SV650.org - SV650 & Gladius 650 Forum - How not to ride on the road?

Quote:

Originally Posted by specialone (Post 2637029)

Few things IMO.

Some of the corners they were cutting weren't visible enough IMO, if a car was speeding from the other direction they wouldn't have seen it until too late.

Stuff like that doesn't belong on the road, no margin for error, no reaction time if something pulls out / goes wrong.

When you actually watch them closely, the middle rider isn't very smooth at all, corners are taken like a hexagon rather than a curve.
I'm crap compared to most, but their riding was erratic, jerky and like I said not very smooth.
I've seen / rode with smoother riders doing similar speeds off here and these were pro riders?

I'm glad they weren't in this country.

Shakey on the Duke was straightening out more corners then the other two, and taking the racing line a lot more, and a lot of them were blind. He looked like he was having to do that to keep up at the back, but then he was running into the back of the bike in front a lot (see next paragraph). At some points he looked like he was being held up, at others he looked like he was trying to keep up. He'd have been better giving himself more room in front and having his flow interrupted less, he'd have been less frustrated and enjoyed the ride more. There's nothing worse that being held up by the bike in front on the bends, and then they pin it on the straighter bits so you can't get past. When that happens on rideouts I just pull over for a break and let them get 5 mins ahead.

The bike in front wasn't riding very smooth and was threepenny-bitting a lot of corners, but neither of the two at the back were giving themselves the room in front to read the corners properly in the first place. You can see this guys brake light coming on mid corner, and Shakey constantly running into the back of him. I think his head was probably also in a bit of a mess, he was worried about running wide on the narrow road, worried about his knee running off the road and catching something on the inside, and worried about his head hitting the vertical banking on the inside on a couple of occasions as well.

In the middle of the video it says Shakey leaves the other bikes behind, "because the Ducati is just that good". Load of bolox, the bike is quicker because Shakey is taking more risks, and he's using the racing line across the whole road, rather than sticking to his own side like the other two.

Rob Frost, hearing the bike decking out like that on a track is fine, because you are there to ride the bike right to the limit, that's racing. But to hear that constantly on the road and choose not to heed the warning, then bin it as a result, you've got to be a bit of a prat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by skeetly (Post 2637020)

I wonder if anyones going to say how rubbish they are....

Me! They may be damn talented riders and fantastic on a track, there's no doubting their skills handling a bike, but the thread title is "How not to ride on the road?". Just 'cos somebody is a successful racer, that doesn't suddenly make them a god of all things biking. Road riding, especially riding at close quarters in a group of bikes, takes a completely different set of skills, and those skills are about how you use your noodle, not how well you can handle the bike, and those guys in that video, were sh!t. You can't just take skills off the race track and dump them on the road, with no adjustment.