One track mind - riding a motorcycle as it is meant to be ridden
How it feels to spend three days riding a motorcycle around a track as fast as you can
I first started attending track days back in 2012, with Indimotard Throttle Wide Open (T. W. O.), arguably the best track school in India.
My riding skills then were only mediocre, even though I had ridden on extreme terrain in Ladhak twice. I never had a level of confidence that would let me push hard.
A sense of tentativeness existed, due to having a very bad crash early in my motorcycling experience.
The story of how I slowly and painstakingly improved my skills to some reasonable level, over a decade and about 25 trackdays is too long to recount here, instead I’m going to describe what has been the best one I experienced this past weekend.
I had been riding my highly modified RC 390 since after COVID, having spent a few trackdays re-learning the basics on a cute little R15.
My lap-times had improved between 2020 and 2022 quite a bit, but there was this feeling of lack of control and difficulty with the RC.
It came to a head after I crashed with a tank slapper coming off a straight. The next trackday I simply lacked the pace I’d had before - I just felt like it was a non-stop fight with the bike with no way for me to exploit what it had to offer.
Having heard some good things about the Yamaha R3, and having been completely blown away by my earlier trackdays with a Yamaha R15, I started looking for one.
R3s are pretty rare since they stopped selling them in 2018 in India, but I found a fantastically well maintained one with barely 3500 KM on it, at a very good price, and got it at the end of 2022
No sooner than I rode it home, I had completely fallen in love with the blue machine.
I attended the February 2023 California Superbike School event on it, and for the first time I felt completely at ease on the track, with my mind completely relaxed.
Unlike the RC, this bike was completely practical for city rides, crawling through traffic, touring and even tackling some unavoidable offroad sections with ease. I racked up 6000 odd KM on it roundabout town and country over the past 6 months or so.
My plan was that the RC was still going to be my track machine and the R3 a daily workhorse.
This year due to many reasons, the MMRC race track had no dates available for booking from T.W.O, so it was only last week that I got to go on track after a gap of 8 months.
I rode over to Chennai on my R3 and had my RC390 shipped as usual - due to various reasons, this time the number of participants was not more than about 20, which meant that there were back to back sessions of about 20-25 minutes.
Those with enough fitness, could ride every alternate session, and rack up solid track time. In previous events it had always been that you could ride every 3rd session - due to the number of folks.
The very first session, I set off with great gusto on the RC390 and hardly after 5 corners, I was completely hating it. It felt like I was driving a diesel tractor after having driven a sports car.
Everything shook, jerked and just needed much more physical effort from me than I had expected and ever remembered.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the bike, nothing changed since I last rode it - in fact it is an excellent race build with top spec suspension, tyres, race tuned ECU, freeflow filter and exhaust, and what not.
But having ridden a few 1000 KM on the R3, my expectations of how a modern motorcycle should behave, were way past what this RC could provide.
I realized what a lot of Yamaha fans do - once you go blue, theres no going back.
So I parked my RC and got on the R3 - this is something I should have done 5 years ago!
It’s a stock machine, with no fancy mods, just good tires, haven’t even needed to adjust the preload since I got it.
It’s down by at least about 5 HP over the souped up RC 390 and at least 6 KG heavier. The seating is less aggressive, the handles much more road oriented. There’s not even a quick throttle or a slipper clutch.
And yet, within a few sessions I was not only scraping my right knee slider on almost every corner, I was within a 4 seconds of my best time on the RC 390 and doing it lap after lap consistently.
For the first time, I wasnt completely drained at the end of each session and was raring to go after the short break.
What changed?
Well, I have lost a bit of weight, and fitness levels improved a bit, but that really doesn’t explain why it seems so effortless now.
I have to give credit to the Yamaha engineers, they really know how to build smooth and fast machines. It’s almost like magic how the bike just does what you ask it to.
There is no sense of fighting it in any way, no punishment for small errors, no sense of strain while revving the bejesus off that smooth and (relatively) silent twin.
I had experienced this on the R15, but that is not a fast track bike by any measure, even if it is the best in its class.
On the second day, chasing my track buddy Ashutosh who was tentatively riding a Ducati Panigale with an unfamiliar GP shift, I managed to up my pace and do the fastest lap I had ever ridden on this track. And I did it twice in that session.
