Stolen from slowpoke, stolen from www.tz250racing.com, stolen from bonelli
Passing as an art
By Gregg Bonelli
If you race very long you inevitably notice a pattern about races: You start, then you pass everyone you can, everyone who can pass you does so, and then you ride to the end and see where you finish. If you are a beginner, almost all your concentration has to be devoted to going fast and dealing with the track, not with other riders.
If you were not expecting to be passed, then when you are it’s somewhat startling, particularly if you were doing all you could and someone comes along and takes away a vital part of the track you had intended to use in just a moment. Passing and being passed in a turn is a moment of supreme risk.
Yet there are those who pass you without regard for your safety and intentionally set out to disrupt your riding just because they can. This was something I saw at AHRMA races this past season, which should worry all of us. The purpose of this article is to see what can be done about it.
Let’s begin at the critical moment of the pass—a faster bike approaches a slower one from behind. The speed differential may be due to rider skill, machine capabilities, track familiarity or any number of other causes. Whatever the reason, one machine is about to overtake another, and the manner in which it is done speaks volumes about the riders.
After a long racing career I am not ashamed to admit to being passed by some of the greatest riders of our time. As an AMA Expert I saw Kenny Roberts come on the scene as a Junior and dominate roadracing. I was on the grid with him and others who made it a habit to pass me at every opportunity. I would gladly have done the same to them, of course, but seldom could.
What I noticed about being passed by them was that I had to do absolutely nothing different than what I was already doing for a safe pass to happen. They came and went without bothering me in the slightest. I did not have to change lines or grab a handful of brake or even let off the throttle, because they had already calculated my speed and line and theirs, and knew it was going to work out. It had better; it was their responsibility to see to it.
Passing, then as now, is one of the skills that makes roadracing continually challenging. My job, as a rider being passed, is to maintain the integrity of their calculations by not changing anything. That’s right, all I have to do is press on as hard as I can at what I was already doing and I will be protected and safe. Of course, there is one factor with two expressions that can make all this go wrong—rider judgement. If the guy being passed changes something during the pass, and contact occurs, then it’s his fault. Changing your line or throttle setting or braking in a turn while someone is in the process of passing you is asking for trouble.
Why? He is faster here than you or he would not be passing. That being true, he has the only view of both bikes as he approaches and he alone can make calculations about where you will be when he passes. If you alter that calculation after he has committed to the corner and the pass, then you caused the consequences that come after. Simple enough: Protect yourself during passes by keeping on doing what you were already doing as if the other rider was not even there.
I know some of you are thinking that this is going to cause trouble because Joker “A” passed you at such and such last year, and if you hadn’t grabbed the brakes and avoided hitting him you both would have gone down. Maybe that is true for you, but this is about what the art of passing should be, not about some failure of it as applied to you.
I want to add here that there is nothing intuitive about this. When I hit the banking at Daytona on a TZ750 the first time and Roberts passed me a mile later at 180, I was petrified. I knew he was good, but I wasn’t sure I was good enough to be on the track with him. If I made some stupid unexpected move we were both going to pay for it, so holding my machine steady (and leaving room at the edges) was a necessity. I also should add that he would pass incredibly close, but we never touched. He just came and went, and I kept doing what I had before he was there. His was a standard I still aspire to today. (continued)
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