‘Struggling with the bike’

They are struggling to keep up with the competition, it must be the bike.

Haha, not sure ask Sexton.

I think us mere mortals often don’t understand just how small the percentages are at the elite level. Whether it’s mental, physical, or the bike.

Roczen said he was able to feel the difference between a kickstarter on his Honda and the E-start. I don’t think they’re “struggling,” rather  wanting more out of the bike. 

 I have a clapped out Honda SL125 that I occasionally “struggle” with. I would love to “struggle” with a new Star Yamaha YZ250F . I would be happy to struggle my ass off on that thing.

Tondel, Fineas, and Harrison are a several seconds a lap off the pace of the top 5, I think it is when you get into rarified air of elite speed is when the smallest of details matter.

Hear me out: These bikes are setup to go race pace. When a rider isn’t comfortable, sick or just not able to ride the pace they do in practice, everything feels off. 

When everything feels off, the rider is only capable of whatever pace they want to go and it isn’t race pace. 

The delta between race pace and comfort pace is probably 2-3%. It’s not much on paper but it’s a lot on the bike. 

When one gets older or recovering from injury, the comfort pace becomes more preferred but the bike setup stays the same. 

Would love for any journalist at least once to ask the second level question: "what do you need the bike to do better and what are you willing to sacrifice in setup to get it?" None of these journos ride, and nobody knows a thing about bike setup except JT$, but he's too bashful. 

No. They rode the fucking thing. Honored their contract of keeping their mouth shut and complained or made their excuses years later. We raised pussies, proven daily 

If I had a bad landing and told the boss I was struggling with the airplane, I’d more than likely not have a job. 

 

The general philosophy used to be, “get the bike to about 90% of where you want it to be, then figure out how to ride it.” This was during a time when there was more separation between riders on things like fitness and technique though. 

I think so many riders today are nearly evenly matched on fitness and technique that they’re searching for any little edge they can find with the bike. I also think today’s riding style is pushing the limits of chassis and suspension setup. 

There’s also always riders with a mentality similar to Reed where they absolutely cannot take the blame themselves and have to blame the bike if things don’t go their way and they get beat straight up. 

Nobody will ever say that they rode poorly.

Always a setup issue.

Nowadays I struggle to find gear that fits.

I remember RC, at times, saying "i got beat - I have to ride better" .  Of course this came from a rider who had an incredibly high winning percentage. His ego could probably take the hit.  

Its all mental…ride the f@$#&*ng bike…..

I could be wrong but I remember Michael L and Steven T talking about how the newer bikes are able to reach that top peak of performance but it's just a smaller window to find it. So I feel like then factoring in everything that the top teams are doing to push the bikes to another level, with elite riders etc it's even more extreme. So maybe these days, with all of the options with tuning, it's easier to be hit or miss than it was in simpler times? I dunno. 

I think it goes along with how quickly elite racers forget their mistakes. It's pretty well established in sports psychology. Numerous studies show that it isn't that elite performers (especially disciplines like racing) don't make mistakes, it’s the speed at which they forget them. The benefit is their brain isn't distracted by dwelling on the mistake. I would have to assume anyone that can dismiss their mistakes so quickly likely also looks elsewhere to attribute fault in the first place.

That’s something someone would say who’s never ridden at the top level of the sport. All the riders say setup is key.  What do you seem to know that they don’t?  

ML rides.  Matthes rides.  Swap rides.  Ping rides.  Darkside rides.  Brayton and AC ride.  Gypsy rides.  Not sure what you are getting at here.  They ask about bike set up all the time and rarely get a straight answer.  Listen to Barcia and Cairoli post race interviews with Steve.  They talked about frame changes and what they had been working on.

Its is, 100%

There's also chasing your tail and trying to re invent the wheel.

One of the first things Baker did with RD5 was getting a setup he could live with and leave it the heck alone. Not chase a feeling every single weekend.

If a guy like Roczen can win a title on an old Suzuki without touching anything more than a click here or there, then it's clear that guys are way too into their own heads about setup. Watch Ricky or James and you tell they were just willing to ride the bumpy lines and let the bike swap all over the place to go fast. Hell, watch RJ ride the 500s at Carlsbad. He was hauling ass and that bike looked more uncomfortable than anything today's pros will ever ride.

Lewis does in his post race interviews. 

Get the bike close.  Get in the zone, relax and find the flow. Imho that's the best you can do.  Yesterday Hymas ,Kitchen, Mumford, Moisman, Deegan and Beaumer all found it.  Very cool to watch. 

Teams are always trying new things every week to make it a tiny bit better and build riders confidence to push it a little harder and faster than last week.

Tracks are all different week to week and need a different base setup that then needs tweaks to again give the racer confidence.

Its all about the racers confidence to not push it over the envelope edge and crash

I agree, but I also think muscle memory might play a bigger role than it's given credit for. At some point, familiarity versus optimization likely has a bigger affect. Where that point is I can't tell you. What I can say with confidence is riders constantly chasing a feeling aren't consistent. Riders with a well established base often are.

Then we have the mental games mechanics have to do to make the rider comfortable. Stories abound where a mechanic told a rider they changed something when they didn't, but the rider thought it was an improvement.

So we have optimization, familiarity, and mental acceptance that all interact. And with some riders being different than others, and some bikes having bigger setup window than others, we have enough variables to qualify for a full blown scientific experiment involving sensitivity analysis and a DOE.

Well said 

There is a LOT about the mental aspect too.

I was one of those mechanics once when the rider thought the rim was so out of true it was shaking and when I checked it the rim was true and when it looked like I was trueing it he said thats much better.

More so because your a Brain Surgeon, ha!

Do you reckon this guy blames his set up?