Wakefiekd park RD 8th and 21st July

[Marshy]

check the heat? What temp would you be looking for?

I only have a hand to check with...

A hand is fine. I have a temp gun, but for tyres I still just use my hand. Your hand is perfectly good for telling is a tyre is 'ouch, hot!', or 'warmish', or 'fark, there's hardly any heat left in them at all'. At Wakefield, check both sides of the front, because it's very hard to hold heat in the left side of the tyre. The rear spreads the heat better, so isn't so much of an issue. But I can't stress enough how important it is to check the temp of the left side of the front. If you aren't generating heat, do three things:

1. No mucking around once the warmers come off! Straight out of the pits and hard on it from turn 2. Especially Turn three and the fishhook, to generate left-side heat.

2. Let more pressure out of the front. 30-31 psi, instead of 34. Hot.

3. Be aware that the left side of the tyre isn't all that hot, and compensate with less lean angle in T3 and the fishhook.

And an extra for racing... brake hard on-and-off on the front (like a kinda reverse bunny-hop) to maximise flex in the front sidewalls as much as you can, eg leading up to the grid, on the outlap etc. It's flexing the sidewalls that generates tyre heat on track, not weaving side-to-side. This has been scientifically proven, and is the reason nobody weaves on sighting laps in motoGP any more. And we aren't allowed to weave anyway, so don't do it, and it does nothing, so why bother? Braking on the front hard-soft-hard-soft-hard-soft to flex the sidewall actually generates a lot of heat, so do it as much as you can.

After extensive testing in the cold at Wakefield, I can tell you that once the heat goes from the left side of the front tyre, there's nothing you can do to get it back (unless it's a sighting or warmup lap and you can do the front brake thing). On a trackday, or in qualifying etc where you can't ride at 30kms an hour on-and-off the front brake, you simply cannot apply enough force to the left side to generate the heat back. You can hold the heat in, by going balls-out from the pits or by flexing the sidewall, but you can't get it back once it's gone.

[Ruckos87]

A hand is fine. I have a temp gun, but for tyres I still just use my hand. Your hand is perfectly good for telling is a tyre is 'ouch, hot!', or 'warmish', or 'fark, there's hardly any heat left in them at all'. At Wakefield, check both sides of the front, because it's very hard to hold heat in the left side of the tyre. The rear spreads the heat better, so isn't so much of an issue. But I can't stress enough how important it is to check the temp of the left side of the front. If you aren't generating heat, do three things:

1. No mucking around once the warmers come off! Straight out of the pits and hard on it from turn 2. Especially Turn three and the fishhook, to generate left-side heat.

2. Let more pressure out of the front. 30-31 psi, instead of 34. Hot.

3. Be aware that the left side of the tyre isn't all that hot, and compensate with less lean angle in T3 and the fishhook.

And an extra for racing... brake hard on-and-off on the front (like a kinda reverse bunny-hop) to maximise flex in the front sidewalls as much as you can, eg leading up to the grid, on the outlap etc. It's flexing the sidewalls that generates tyre heat on track, not weaving side-to-side. This has been scientifically proven, and is the reason nobody weaves on sighting laps in motoGP any more. And we aren't allowed to weave anyway, so don't do it, and it does nothing, so why bother? Braking on the front hard-soft-hard-soft-hard-soft to flex the sidewall actually generates a lot of heat, so do it as much as you can.

After extensive testing in the cold at Wakefield, I can tell you that once the heat goes from the left side of the front tyre, there's nothing you can do to get it back (unless it's a sighting or warmup lap and you can do the front brake thing). On a trackday, or in qualifying etc where you can't ride at 30kms an hour on-and-off the front brake, you simply cannot apply enough force to the left side to generate the heat back. You can hold the heat in, by going balls-out from the pits or by flexing the sidewall, but you can't get it back once it's gone.

Cheers Nick good advice.

So today was damp, session 1 & 2 on slicks was ..... Dodgie at best. I only managed 2-3 laps with fogging visor issues
3rd session I chucked on the wets and a spare helmet, it was much better T5 6 and 10 were really slippery, T10 has a small stream across it all day even in he dry. Managed another 3 session "s on wets before pulling the pin at 1230

On a brighter not for us (not WP) there was only 10 bikes so merged sessions saw us going out every 15 min

Hi crash rate though, 50% as I counted very slippery but at least I've been out on wets now and stayed upright



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