At that point all the typical race-lore tropes of “Smooth is fast” and “It’s all a mental game to ride fast” and “Go slow to go fast” fell into place. I could not only ride fast, I could also clearly see where I could go faster and plan how to do so with intent.
Three glorious days of riding with about a 170 laps in total.
Never had so much fun, or so many laps, and never have ridden so quickly and smoothly.
Now the rest of this post will be about how it feels (to me) on this particular race track on this particular machine.
It all starts with gearing up - track riding is serious business, and you need the best protective gear you can afford.
A full single piece leather suit, which easily weighs about 6 to 8 kilograms, and requires a fair bit of dexterity just to get in and out of.
Heavy ankle length boots with all kinds of high-tech shields and guards to withstand impact, scrapes, twists, or any other forces you may be unlucky enough to experience if you fail to keep the rubber on the road.
A light and modern race spec helmet - these are 5 to 10 times more expensive than the ones most commonly seen on the street - but you cant put a price on the safety of your brain!
Did I mention light? A heavy helmet is the worst thing to put on your head.
These helmets are also supposed to be snug - like really tight - quite impossible to chew gum when wearing one. You should not be able to move the helmet independently from or relative to your head.Associated inner full body liners to provide some sweat control and make it possible to wear and take off the leather suit with less physical effort.
There are 12 corners on MMRT, over 3.7 kilometers, each corner with a dozen nuances, visited over an over, never quite feeling the exact same way, no matter how many times you loop around.
We start off, leaving the pit lane parallel to the first corner C1, being religiously careful not to cross to the left of the white line drawn in the middle of the track, which keeps those entering the track out of the way of those already on it.
You immediately reach C2 - a sharp right angled turn, which seems to go uphill, but actually that’s an optical illusion - its perfectly flat - I actually tested this once with a water bottle and was shocked that it wasn’t sloping.
It takes a couple of corners to orient yourself and focus on the track, so C2 and C3 are usually sacrificed on your entry lap.
Then comes a deceptively easy looking chicane, but keeping your throttle pinned here is not the easiest thing, as you encounter dips and undulations just as your bike swings from left to right and back again. Depending on your bikes suspension and luck, the rear will buck and feel vague as it hotfoots over them.
Keeping the throttle pinned here is critical, since it leads onto one of the two main straights on the track.
You can lose a lot of time if you back off even a bit - the best strategy seems to be to straightline it and ignore the bumpy ride - some pros tend to go right over the kerbs, which apparently is less bumpy than the tarmac.
On a smaller bike like mine, you should be in the top gear you need for the track (5th in my case) by the time you point down the straight - at an indicated 145 to 150 kph on the meter.
It was on this section of the track that I had one of those “Marquez” moments. Barrelling down the chicane at a speed much faster than I had before, I entered the left “corner” onto the straight too early, and was leaned over and still drifting in a wide circle well after the point I should have been pointed straight ahead.
I went dangerously close to the edge of the tarmac, and as I braced for a crash in my mind, the wheels left the road and went on to the grass - I was at an indicated speed of 145 km/h (about 135 actual)
It was either the sheer momentum, or the fact that somehow the soft ground (from the previous days rain) or the gravel under the grass magically held my tires and I was back on track before I could even realize what happened.
Ashutosh, who was riding behind me then, had truly decided I was gonna wipe out.
I like to think it was the Yamaha which saved me, repaying me for my trust in it, by making what could have been a scary situation into a mere blip.
My adrenaline didn’t even surge, and I just went on as if nothing happened.
As you barrel down this straight you brake really hard (on my best laps I brake at about 160 kph indicated, 150 actual) to turn onto the left hand corner C4 - where some of the most fun parts of the track start.
It’s a fast left hander - requires extreme pace and good technique to touch your left knee down - have never quite managed that - left corners are tough!
There’s hardly any time to throttle out, before you turn right onto C5, a sweeping tight right hander. My lines on this section are always on the inner most part of the track, with just enough room to get my knee on the tarmac just outside the rumble strips.
This corner feels relatively easy - scrape scrape scrape the knee slider, continuously increasing throttle reaching wide open before reaching halfway through it.
Inner lines always need less lean than outer.
A brief “straight” follows next and a slight left, an opportunity to get your speed high enough so that the next right hand corner C6 has enough entry speed.
When a bike is turned rapidly with no power input, although speed remains constant, velocity changes. The centripetal force on the tire scrubs kinetic energy from the bike and the bike slows down quite a lot.
