[The Debrief] 16,900 laps without a crash – how?
[The Debrief] 16,900 laps without a crash – how?
We all want a better laptime, but we also don't want to crash. The two aren't incompatible, and together help guarantee your success on the track. Turns out you CAN have your cake and eat it too!
First session, first track day of the season at The Ridge Motorsports Park, and there was already a red flag. My quick assessment of the new, freshly crashed GSXR1000 in the pits had the damage at an easy $5k. Bodywork, subframe, gas tank, pipe, dash, and all of the right-side controls were wiped out. Not a great sight. The bigger bummer was that the rider didn’t even make it past turn 3 on his outlap; his event and possibly much of his season were over before they even started. Luckily, he was unhurt, and as we spoke he told me he had big plans for the 2-day event. He had a laptime goal in mind in addition to trying out updated suspension settings. I asked him why he thought he crashed, and without much reflection he shrugged and said, “Probably cold tires, we had to wait in hot pit for a while before heading out.”
While it was great that this rider had a plan for his event, there was clearly a significant disconnect between those goals and his headspace going out for his first laps. Cold tires or not, his crash was completely avoidable. Per the five reasons why we crash, it was evident that the rider hadn’t heeded at least a couple of them.
I’ve crashed enough in my life to know that it’s near the top of my “Things I don’t want to do” list. It’s not that I have a fear of crashing, but to me personally, it represents a catastrophic failure—the potential injury, cost of repairing equipment and gear, loss of track time, not to mention embarrassment; all absolutely suck. Moreover, chronic crashing is simply not a sustainable way of staying in our sport. You might be thinking—but isn’t crashing an inevitable part of riding a motorcycle? We all know that there two kinds of riders: those who have crashed and those who are going to. And isn’t crashing just part of the process of testing our limits, like we see with the pros?
I get it! Crashes happen, and there are times when they can be out of our control, for instance due to a mechanical issue or if someone takes you out. But the majority of crashes that happen at the track are entirely preventable and within our control, and have little in common with the crashes that occur during pro races, when riders are trying to extract the last percentage out of themselves or the bike, hunting for those last tenths or hundredths of a second. How many MotoGP riders crash in turn 3 on their outlap? My focus is to help prevent these unnecessary crashes, while simultaneously helping you meet your laptime goals. This is the ultimate dilemma of our sport: no one wants to crash, but we all want to go faster. I want to convince you that these two things are not mutually exclusive—in fact, reducing your laptime without sacrificing safety is an important metric of success on the racetrack.
I recorded a podcast on this subject in early 2020, after a crazy statistic emerged from the Rick training program: in 2019, the program’s final year, we had zero crashes over a total of nearly 17,000 riding laps. Not a single instructor, student, or guest pro rider fell down, yet nearly all of us set PBs at every track we went to. And, to be clear, we didn’t set speed limits or make everyone ride in rain mode. So how did we make this happen? The short answer is that it was accomplished through consistent, deliberate focus. Every session, every lap, and every segment had purpose; there wasn’t a single moment on track that we didn’t have a plan for. The more in-depth answer is explained in the podcast below, with lessons and takeaways to apply in your own riding to avoid crashing and interrupting your season, while still working on that quicker laptime.