21 replies to this topic

[tonyed]

Shoot me down in flames if I am wrong but I am sure it used to be (at least an ACU rule) that riders in road race events had to keep both feet in contact with the foot rests during a race, obviously to prevent the prevalence of US 'dirt track' style riding,  which would make the current 'Doctors' Dangle style illegal.

 

I know riding styles change, witness the knee out style of say Wadda in his hey day which must have provoked some debate. However the DD is coming so pronounced with some riders that it appears to interfere with the 'sliding up the inside' out braking maneuver. I for one will laugh meself sick when one of the exaggerated exponents gets his leg taken away and finishes up on his backside.

 

Opinions, Gentlemen, please.      

[larryd]

Go back into the 50s, Tony, and recall Ray Amm with foot  down, and not always in the wet!!

[275 GTB-4]

Do you ride?? A dab here and there can do wonders for staying upright!

 

I have no problem with DD so long as it is not used to block in an un-sportsman like manner

[Robin127]

If I remember correctly the rule requiring both feet to stay in contact with the footrests came about when Randy Mamola started lifting his outside foot off the peg when cornering.  I think it's one of those that just sort of disappeared over the years, like the lockwiring of filler caps and the beading around the edge of the screen.

 

One rule that always annoyed me was the one requiring that touring in if one had a problem wasn't allowed, you had to get off the track there and then.  This was put in place after the accident involving Reinhold Roth, in light of this it was a good rule, however, I only saw it applied at club events, safety conerns should cover every level of the sport.  It was this double standard that I didn't like.

[tonyed]

Do you ride?? A dab here and there can do wonders for staying upright!

 

I have no problem with DD so long as it is not used to block in an un-sportsman like manner

I don't have a problem with the odd dab for safetys' sake I have done it myself but it is this deliberate movement which with some riders like Jonathan Ray and Chaz Davies where the leg is almost horizontal at times. The raising of the outside foot off the rest is becoming another feature and apparently, according to the pundits, puts more weight over the rear wheel, like the DD moves  weight to the front wheel.

 

I propose that like in trials riding 'footing' should earn a penalty.   

[ERIC63]

About 10 years ago,a couple of riders with Super Moto bikes started entering Preston Club meetings at Three Sisters.The track was originally designed for Kart racing and I think was once described as  a series of roundabouts joined together by bends.It's not very wide,so most overtaking there is up the inside on the brakes.Because of the foot down style used by these riders,it became almost impossible to overtake,so the rule there was that feet had to be kept on the pegs when cornering or risk exclusion from the results.Don't know if this was the ACU rule being implemented or a club rule though.

Edited by ERIC63, 06 June 2015 - 07:53.

[Paul Collins]

I'm pretty sure that the rule requiring riders to take up a position with feet remaining on the footrests was there right from my first handbook back in the late 70's,

 

I have heard commentators recently starting to refer to riders using the leg to 'make themselves as wide as possible' during battles, which I think is not only wrong but is likely to lead to someone getting a leg wiped out eventually!!

[tonupdave]

One of the old rules which must have been repealed was if you came off the track you had to go on in the same place....Very difficult...

[Paul Collins]

Yes I think the re-joining rule was changed some years ago to say that you must not gain any advantage from off track excursions, hence you will often see riders letting people re-pass them if they have run out of road and cut a chicane.

 

The touring rules were tightened up after a couple of serious accidents, its now frowned upon, and pushing in is also tightly controlled now, I live about 500 metres from the finish line of the TT course and riders pushing in from Governors Bridge are chased quickly onto the pavement by the marshals and a yellow flag is displayed.

[tonyed]

I'm pretty sure that the rule requiring riders to take up a position with feet remaining on the footrests was there right from my first handbook back in the late 70's,

 

I have heard commentators recently starting to refer to riders using the leg to 'make themselves as wide as possible' during battles, which I think is not only wrong but is likely to lead to someone getting a leg wiped out eventually!!

Could redesign the bike to have both  wheels at the front spaced at the same width as the length of the wheel base of a traditional solo bike to make it wider legally, a sort of two wheeled monocycle. 

 

I have just patented this design along side my 6 stroke internal combustion engine which produces (per cc) one third of the power of a two stroke engine with 40 times the number of components at ten times the production costs. I am in touch with Carmelo Blatter of DORMA (Don't Organise Racing Much Anymore) to replace the 50cc class with a 500cc 6 stroke single where teams will be limited to a 2 billion $ budget.

With  the new chassis set up and the 6 stroker I see it replacing F1 as the most boring TV since Ant and Deks 'Saturday Night Scraping The Barrel' and 'Baffin Islands' Got Talent' (*Oh my Dog not another penguin impersonator, singing 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina') 

 

* Those of you knowledgeable enough will realise that Baffin Island is in fact in Canada which is in the Northern Hemisphere whereas Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere but on Saturday night who cares.        

Edited by tonyed, 06 June 2015 - 15:13.

[tonupdave]

I have beaten you to it just patented my V7 Segway.......Some minor mods to be made I am not sure if Wheely bars are allowed

[GD66]

Working beautifully, lads. I can think of at least two of Crutchlow's practice crashes that I felt could have been avoided if he'd had both feet on the rests. Then at Le Mans he crashed in the race when he rode over his own foot laying it into turn 4, frightening himself into involuntarily grabbing the front brake too tight. Yet to see any pics, but I couldn't help wondering if that may also have contributed to his crash at Mugello.
There's plenty of quick riders who don't do it, including Lorenzo and the bloke who stuck the bike into corners as hard as any I've seen, Ben Spies. So it's no more than a fad, and will hopefully trail off when Rossi eventually and finally packs it in.

