How Far Can I Lean My Motorcycle?2025-03-06 16:56How far can I lean my bike over? Nobody like this answer, but...it depends. Everybody wants a very specific answer to a question that is constantly changing based on a million variables. So instead of focusing on the answer or result, let's focus on the process. Here is the best answer we can give you. If you have good technique, good body position, warm (good) tires, and a consistent road surface, your knee or hard parts will touch before you lose grip on most modern motorcycles. The image below is a stock 2024 Yamaha Tracer GT on Bridgestone S23 road tires. Not an R1 race bike on racing slicks. If you are on a consistent road surface with good, warm tires, good technique, body position and your knee or hard parts are not touching, then there is lean angle available. Now for all the "Well, it depends." We should never carry enough speed on the street to drag knee because the street is missing a very critical component. Consistency. There is nothing special about track asphalt, except that it is (mostly) consistent. Even on a very consistent race track, the amount of grip available is constantly changing. The track gets hotter, colder, wetter, or more rubber is laid down. Tires get worn out, tire temp goes up or down, pressure changes, the fuel load decreases, etc.....etc. We are always testing the amount of grip available. On public roads the variables are virtually endless. Grass, shade, oil, hot dog wrappers, couches, cows, sand.....you name it and it's out there. Safely testing the level of grip with pace is almost impossible because we never know what is around the corner. So how do we know how much grip is available and how do we know how far we can lean our motorcycle? We sneak up on it. The tire will take a tremendous load, but it will not take an abrupt load. The front tire has 100 points of grip available. The scale may change, but there is always 100 points available. That grip is divided by lean angle and brake pressure. The motorcycle was designed to turn into the corner with weight forward. The most accurate way to place weight forward is with the front brake. The front brake is the most important control on the motorcycle because it controls three things. Speed (duh), chassis geometry, and tire contact patch. As we turn into the corner we have to give up brake pressure proportionally to lean angle. Add 5 points of lean angle, give up 5 points of brake pressure. This progression happens until we trade braking load on the front tire for centripetal load from cornering forces. If we turn into the corner with no brake pressure, there is very little load on the front tire. If we add lean angle to an unloaded front tire bad things happen. Rear tire grip is made up of lean angle and throttle. We cannot accelerate out of the corner until we can see our exit and take away lean angle. Take away 5 points of lean angle and you can add 5 points of throttle. If we try to accelerate while adding lean angle, bad things happen. In between braking and accelerating is neutral throttle. This is just enough throttle input to maintain our speed and cornering radius. We have a video on YouTube where we briefly explain the 100 Points of Grip concept and it is covered in depth in our Champ U: Core Curriculum. Click the link here to see the YouTube Video on 100-Points of Grip Lean Angle = Risk. The picture above is ChampSchool lead instructor Kyle Wyman with a lot of lean angle on his Factory Harley-Davidson Road Glide at turn 5 at New Jersey Motorsports Park in MotoAmerica Qualifying. In our world, lean angle = risk. We want to use the least amount of lean angle of the least amount of time possible to get the motorcycle to change directions at the speed we are traveling and the radius of the corner. Believe it or not, Kyle is using the least amount of lean angle possible for the least amount of time for speed he is traveling and the radius of turn 5 at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Kyle is just going VERY fast in that corner and so he needed a lot of lean angle. If he could have used less, he would have because lean angle = risk. How did Kyle know he could lean the bike over that far and go that fast? He tested the level of grip on all his previous trips through NJMP turn 5. He always entered the corner with load forward by using the brakes until the slowest point of the corner. Each time he went a little faster until the tires and the chassis started to tell him he was getting close to the edge grip. The only way to feel what the chassis and front tire is telling us is to have load in the tire, through the suspension, into the bars. If the front tire is not loaded, then there will be no warning through the bars. The other component is body position. If we have poor body position, then our head will be high, there will be too much weight in our hands and very little dexterity. We are able to keep our hands light because we have a solid base of the lower body and a strong, engaged core which allows us to have a lot of feeling through the bars. If we have a death grip on the bars, we have very little feel. The combination of load through the tires into the bars and good body position allows us to sneak up to the edge of grip without blowing through it with abrupt inputs. The faster the pace or lower the grip, the more important it is that we use smooth inputs to find the edge of grip. As we get closer to the edge of grip the front tire will start to push or understeer. This may cause the front tire to chatter across the road surface. The bars will start to turn in and the feeling in front tire gets very vague. When this happens we have two choices. We can take away lean angle or give up brake pressure. In some cases, we take away lean angel and give up brake pressure at the same time. If we regain grip by taking away lean angle, the chassis stays loaded. If we simply hop off the brakes or throttle abruptly, the chassis can unload rapidly causing a loss of grip. The most unstable motorcycle is an unloaded motorcycle. When there is no load in the chassis. The motorcycle is sitting on top of the springs with a very small tire contact patch. If we are always riding like this, then the edge of grip becomes very difficult to understand. If we are abrupt at the edge of grip, we will suffer the consequences. We may intentionally find the edge of grip from pace or the edge of grip may find us on a cold, rainy trip home. In either situation, we must sneak up on the edge of grip with adequate load in the tires and good feel through the bars. The tire will take a tremendous load, but it will not take an abrupt load. This is a complicated topic and we go into it in great depth on both our online curriculums and in-person schools. ChampSchool for LESS = ChampStreet Look. We know. ChampSchool is expensive, exclusive, and geographically limited. The 2-Day program is a significant investment and most riders are not ready for that kind of investment in their riding. We. Get. It. This is why we created ChampStreet and Champ U. ChampStreet is the exact same curriculum as the 2-Day ChampSchool but there is simply less of it. We stripped out the time-consuming and expensive portions to be able to offer world-class in-person instruction at a fraction of the cost of the 2-Day ChampSchool program. Think of ChampStreet as ChampSchool lite. Same great taste, but a lot less money. ChampStreet is taught on your street bike with your street gear. Since full safety gear is not required, ChampStreet is limited to highway speeds. We teach ChampStreet in the paddock are of the facility, the kart track, and with some speed-limited time on the main race track. In most cases the ChampStreet experience is less than $500 with an early bird discount. The 2025 ChampStreet Schedule: March 6 – 7, 2025 Buttonwillow Raceway Park, CA March 21 – 22, 2025 LVMS, Las Vegas, NV April 17 – 18, 2025 Road Atlanta, Braselton, GA May 13 - 14, 2025 New Jersey Motorsports Park, Millville, NJ May 26, 2025 Code 303 Training Center, Douglas County, CO June 5 - 6, 2025 Thunderhill Raceway, Willow, CA. June 17 – 18, 2025 New Jersey Motorsports Park, Millville, NJ. July 23 – 24, 2025 - The Ridge, Shelton WA August 4 - 5, 2025 Autobahn Country Club, Joliet IL August 19 – 20, 2025 Mid-Ohio, Lexington, OH September 22 – 23, 2025, CMP, Kershaw, SC September 30 – Oct 1, 2025, NCM, Bowling Green, KY. October 4 - 5, 2025 Streets of Willow, Rosamond, CA November 6 - 7, 2025 CA Buttonwillow, Buttonwillow, CA December 5 – 6, 2025 Las Vegas Motor Speedway, NV Source: Champschool Click here to visit our forums to discuss this story |
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