Typically, you can’t enter a corner on high throttle, you can only maintain a bare minimum or increase very gradually until you reach the exit where you should be at max throttle.
This means that more often than not, braking late, and entering at a higher speed will be the only way to get the mid corner speed you desire. It’s better (and easier?) to go from say a 100 to 60 as the bike automatically decelerates, than enter at 90 and try to get 75 midcorner by applying throttle.
Bikes will turn on a dime, if you let them. With modern chassis and sporty tires, the angle you can lean a bike without any fear of losing traction is quite surprising, the first time you experience it and later look at the pictures of you leaning.
You enter C6 a bit wide and fast, and no sooner than you lean the bike in, you have to start adding some throttle to remain at max lean. Once again, I am partial to hugging the inner line.
Knee down is very routine here and my focus was on doing this while keeping my knee a little closer in than my usual exagerrated position. I’m pretty sure I still have another 5 degrees of safe lean in the tires.
The corner is very long, and technically the next corner C7 is not really separated from this.
It’s one one of the few places where one can do MotoGP style overtakes on the outside - something I really enjoy when I manage it - especially when its a big powerful bike I am overhauling, simply because I can lean further than the other guy.
Almost all bikes are limited here to a corner speed that a 300-400 cc class machine can manage.
Mid-corner correction is something you get to practice on this relentless right hander.
The technique that works for me here (and in many other corners) is to push the entire torso into the inside, forward and down. This loads your front wheel, increases the precision of your steering input and lets you reduce lean angle even more than otherwise.
This is also the corner to practice the “sweeping” vision. There is nothing you can see but the neverending corner, you try your best to keep your eyes on the furthest part of the track thats visible without fixating on anything.
Technically C6 is where you first turn right and C7 when the track straightens out, but this is more like one big U shaped corner, long enough to give you time to think and observe your body position and other fine points.
The moment you see the track open out, about two-thirds along this bowl, you are at full wide open throttle, approaching the second long straight of the track.
The exit from C7 is not labeled a corner, but at the speed you reach it, it may as well be one. You have to be fairly leaned over full throttle and force the bike vertical to get maximum drive as you point your bike down the straight.
On a small bike such as mine, I let the bike drift to the extreme right of the track on the straight, to maintain speed and reduce the exit radius.
There are some undulations at strategically bad places here. On my RC, last year I had a tank slapper as I went over a dip in the track on this section and ended up crashing.
The Yamaha soaked up the bumps very smoothly no matter how fast I went through here.
This straight is downhill, it gives you a few seconds to catch your breath, until you get the dreaded sharp right hander C8. This used to be my least favorite corner because it’s really hard to find the vision point to look at further down until the last moment.
However, the February CSS training had helped me find a better way to tackle this corner - I would start looking early into the inner side of corner - even though the apex is late - and then tell myself to “hold… hold… hold…” for a few meters before turning in. At this point you would reach a point where you can see the marshals huts and a tall pole right at the end of the exit, which you can use to lock on to the correct line.
I remember a few years back, a very young Rajiv Sethu (competitive racer and all round champ of a rider) was practicing on his race spec CBR 250 and I was lucky enough to see him in action on this corner.
His technique looked really simple - he braked late and hard, let the rear wheel lighten and slide outward, pointing him exactly in the direction where he could just gun the throttle fully open, leaving a black comma on the track to mark this maneuver. Kids these days, I tell you!
By a few sessions I was religiously scraping my knee on this corner as if it were nothing - according to RaceChrono Pro, this is one of the highest G turns on the track.
The trick is to find the line to minimize this scraping and get on the throttle early.
A brief straight leads onto C9, a fast sweeping lefthander.
I used to hate this corner and struggle with it over the years, until the first time I attended CSS in 2019 when my extremely young and talented coach Travis Wyman, told me … ”Do you notice there is an access road with full tarmac that is at right angles to the outside of that corner? That road is where we coaches wait to see how you guys corner, If you want to impress us, get your bike as close to us as possible!”
No sooner than I understood what he meant, I would thereafter always let my bike go wide with full throttle, actually sometimes ending up a few inches onto the side road before coming back in.
For a smaller bike, this wide sweeping fast line is ideal. In fact sometimes I was so wide on the access road that had it not been for that road, I would be on the grass.