[Robin127]

Funny thing is, that when Rossi is really pushing hard he doesn't do it.

[tonyed]

Watched the first race before being dragged off for a family BBQ and spending the first decent Sunday afternoon of the year drinking Retsina and eating steak (my doctor told me after my post operation tests last week that I was now 100% apart from slight anemia and too eat plenty of red meat, he also inquired of my imbibing habits where I informed him of my partiality for an odd glass of good Red, omitting, as you do, of informing him of the vast quantities of cheapo plonko also consumed, (statistics are everything).

 

Anyway from race one at the sun (surely rain) drenched Algarve not a foot strayed from the rest (unless of course you do included a dab from the bearded northern winger of a Kwaker on its first encounter with the precipitation).

 

Hallelujah they have been reading the posts and seen the light. All praise to Dog.   

[PJ52]

If I remember correctly the rule requiring both feet to stay in contact with the footrests came about when Randy Mamola started lifting his outside foot off the peg when cornering.  I think it's one of those that just sort of disappeared over the years, like the lockwiring of filler caps and the beading around the edge of the screen.

 

One rule that always annoyed me was the one requiring that touring in if one had a problem wasn't allowed, you had to get off the track there and then.  This was put in place after the accident involving Reinhold Roth, in light of this it was a good rule, however, I only saw it applied at club events, safety conerns should cover every level of the sport.  It was this double standard that I didn't like.

lockwiring of filler caps:  I recall a bit of irony with that one.  It was late on a wednesday? test day at Snetterton, and I'd just drained the fuel from both TZ's when Granty came up (who had been testing the Kawasaki in-line 250s), and said can I borrow your 250 for a lap or two as I want to compare vibration levels. As I say we were about 5 mins from track closure at the time. I got the fuel back in the tank, and proceeded to lockwire the cap. " NO NO dont bother with that, give me the bike......" and off he rushed. The irony being that Mick Grant got the locking rule introduced!

 

 

Tony: Well done  -  excellent thread, had me cracking up

Edited by PJ52, 10 June 2015 - 12:00.

[greg1953]

No-one will convince me that this leg waving has any real effect, it looks like a fashion to me, riders are copying the master but even he doesn't do it all the time.

Watch the BSB next time, riders appear desperate to get a foot off the rest even for a second at slow corners, Shakey at Brands going into Druids looked almost dirt track style.

I hate seeing it, it looks awful, thats why I like Sykes & Lorenzo.

Greg

Edited by greg1953, 08 June 2015 - 17:54.

[Robin127]

 

lockwiring of filler caps:  I recall a bit of irony with that one.  It was late on a wednesday? test day at Snetterton, and I'd just drained the fuel from both TZ's when Granty came up (who had been testing the Kawasaki in-line 250s), and said can I borrow your 250 for a lap or two as I want to compare vibration levels. As I say we were about 5 mins from track closure at the time. I got the fuel back in the tank, and proceeded to lockwire the cap. " NO NO dont bother that, give me the bike......" and off he rushed. The irony being that Mick Grant got the locking rule introduced!

 

 

Tony: Well done  -  excellent thread, had me cracking up

 

My brother and I found a way of lock wiring the cap so that it could be opened with the wire in place, all they did at scrutineering was check there was wire there not that it held the cap shut. Saved a bunch of time, can't for the life of me remember how we did it now.

Edited by Robin127, 09 June 2015 - 02:49.

[tonyed]

I seem to remember that if you passed the locking wire through the latch pivot pin then it looked like it was wired shut but wasn't.

[tonyed]

Resurrecting an old topic concerning riding styles and pointless technology.

 

Are the squat devices on MotoGp bikes there so 'short arses' can DD (doctors dangle) more easily, if  so should it not activate on corner entry rather than corner exit? 

 

I designed a similar system for my Crescent I raced in the 70s. I converted the front forks to run on air pressure only and had a valve that I activated in exiting the corner before a long straight so as to deflate the front fork and by lowering the front end reduce frontal area and wind drag. However I found it almost impossible to use the foot pump whilst braking and changing gear on entry to the next corner to re-inflate the front fork for adequate cornering ground clearance.

I also invented the inflating leathers to reduce injury when bailing out. With my suit it inflated using helium which meant that the crashing rider just floated off into the distance.

It never caught on as retrieving the rider from several miles away proved difficult.    

[Rodaknee]

Resurrecting an old topic concerning riding styles and pointless technology.

 

Are the squat devices on MotoGp bikes there so 'short arses' can DD (doctors dangle) more easily, if  so should it not activate on corner entry rather than corner exit? 

 

I designed a similar system for my Crescent I raced in the 70s. I converted the front forks to run on air pressure only and had a valve that I activated in exiting the corner before a long straight so as to deflate the front fork and by lowering the front end reduce frontal area and wind drag. However I found it almost impossible to use the foot pump whilst braking and changing gear on entry to the next corner to re-inflate the front fork for adequate cornering ground clearance.

I also invented the inflating leathers to reduce injury when bailing out. With my suit it inflated using helium which meant that the crashing rider just floated off into the distance.

It never caught on as retrieving the rider from several miles away proved difficult.    

You were so close to giving bike racers a unique solution to a serious problem.  If you'd had a few more pints down the Bomb and Dagger, you may have realised the solution would be to position the pump under the seat.  A couple of bounces down the straights would have put all the air back into your forks.

[tonyed]

I agree. all I needed was a development engineer. 

[Rodaknee]

Edgar Jessop would have been ideal, but sadly he is no long with us.