Skills school: Steering the right course

PART TWO: PRECISION STEERING

If you want to experience the joy of cornering, then knowing how to steer is critical. Sounds crazy – but are you doing it right?

WITH DAVE HEWSON CHIEF TRACK COACH
Dave’s done a 123mph lap of the TT, rides an Aprilia Tuono V4 on the road, and is crew chief for Rapid Honda’s British Superbike

Welcome to the second instalment of MCN’s Riding Masterclass series. Having covered cornering lines last week, the experts at Rapid Training now turn their attention to steering, which sounds like an easy skill to master, but in fact limits the progress of most road riders. Like the other seven instalments, this one is based on Rapid’s hugely successful road and track coaching, which combines the knowledge of their team of elite police-trained coaches and their British Superbike and TT riders. And when it comes to steering technique, racers can teach road riders a huge amount.

Steer consciously

For many riders, steering is an unconscious act and they are not entirely sure how they do it. But if you don’t understand how you’re steering, you can’t improve.

The key issue is that slow steering inputs cause the bike to run wide on corner entry, forcing you to slow down or use additional lean angle to compensate. While a slow-steering rider is slowly moving their bike onto its new line, the fast-steering rider is already carving hard to the apex. That difference can be critical. Your steering can also affect stability – rough inputs and unnecessary corrections destabilise the bike when it’s already in its least stable state, and the faster we go, the more important these two effects become.

How to counter steer

In its most basic form, counter steering is pushing the left bar to go left, and the right bar to go right. But at Rapid, we discovered that our BSB racers and elite coaches use a more sophisticated method. Firstly, they give the inside bar a firm, crisp push, not a long, gentle one.

Secondly, they only use one input per corner rather than multiple adjustments. And finally, after the single push, they relax their grip and let the bike carve round the corner. We call the technique Precision Steering because that’s the effect it has.

Push forward not down

The most common counter-steering error is the push direction. If you push down on the bar, nothing will happen. But if you apply a tiny amount of forward pressure on the bar, the bike will turn sharply…

Read more on how to perfect your technique in the latest issue of MCN, head to stores to grab your copy now, or subscribe to MCN so you can keep up with MCN’s Riding Masterclass every week.