If you carry speed through here, you come to another corner that’s not labeled a corner. You might look at the map and think it is a mild bend, but when you are careering towards it at 120 kph, you have to lean and turn as hard as you can, even if you don’t brake.
This semi-corner leads to the tightest left hander on this track C10.
I remember years ago, when Shumi of Motorinc fame made his hot lap video with the R15 V3 on youtube for Overdrive, he commented “C10 is my nemesis” - it is that kind of a corner….
Firstly you feel like there’s no time or space to brake from the short straight that precedes it.
Secondly, you have to reset your body from right to left and brake hard, and also tip the bike over. You have to turn late, but the outer half of the track is really not the grippiest. Then the corner is super tight and you can’t see much ahead.
Lower gear and I always risk messing up the line due to poor throttle control.
Higher gear and I risk dropping the RPM too low and having the engine not provide enough drive.
As usual, you can enter much faster than you would think, the bike automatically slowing when you turn in.
You have to hug the inner edge to get in position for the next righthander. It’s the slowest, tightest corner and seems never to finish.
If you did it right, you can see the marshals hut at the end lined up right ahead, and open the throttle as much as you dare, and end up on the left side of the track with a good entry line to the next corner.
C11 slopes upwards since it leads onto a raised bridge (under which you ride to enter the track every morning).
When you have a curve that is flat until halfway and then slopes up, the inner edge gets a “kink” - the relative camber changes suddenly, and there is a kind of dip and step if you hug the inner line.
Riding at speed on the inner side will give you that “internal organs floating in your stomach” feel and a wallowing lurching rear end, as it dips and pushes while being leaned over too hard for the suspension to manage. Its not uncommon to have the wheel leave the ground and slide just a bit too if you are on a bike with a too plush rear suspension.
You learn pretty fast to avoid that and take a late apex on this curve, with generous throttle on small bikes (since its uphill from there).
The bigger bikes often lift their wheel up here as they crest the slope.
Down the other side of the slope onto what I think is the toughest corner of the track.
Perhaps because its easy to go wide and wipe out (as I have done)
Perhaps because of the uneven surface and dip close to the apex that gives you the heebie-jeebies as you hurtle over it.
Perhaps because as the RaceChrono app tells me, it’s the place where the lean angle is the highest (just a humble 48 degrees for yours truly, with body hanging off the bike).
Perhaps because this is where I have experienced the most number of minor rear slides.
Perhaps because nailing this corner sets you up for a very good laptime - the main straight follows, and then the fastest corner of the track.
If I need to do one thing, I need to do this corner consistently and get on the throttle early here.
This is also where I experienced another “Rajiv Sethu Special” all those years ago - he was behind me down the bridge, doing a good 20 kph higher speeds.
I only realized that he was there, when he took his bike off the track onto the dirt alongside, overtook me still while on the dirt, and accelerated way ahead of me before coming back onto the tarmac.
I asked him later why he took what seemed like an insane risk to me…
“Sir, we do these shenanigans all the time, it was the safest cleanest way to overtake without spooking you, no sweat” - he said (in typical street Tamil).
Dang! - That’s true respect for elders!
Once this last C12 corner is passed, you set yourself up for C1, my favorite corner - the one with the highest entry speed on the track and one of the longest.
Screaming down the main straight, I can reach close to a true 140 kph on a small bike before crossing the big entry arch made to look like a tyre, where the turn in point is.
When I first rode on MMRT in 2015, even 100 kph seemed too fast for that entry. As I progressed and learned, I came to realize that not only is braking unnecessary, even throttling down fully is unnecessary on this curve.
Over the years I have been upping my entry speeds into this. I dare to go in at about a true 140 kph now, but it seems like its possible to do so even faster, the curve is sweeping, the surface is good, and there’s plenty of room.
As always the bike slows down a lot when turning, by the time you reach the apex, so a little bravery when entering will reward you with a great exit, with very little extra risk.
After the initial thrill of entering the corner and tipping in, I usually settle into a comfortable smooth line dragging the knee lightly until the apex, sometimes rubbing on the rumble strips. This is where you literally hang off until you’re “under” the bike.
You kinda relax (if that’s even possible) waiting for the end to be visible.
If you get the bike picked up straight as soon as you see the straight, you can accelerate out onto the short straight really hard.
