How to handle a tricky corner

Edward’s Corner is what riders might call a “tricky corner.” It is a corner that seems to catch you off guard or no matter how many times you ride it. You may be in the middle of a ride, feeling good about your skill, and then a corner comes along and crushes your confidence. You know you should have taken it better or smoother.  I think we’ve all been vexed by a tricky corner.

Editor's note: Dylan Code is a rider coach and the COO (stands for child of owner) of the California Superbike School, with 23 years of full-time experience in the area of rider training. He works closely with his father, Keith Code, on curriculum development and figuring out how to provide the best possible motorcycle riding experience for their students.

So what makes a corner tricky? Let’s break down the elements a rider needs to know about a corner in order to conquer it.

• The corner’s general radius. How tight or open is it?
• Changes in radius. Does it tighten up further into the corner (decreasing radius), does the radius open, or perhaps both opening and decreasing?
• Elevation. Is the corner flat, uphill, or downhill?
• Changes in elevation. Does it go downhill, then up or vice versa? Does it go uphill and crest off, etc.?
• Camber, aka banking or tilt of the road. Is it flat, positively banked (helps hold you in the corner), or negatively banked (pushes you out wide)?
• Changes in camber. Does the camber change as you go through the corner?

Even if a corner has many complicated changes in elevation, radius, and camber, if you are fully aware of those changes you should be well on your way to conquering it at whatever your current skill level may be.

So, let’s go back to Edward’s Corner and see what it is about that corner that sends so many riders sliding along the asphalt or into the dirt embankment. There are plenty of reasons but this is a common one when going in the uphill direction: the camber flattens off in the last third of the corner.

When camber decreases in a corner, the bike gets sent wide. At this late point in the corner, riders are already peering up the road and rolling on the throttle. The camber loss pushes the rider wide and the instant reaction some riders have is to increase lean angle — while still rolling on the throttle. This results in a sudden loss of traction because the rider is increasing two things that use up traction at the same time — throttle and lean.

The solution? If a corner loses camber, treat it as if the radius tightens where the camber is lost. This would mean you should not add throttle until the bike is truly pointed and no further increase of lean angle is needed to finish the corner.

Now you may be thinking, “That’s great, Dylan, but what if I get into a corner on an unfamiliar road and then find out it’s a tricky corner?” That gets into the art of reading a blind corner’s radius and that’s a whole other article. For now, we’re talking about the known tricky corners that can give us fits.

Many riders happily ride along and overlook how variations in radius, camber, and elevation directly affect what they should be doing in response to these changes. They just seem to like some corners and not like others. The first chapter of my father’s first book, written in 1982, “A Twist of the Wrist,” is called “The road you ride.” In it he discusses the changes a road can throw at you, which I have summarized above. I wonder how many people glossed through that chapter looking for hidden secrets on knee dragging, not realizing it is one of the most fundamental ingredients for cornering success.

If you have a “tricky corner” out there in the world, I suggest you spend some time going through it slowly and take note of characteristics you may have missed, like radius, elevation, and camber. See if that doesn’t start to turn that tricky corner into a fun one.