Better Riding: Corner with confidence

The BikeSocial Better Riding series contains articles, blogs and videos all aimed at ramping up your enjoyment of riding by being safer and smoother. We’re going to help you get more out of your motorcycling with this self-help series brought to you in conjunction with Honda Motorcycles UK.

In this episode we focus on how to improve our cornering confidence. There’s always something new to learn about riding and if we put the hours in to actively learn and practice the correct techniques then we can all become better and more confident riders too.

Our professional Motorbike Coach is Mark McVeigh – an experienced rider coach, an ex-MotoGP engineer, a riding academy owner for over 20 years and the inventor of motoDNA rider training tech. He’s worth listening to.

Better Riding – Cornering Confidence

 Take corners with more confidence with our pro guide

How do you corner a motorcycle with confidence – it’s not like a switch you can turn on?!

It comes from not just one thing but a fusion of the correct techniques and knowledge. There’s no silver bullet to becoming a better rider, after all it can famously take 10k hours practising correct techniques for mastery. You won’t learn everything in one video of course but let’s look at some of the key techniques so you can corner with increased confidence. 

Understanding grip is key to improving cornering confidence. If you consider that over half of motorcycle crashes are single vehicle accidents, which are often caused by a survival reaction when the rider doesn’t understand their limits or their abilities. This lack of understanding can result in an overaction and a panic to a sudden small problem that can lead to a big problem.

Above: grip difference when there’s load through the tyre vs. no load

What sort of problems might we incur on the road while riding a motorcycle?

Gravel, oncoming vehicle, running wide, the corner tightens unexpectedly. These are the type of issues that can affect your grip, so to understand the grip available from your tyres is key to increased cornering confidence and greater safety on the road.

The amount of grip a tyre provides is influenced by various factors including road surface, friction, tyre compound, tyre pressure, and temperature. However, when the vehicle is in motion, the primary factor determining the amount of grip is the weight or load on each tyre.

If there’s no load on a tyre it’ll slide across the surface while increasing the vertical load i.e. through braking, that increases the level of grip from the rubber massively. It’s a concept that if you get your head around, it can really help improve confidence in safety.

Above: see how the footprint of the tyre is affected as the suspension compresses under braking

How do you control ‘tyre load’ while you’re riding?

Essentially bike balance and weight distribution, that’s the grip between the front and rear tyres which constantly change as you ride. So when you use the front brake, the bike pitches forward and it puts weight on that front tyre which enhances the grip of the tyre. When the suspension is topped out (and there’s no front brake pressure being applied), the tyre footprint is quite small but as soon as you apply the front brake that footprint of the tyre on the ground increases which improves grip.

Then, as soon as you increase the throttle that takes the weight off the front tyre and starts to put it onto the rear instead. It’s important to apply that pressure progressively because tyres don’t like surprises.

One way to help understanding grip is an effective tool Mark uses in his school is a Traction Circle (also known as a GG diagram) as shown above. This demonstrates the process of a racer’s cornering technique, how they get the maximum grip from the tyre and the associated forces involved: from accelerating to braking to trail braking and back to accelerating once the apex of the corner has been negotiated.

The true racing line taken by a professional would see the grip limit of around 1.5G where the majority of the weight is loaded on the front tyre for maximum front-end grip, and therefore very little weight on the rear. 1.5G is about the limit before the back tyre starts to come up off the ground which, unless you name is Toprak Razgatlioglu, isn’t a good idea for maximum grip. As the rider starts to lean into the corner, they start to reduce the brake pressure just as the cornering force comes into play. The suspension is fully compressed which is where the forks stay until the apex, and even though the rider is off the brake by then, because the cornering force takes over, the fork height stays roughly the same. At the apex, and after deaccelerating, the rider is thinking about getting back on the throttle, the cornering force is at its maximum. Once the bike is vertical then maximum acceleration can be applied.

As a new or inexperienced road rider they tend to separate out braking, steering and throttle inputs because that’s how they’re taught. But if you’re a more experience road rider then your corner could look like this:

The different technique increases more safety margins and leaving a lot more room for error. As the rider approaches the corner they’re at neutral throttle and applying the brakes while upright, and the force here could be 0.3G. There’s little trail braking and the engine braking is still involved in slowing the bike, then as the bike begins to tip into the corner the throttle is still neutral and the speed is being maintained. The cornering force comes in early, before the apex, with neither acceleration nor deacceleration, because once the rider has assessed if the road ahead is clear they can start to pick up the throttle which removes the cornering force and the bike gets back to vertical which is a big difference between the racer’s graph and from that we can start to understand how far the road rider is from the limit of tyre grip.

How can we better understand grip when riding?

We use a lot of cornering avoidance drills but that’s in a controlled environment, as is the Figure Eight, but the more practice with the correct techniques the better. It builds muscle memory and automatically becomes your default if your faced with an issue on the road.

All the modern bikes can stop at over 1G, even using knobblies on an off-road bike. The advancement in electronics (rider aids, especially the braking systems) and tyres has been phenomenal. We rarely-if-ever practice emergency stop situations yet building that muscle memory and being able to trust your ability and that of the bike too could well save your life.

Very simply, the more we practice with the right techniques, the better we’ll become.

What is the best line around a corner?

The second fundamental with corning is the ‘safety bubble’: a system for dynamic cornering which is a defensive-yet-dynamic method of riding. Imagine a safety circle around you when riding – as hazards increase around you, the bubble gets smaller and, using a traffic light system, the safer green becomes amber and then red. More of that in a moment, but first let’s look at lane position.

When approaching a corner, lane positions 1, 2, and 3 depict your safest approach. 1 being closest to the outside of your lane and 3 being the nearest to the central white line and therefore oncoming traffic. This allows you to optimise your view through the corner and allow the most time to react because the more we can see, the more information the brain can utilise. A wider line also means less lean angle and less risk giving yourself more space. The nearer the central white line you are, the more you’ll need to lean and therefore the more of you and bike will actually cross into the oncoming lane. Remember this: see and be seen.

What are the benefits of using the safety bubble?

It’s a system that is intuitive and can make your riding flow much nicer by using the riding fundamentals; see and be seen, positioning, be able to stop in the distance that you can see. So, it becomes more systemised and intuitive. The other benefits means more lateral movement in your lane which is really good for increasing your visibility to others and reducing that motion camouflage. We’ll be talking more about the safety bubble in detail in the next episode.

The Better Riding series continues next time with episode 3 where we’ll be discussing how to pick the right line, every time as we delve further into the safety bubble.

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