you will reference to your needs.

Start with. LOCATION: DATE: WEATHER: AIR TEMP: TRACK TEMP:

BIKE: GEARING:

TEST / RACE 1

FRONT TYRE NEW WORN AGE PRESSURE - OUT PRESSURE - IN

REAR TYRE NEW WORN AGE PRESSURE - OUT PRESSURE - IN

FRONT SUSPENSION: LOW SPEED COMP: HIGH SPEED COMP: REBOUND: PRE-LOAD: SPRING WEIGHT: OIL LEVEL: FORK HEIGHT: SAG:

REAR SUSPENSION HEADINGS SAME AS FRONT: Have 3 or 4 sections for Tests or Race like TEST / RACE 2 TEST / RACE 3 etc.

PERHAPS IT WILL LOOK LIKE THIS

‍ Lets Consider a few notes: Why record tyre pressure OUT and Tyre pressure IN. Okay if a tyre comes in at a different pressure than what you go out on then the handling of your bike will change during the race, As the pressure changes the bike may come to you (get better) or go away from you. If you know the PSI changes then any suspension / geometry changes etc will help you with understanding performance gains or losses. Its interesting to listen to riders adding a lb of pressure or taking a lb out yet what happens during the race appears to be irrelevant.

Most Racers will heat tyres on warmers to a setting of around say 80*C. This is the setting of the warmer, not the heat in the tyre and also consider the surface of the tyre, that which sits next to the heating element will be much hotter than the rubber 1mm under the surface. Now consider the 2 min call sends you into activity and you ride out to the dummy grid and sit for say 3 minutes, now you ride the out lap, dawdling around behind all those early bikes that present themselves to the starter. Now you wait for another 3 or more minutes while stragglers find there Grid spot. You may notice some “RACERS” time the track entry just before the track closure, they now have clear track, able to keep the pace up on the out lap, roll to grid position and have minimum delay prior to race start.

So now guess which riders or pits crews are monitoring out and in pressures and temperatures and who clearly have a strategy. Consider different Tyre compounds as well and the recorded information just may help you understand if the tyre is better or worse for given track temperatures, There is no limit to the advantages you gain from having a note book.

NEXT TRACK DAY why not focus on a section of performance, be it tyre temperature, tyre pressure, sensing through your feed back on track what is happening, this to is a learnt process, recording notes for you and your PITT-CREW to chew over, don’t have a PITT-CREW, consider getting someone, I am sure you will all have friends chomping at the bit to help your racing and one things an absolute known. “You cant do it on RACE TIME.”

SEE the next blog: UNDERSTANDING your BIKES GEOMETRY 1. coming soon, give us a few likes and the update will come sooner rather than later. ‍

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LATEST BIKE BUILD: F3 or sportsbike#

It all begins with an idea. Follow this blog for updates on the latest bike Build.

Firstly take a Yamaha YZF R7 2022 and strip it completely. Then do some removing of unwanted frame parts, (Photo1) Then from past knowledge visiting teams overseas we learnt that to put a suitable stroke shock with a reasonable Top-Out spring we needed to have more room and so while the Sub-Frame is left intact at the chassis, modifications to allow for the shock and Link-Arm and later fitting of fairings is comprehensive. Then the Link-Arm came under scrutiny as well, when we plotted the Link Arm Travel it became apparant the speed towards the later part of shock travel was to fast and so modifications were made.

The Swing arm came under attention as well, the swing arm flex is way to much, the flex comes very early on in the corner dynamics and adding an extra bearing helps to reduce this flex, the the swing arm mounting within the frame is nothing more than production shop basics so this came under scrutiny and modifications as well. While at it lets make the pivot point adjustable height wise.

All modification items are available through the KIP web page.

That brings us up to date, stay tuned, as we progress with the build.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.