BIKE FEATURE CALIFORNIA SUPERBIKE SCHOOL: As GEOFF HILLfinds during his second round in the California Superbike School, cornering is all in the mind
‘WHOSE IDEA was this, anyway?” I muttered as I dragged myself out of bed at 4am to ride from Belfast to Mondello for level two of the California Superbike School.
“Yours, dear. As usual,” said my wife, and went back to sleep.
Three hours later, having almost died of hypothermia, I climb stiffly off the bike at Mondello to be greeted by Spidey, my instructor. The school instructors are all called Spidey, Flash or Hollywood, since bikers are simple creatures who do not need proper names.
“Hello, Geoff! You look bloody freezing. Still got that dodgy helmet, I see,” he says, brightly. “Andy’s up the stairs.”
Andy Ibbott, school director, is sitting behind the registration desk, looking alarmingly chirpy.
“Hello, Geoff! You look bloody freezing. What fine machine are you on today?”
“My wife’s Honda Shadow 600. All 32 horsepower of it. It’s a long story, but I fully expect to grind the pegs down to nothing and set Mondello’s slowest ever lap time,” I say, grabbing a coffee before the classroom introduction and first exercises: finding reference points, then experimenting with different lines by riding one lap on the right of the track, one on the left and one in the middle.
“That was the best session I’ve ever had on a track,” says the man next to me, upon our return.
“I learned more from that than I have in the past two years. Every time I race, I’ve been trying to figure out how to overtake. Just take a different ****ing line, that’s how.”
“Brilliant,” says Andy. “Right, a question: what do your eyes look for?”
“Booze, women and danger,” says the man next to me.
“Same,” says a man at the back.
“Quite,” says Andy. “In fact, your eyes are trying to kill you, because you look at danger spots, and go where you look.
“On level one you looked at the turn point, then the apex of the corner. Now, step three: once you’re sure you’re going to hit the apex, look at the vanishing point, the illusory spot where the sides of the road appear to meet.”
We go out chasing illusions and find ourselves surprisingly good at it.
“Well done,” says Andy, back in the classroom. “The next exercise is to get rid of the sort of target fixation that means when a car pulls out in front of you, you look at the car and hit it; or when you run wide on a corner, you look at the verge and hit that. This time, through the corner and out of it, keep your attention wide.”
I did, and the weird thing was, although I felt I was riding smoothly and in control, but slowly, when I got back into the pits Flash, the instructor, said I’d just ridden my fastest laps yet.
Back in the classroom, several other riders say the same.
“Im not surprised,” says Andy. “The funny thing is, if you try to ride fast, you brake hard and late into corners, and ruin the balance of the bike and the smoothness of the transition through the corner.
“On a good ride, you’re slow in and fast out, and although you feel you’re riding slowly, you’re actually going quicker.
“What you’re doing now is using your vision to create space in front of you, which means you can go faster.
“Every GP rider I’ve coached or met has one thing in common: better visual skills than the rest of us, which means they’re better at managing the space in front of them.
“Right, last exercise – pushing the bike away from you as you come out of the corner, so you get it upright and ready for full throttle quicker.”
After that comes the best bit of the day – lying on the grass warmed by both the late afternoon sun and a glow of satisfaction, with only one thing taking away from the perfection of that moment – the thought that I still have to ride all the way back to Belfast.
Still, at least it will be warmer than the way down. Especially when my wife finds out I owed her a new set of footpegs.
For details of the California
- Superbike School, tel: 0044-870 067 1061 or see superbikeschool.co.uk
- Bike News will return to Motors next week