Your speed at this point is a good metric of how well you rode all the way from C10 because each of those corners done well, leads to increased pace on the next.
Then we’re upon C2, the one that you have to sacrifice when you start your session.
There is a painted white line across the track here - the best braking reference you can have, and you have to brake really hard to make the right.
There seem to be two ways to do this fast, I still haven’t figured it out (yes I’ve crossed that corner a 1000 times, but no one can say cornering at the limits of your skill is easy)
One is to brake late and hard, downshift and take a tight V shaped curve and use the grunt to get out fast.
The other is to brake a little softer, lean hard and take a sweeping curve trying to maintain cornering speed.
In both cases you can end up too far to the left of the track, ruining the next corners entry. It’s not easy to knee down here, but when you do, on the rumble strips, you know you have the pace.
It feels faster to go in a lower gear, but sweeping through Yamaha style is the faster approach - on a Yamaha.
Finally we have C3, another difficult lefthander (actually, all corners are difficult when you are riding as fast as you dare).
My approach has been to brake really hard, take the apex slow and throttle out ASAP.
There is a lot of room to run wide here - there’s a wide rumble strip to give you the extra 6 to 8 inches that will increase your exit speed.
I think I can vastly improve here - never got my knee touch here, but have scraped my foot-pegs - which means my body positioning is really bad on the left.
This is also one of the most important corners since the exit here affects your speed over the kinky chicane, the first straight, the entry into C4 and onto C5.
This was one lap, described as well as I could with my amateur perspective.
I write this not just for readers, both familiar and unfamiliar with racing motorcycles, or this MMRC track in particular, but also for myself, to remind myself and capture the feeling of these 12 corners, each arriving much too soon to really ever be comfortable, challenging you to focus intensely, non-stop until you did your quota of 8 to 9 laps in a session.
The physical exertion of track riding has always felt extreme for me, whether I was 32 or 42. Whatever fitness I had doing MMA, crossfit style stuff, running, lifting etc. seemed to be useless on a racetrack
Chennai is hot, you get dehydrated, you weigh 30% to 50% more due to G forces, you also have 10 KG of protective gear on top.
The mental effort of keeping 100% focus at close to 100% limits also makes you feel doubly tired.
After each session you gulp down almost a liter of fluid to stop feeling like you will just collapse from the heat.
This time though something was different. I put it down to just enjoying the ride on the Yamaha R3 so much. It felt less like a task and more like a game.
I had three “Oh No” moments
Sliding on a wet patch at full lean
Getting off the track on the grass at breakneck speed
Sliding the rear on the most scary corner fully leaned over
None of these three times, did I panic, feel that surge of adrenaline or lose composure over the next corners, laps or sessions. The bike just returned to its equilibrium with no sign of anything untoward, and I continued as if nothing happened - something that I never experienced on the RC 390 - which always felt edgy and unpredictable no matter how it was ridden, and punished you for the smallest mistake.
I would wholeheartedly recommend any budding racer to get an R15 or an R3 to save themselves a lot of pain and effort that other bikes extract from you.
I think I’ve reached an inflection point in my journey, where I know how to do things finally and no longer feel overwhelmed at speed.
Here’s to racing, our dear Indimotard TWO school, all my racetrack buddies and beloved Yamaha(s)
Until next time!
Hi
With your experience in track riding I want to ask your suggestion.
Myself have no track experience, don't own any sports bike till now.
I use a 150cc trigger for daily commute and also I had done some long trips on it. In my family there is another bike the Honda CB350 rs. So I am looking to buy a new bike and I am leaning more towards a sportsbike dream of 300-400cc. I was eagerly waiting for r3 launch last month and the pricing was a worry for me.
Besides looking for the new bike I am thinking about riding in tracks. So which one should I go for first. As both is expensive business in india.
Option 1. First go take a course in racetrack and get the racetrack licence
Option 2. Get a sportsbike and get adjusted to riding a sportsbike. Then later go for the course on racetrack.
Also the last thing to ask is since I am near to Chennai. Which school do you suggest
(Even if i am buying say a r3 or aprillia rs457 I don't wish to immediately take it to a racetrack. I think it will take years for me to have confidence to take my bike to the track)
Also I request one more thing from you. When the Aprilia rs 457 reaches the showroom. Please ride it and let me know whether it feels in the same league as r3 or just in the same as rc390