Over-Riding: The Unwanted Approach
Over-Riding: The Unwanted Approach
If there’s one thing that many (if not most) riders can be guilty of during their quests to go faster, it’s the mistake of over-riding.
It’s true that in order to go faster we need to push past our barriers, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this.
In this article I want to cover some of the typical things that result from pushing past our limits in the wrong way and over-riding.
Charging Turns
The most typical result of over-riding is that riders will charge into turns, taking in too much speed.
Everyone knows that as a general rule for riders working their way up the track day ranks, in order to go faster we need to brake later and carry more speed into the turns.
This is a massive oversimplification, but it is something that will be in the back of most track day rider’s minds.
Because of that, riders are constantly trying to overstretch themselves by being super aggressive at the start of the corner in an attempt to brake as late as they dare and take in as much speed as their senses will allow.
This can (and often does) have detrimental effects to their corner entry.
They may think that they’re riding as fast as they ever have before because it just “feels” faster, but it only feels fast because they’re now stretching themselves and have nothing left in reserve mentally.
This doesn’t instantly mean faster lap times, as I have found on many occasions.
The detrimental effects I alluded to above are:
- The rider will often end up taking in LESS speed than they did before because they’ve left their braking so late that they’re doing all of their hard braking right on top of their turn point, meaning they overbrake for the corner.
- Because they’re still hard on the brakes at the turn point, the rider will end up taking a shallower entry line because they can’t steer as fast, leaving them going wider on the exit and unable to get back on the power until much later.
These effects can be seen again and again by riders who want to take more speed into the turns and feel that charging into them all guns blazing is the only way to do that.
What Is Too Much?
Now, taking in ‘too much’ speed can actually be witnessed from the novice group, right up to the fasted guys in the fast group.
The issue isn’t so much about the actual speed being taken in and it’s not about a simple number where anything above that is considered too fast.
When I say too much speed, I mean too much for what the rider can handle.
Once the rider enters that zone where things get all too much for them (as a result of the speed and their less polished visual skills), then that’s when the detrimental effects I detailed above will start to appear.
For that reason it is better to work at increasing your corner entry speed by getting off the brakes earlier, not on them later.
By using this more correct approach it will keep you further away from that limiting zone of “all too much to take”.
How’s Your Energy?
Another detrimental effect of over-riding is getting tired.
Riders that try to ride aggressively will tend to ride stiff, tensing their muscles for longer periods of time than necessary.
In many instances the riders won’t know they’re doing it (because their brain power is maxed out) but often find that their upper bodies in particular become very tired.
This is obviously going to have a bad effect on your ability to move around the bike, but also your mental ability, because with fatigue comes poor judgment and poor reaction times.
This means that not only will you be more prone to silly decisions, but also that you won’t be able to deal with the mistakes as well should they occur.
This is not even mentioning all the negative effects that riding stiff has on the bike and your ability to use it how you want!
What is the Real Limit?
When you hear riders on TV talk about being on the limit – often referring to a pole position lap or during the last few laps of a race – they aren’t talking about being on the limits of their ability, they’re talking about being on the limit of what the bike and tyres are capable of.
I feel this could be a reason why riders feel that in order to go fast, you need to have that feeling that you are right on the limit of what you can do.
Surely if you are in that zone then you must be going faster, right?
However, like I said that doesn’t automatically mean faster lap times as it can often bring about unwanted effects.
And how effective do you think a rider can apply and practice different skills when their brain power is maxed out by being on this limit?
When a world level racer is ‘on the limit’, they are still in control and aware of where they are and what the bike is doing.
When you see them going wide in a turn because they started braking too late, for example, this is simply because they know that if they had continued to try and make the corner and hit their apex they would have crashed.
It isn’t because things got all too much for them and they lost control. This is very rarely the case as their sense of speed and visual awareness is so highly tuned that they hardly ever feel completely out of control.
They are not over-riding themselves, they are simply over-riding what the bike is capable off.
Track day riders on the other hand have a tendency to over-ride themselves, putting what they are capable of on the limit.
But while being aggressive may get you near your fastest lap times, it really doesn’t make the implementation and learning side of things very easy.
For a track day rider, ‘on the limit’ basically translates to, zero attention left for anything else because everything they’re doing, seeing and feeling is taking up all of their attention and brain power.
And when your goal is to go out there, learn something and improve, you’ll find that being in that over-riding zone won’t help you achieve that.
There’s a good reason why training schools tell you to knock it back a touch when trying to learn. This coupled with a simple game plan (one goal per session) means you have plenty in reserve to not only learn, but potentially go faster in a more comfortable zone!