RoadRacing: Vitaly Karpov: "One can fight with the fear only in the course of racing practice"
On January 14 in the Moscow office of Yakhnich Motorsport the next seminar in the frames of the series “The professional racer’s secrets: Basic rules of motorcycle piloting” took place. It was conducted by the champion of Russia, a participant of The Finish Championship and The German R6 CupVitaly Karpov. More than 20 beginners and experienced racers took part in the seminar. In spite of the “elementary level” of many topics a lot of unexpected and interesting issues were discussed.
First of all Vitaly distinguished city (road) riding and track riding: “They have nothing in common! It turns out that racing experience is even more dangerous in the city than its total lack. And on the contrary, everyday road riding experience is absolutely useless in track racing. That is why the majority of motorcyclists who have big riding experience turn out to be second-rate racers on the track. It is the matter of complexes which have developed in the city and on the road, they prevent a racer from “opening his mind”, getting rid of biases and from accelerating… Any racing track is much safer than even the most deserted highway. On the whole circuit motor racing is a quite safe kind of sport even if it may sound strange”.
Karpov considers fear to be the main reason for slow progress in track racing: “Fear is the main problem. When a person rides a bike for the first time he is afraid, he is tense and constrained, so the first riding experience often ends with falls at the minimum speed and even after stop! The same thing happens on the track. Let’s take corners, for example. “The golden rule” of motorcycling says: “You are riding in the direction of your looking”. In the races especially when the track is full of corners this rule becomes the most important of all. Beginners, for some reason, always look straight on even while cornering. It seems to them that they are riding very fast (it is natural, when you look straight on!). But in fact their speed in the corners is minimal. As soon as a person makes himself look in the right direction while entering the corner he accelerates involuntary. Looking into the centre of the corner you don’t see any barriers, you see only the road and turn by intuition, following the track direction.
Step by step the braking points shift nearer to the centre of the turn. Then the fear passes off and the beginner starts “riding”. How to cure fear? To get more scared! (it is a joke to some extent). I don’t know. Only by training, experience which a person gets in the course of time. You can listen to the explanations thousand times, but only once having understood it, you can “turn off” one more “locking device” in your head.”
One very interesting and deep question was also discussed in the frames of the seminar – what to begin track riding learning with? Of course, there is no simple answer. It depends on many factor such as age, physical fit of a person and so on. But the technical aspect was explained by Vitaly in the following way: “In my opinion the best way is to begin with a mini-bike. In the first place a mini-bike helps to understand how to sit on the sport-bike properly, how to move on it, to regulate your weight on the footboards while braking or accelerating. In the second place it is relatively safe and you can go through all the stages of learning much faster. In the third place it is available all year round. However, you mustn’t “stay too long” in mini-motorcycling! There are some reasons for that: mini has absolutely different limits, it has neither suspension nor gear-box, and the skill of using them is very important for successful racing. The best variant is to ride a bike for example in the city and practice on a mini-bike at the same time. As a result you make double progress.”
Where is it better to practice if you want to achieve real progress? The question didn’t stump the experienced sportsman but it took much him time to answer it. Here are some statements: “Where? Of course in the racing circuit! Unfortunately we don’t have them in Russia… Myachkovo? It is not quite suitable for sport-bike racing. You cannot find stable rhythm: fast straight lines are followed by extremely slow corners. European tracks are all different and in motor-racing the main “relish” are those corners where you can overtake fast, beautifully and technically skilled without losing your rhythm… In Myachkovo the successful performance depends mostly on the knowledge of the track and muscular memory than on racing skills.It takes a lot of time to get good results in Myachkovo, but then when you come to Brno, for example, you have no idea how to ride there! You are overtaken by everybody, exactly in chicanes, long slow corners, even by the youngest pilots riding bikes 125.”
In the course of the two-hour seminar different questions concerning right choice and preparation of a bike for racing were being discussed. Besides some aspects of RMF technical commission work were broached. But this topic turned out to be so deep that a special seminar of the series “The professional racer’s secrets” is likely to be dedicated to it. We will inform about its date in future. Follow the announcements on Motogonki.ru!
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