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Torco1
12/23/2013 2:32pm
12/23/2013 2:32pm
Edited Date/Time
12/25/2013 9:21pm
I hear this all the time and I was wondering what it even means? How do you even gauge if a bike is being ridden to its full potential? Would it be redlining the motor in every gear? Does it mean bottoming out the suspension over every jump? Does it mean wearing the tires out? It seems silly to say the bikes aren't being ridden to the fullest. Have you seen pro's practice bikes? Pro's destroy bikes the way they ride them. They wear parts out on bikes that the normal rider wouldn't even think was possible. So again, I was just wanting to see if anyone can tell me what it actually means to ride or not ride a bike to its full potential.
I think it Matthes talking about Yamaha testing data acquisition when he was a mechanic there..? Pretty vague, sorry.
All I know is I can destroy a TTR125 like no other.
The Shop
If it was possible to ride a 125 to its full potential then there would be no need for anything bigger, but the fact of the matter is the rider will always be the machines limiting factor and not the other way around. I'm not saying that a 125 is as fast as a 450 because it isn't but if a rider can only use 80% of a 125's potential but can use 50% of a 450's potential then they'll be faster on the 450.
Top riders would over-ride a motorcycle and either break it or learn to slow down to go faster.
There has been loads of interviews with riders like Decoster asking him why he was so smooth - his answer was often that if he rode hard and hit all of the bumps the bike would break in half or the suspension would kick him off the motorcycle.
Top riders during the 125 days could ride a bike to the limit and get away with it - and often times if they over-rode a bike and keep a flow flow - they would be slower. Some bikes back in the day if you tried to push them too far, they would tell you to slow down or toss to you the ground the next lap if you did not listen to it.
TODAY: Racers attempt to ride the bike to the limit but as you can see, when they go down now it is way more violent and nasty compared to the 70s- 80s or even 90s.
The motorcycles are so advanced compared to older technology - the bikes are probably better than most of the riders in the world. That is why a SX racer can make a main event on stock bikes with limited changes, suspension setup being the number one. The bikes are so good that by the time you have passed a limit it is too late and there is little time to slow down or make corrections before it spits you off the bike. RV has learned to push the limits of his motorcycle and his ability — most of the time gets away with it, yet even the best get hit the ground now and again
Today riding a modern 250f or 450f to the limit doesn't happen often and if you think you are, odds are your talent ran out long before the bikes performance and handling has reached the top.
Pit Row
Great Logic.
Example.......go to your local MX track....watch the fastest pro there wring the living crap out of his 450.......is that bike at it's full potential? Answer : NO! Then take some guys like RV and Stewart....have them lap that poor local pro guy 3 times in a 30 min moto........you think either one of them is riding that bike to it's full potential? I would assume probably not........but it's probably damn close.
NONE of us on this board and 99% of the top pro's on this planet can not take a 450 to it's limits.......of what it's capable of doing.
Get it?
Just when you think some guy is riding his bike to the full potential........some other guy is a hair faster......so the bar keeps getting raised. So far....the machines are ahead in the " Potential department " compared to humans!
Having ridden and raced in the 60's to present you're spot on in my opinion.
The only time I ride to my limits is in my dreams and usually wake up a bit wet....LOL
in the context of this discussion , however, its more philosophical than physics.
anyone can realize a bikes top speed potential.
a lot of people can realize a bikes acceleration potential on pavement
some people can realize a bikes turning radius potential on pavement
fewer guys can realize the bikes turning radius potential on dirt
even fewer guys can realize the potential of a bikes ability to absorb bumps without hurting or upsetting the rider
almost no guys can realize the full potential of traction or acceleration on dirt.
now, start compounding those elements and it becomes exponentially difficult to be at all of those potentials all of the time.
I think only a few guys in the world can get near those limits on current factory hardware.
here's where this discussion losses it way though; when the threshold of "full potential" is raised, so does the average baseline.
new tech and more refined equipment can still make someone way faster, regardless as to where they are at in regards to reaching "full potential" of the current hardware.
i.e. a guy riding a 60's mx'er at 99% of its potential is still gonna get lapped by a guy riding a modern bike at %90 of its potential. that makes this whole discussion erroneous
I would like to argue that whatever the best guy in the world can do is the current "full potential"
"potential means what is physically possible. Like the limits of traction, acceleration, the ability for the suspension to absorb impacts without hurting the rider, turning radius per given speed, stopping distance."
"I would like to argue that whatever the best guy in the world can do is the current "full potential"
This basically states that the racers and test riders determine the full potential of the bike, after all, they are what develops the current and future technology ...
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