Until I saw this video featuring Mark Marquez, I really didn't grok how much of a slide is happening in GP racing because the racing is incredibly fast and the riders are necessarily unbelievably smooth. From the video, I see he's drifting hard and so eloquently.
Lotho said once after some GP work on a track that he was ok with sliding one wheel but not both of them so that was when he decided, ok, no GP racing for me and that was it; he walked away from it. I'm not willing to voluntarily let either wheel slide so he was already way ahead of my race.
This is all out there in a world of such immediate and unbelievable danger but ... wtf ... live fast and die young. I'm glad I didn't but it is exciting, isn't it.
Wind in the face.
Lotho said once after some GP work on a track that he was ok with sliding one wheel but not both of them so that was when he decided, ok, no GP racing for me and that was it; he walked away from it. I'm not willing to voluntarily let either wheel slide so he was already way ahead of my race.
This is all out there in a world of such immediate and unbelievable danger but ... wtf ... live fast and die young. I'm glad I didn't but it is exciting, isn't it.
Wind in the face.
I was never at even club level racing. The Sweeney kids became quite avid club racers in the 600cc Superstock AMA class.
ReplyDeleteI threw my FZR away lowsiding twice trying to slide that bike.
That's interesting about the Sweeney kids since I didn't have much contact in that time as that was most likely during the Army period.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you had ever dropped the FZR and kind of thought of it as a charmed bike which never goes down.
It was a beast. I never hurt it lowsiding but did have to replace the body panels.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed like it must have been close to the perfect high-speed motorcycle and that must have been some prime riding
ReplyDeleteAt the time I thought it was.
ReplyDeleteNow they have track ready bikes that are street legal
That seems like it makes things too easy. When Doc built his Edgewater car, I don't even know how long it took him but he did that rather than buying it somewhere and that I see as much cooler.
ReplyDelete