Bike India Team

Piyush Sonsale penportrays the man, an avid motorcycle enthusiast himself, who brought the California Superbike School to India

It doesn’t take him long to start calling you, ‘Tiger!’ And it’s the best word to describe his own personality too. You may not know who he is or what he does and you may not find him in a tux, but he still carries the charisma of the beast – fearless and in harmony with his surroundings. Unlike the animal, though, he can be described as anything but intimidating. Tall and well built, with a mop of grey hair like that of a 1970s rock star, he was wearing a one-piece racing suit, ready to ride his 600-cc sports bike alongside riders, some of whom were less than half his age, when I first met him. His name is T T Varadarajan, the man who brought the California Superbike School to India.
TT is a successful businessman from Chennai and owns a company called Maya Appliances Pvt Ltd. His company started manufacturing mixers and grinders back in 1979 under the brand-name ‘Preethi’. Now it boasts of a whole range of home appliances and an annual turnover of Rs 450 crore.

Motorcycles have been TT’s passion and companions since he was 14. “They give you a sense of freedom. You connect with nature, which you can never do cocooned in a car,” he avers. The first bike he owned was a Rajdoot 175 and, over the years, has had many Indian as well as foreign machines parked in his garage, such as the Jawa 250, multi-cylinder Japanese sport bikes like the Kawasaki 250 twins, GPX 750, ZX-12R, Honda 600s and 750s, Suzuki GSX-R600, Yamaha YZF R1 and even a Triumph Daytona 675. TT looks upon the Triumph as the best bike he has owned so far, but his favourite is the Honda VFR 800.

Don’t mistake him for just a rich bike collector, though. TT is as adventurous as they come. For instance, he once bought a brand-new Yamaha YZF R1 in Los Angeles, California, and rode 600 km eastwards without a GPS, a map or any direction aid whatever and reached Glendale, Arizona, only after getting lost in the desert for two hours! He has ridden thousands of kilometres in India and abroad, especially in New Zealand, his favourite riding destination. He has been clocking 4000 km on the trip meter there for the last five years and wants to continue the tradition for as long as he can.

Besides road trips, this Wayne Rainey fan also loves motorsport. He has participated in seven South India rallies back in the late 1960s and ‘70s. His son, Siddharth, too has inherited his father’s passion for motorcycles. Both of them have ridden together around the world and have attended the California Superbike School (CSS) workshops many times in the US and also in New Zealand. CSS is arguably the world’s best motorcycle riding school with a teaching experience of more than three decades. It was established by Keith Code, the famous riding coach and author of the book and documentary, ‘A Twist of the Wrist’.

“CSS has a great bunch of coaches who are passionate, patient and dedicated to provide every student the same kind of attention a world champion would get,” said TT when asked about his fondness for CSS. His passion, however, didn’t end with attending the workshops. TT realised that there was a complete absence of any formal coaching as regards motorcycle riding in India. He wanted to provide a platform for Indian riders to prepare for the world stage. He proposed the idea of conducting a CSS workshop in India to Keith Code in 1995 and, after 15 years of convincing, Keith finally sent the CSS UK team to India last year. The workshop was sponsored entirely by TT and turned out to be a success. Keith was quite impressed by the response and tied up with TT’s company this year again for the workshop conducted in January 2011. Following the overwhelming response, they plan to make it an annual event.

TT and Siddharth attended both the workshops themselves and underwent Level Four training, the highest at CSS. In his passion for motorcycles and the sport of racing them, TT has pioneered the development of Indian racers and yet remains a modest and polite person. He attended the workshop like any other student, waiting for his turn to ride and sharing his lunch table and track time with everybody else. While on the track, even at the age of 59, he was fast enough to give any teenager a run for his money. No mean feat that!

BIKE India’s Adhish Alawani gets into an easy conversation with cornering guru Keith Code and talks about bikes, racing and the Indian experience

Bike India: So, Keith, first time coaching in India. How has been the experience?
Keith Code: Oh, yeah, this has been a fantastic trip and here we are on the last day. Time went really fast. We did two days of school in the first batch – Level I and II. The second batch was three days – Level I, II and III – and I’ve been very happy that the students are taking information so well. Everybody is improving dramatically and showing huge improvement. There are riders who have ridden this track so many times and even they are seeing so many improvements.

BI: That exactly is my second question. Some of the students during these five days have been professional racers, who’ve been racing here for many years, while some others are first-timers at the track. So how has been the variety of students?
KC: Well, what I have noticed over the last five days is that the Indian students – 90 of whom I have known for the last five days, only with maybe one or two exceptions – are very interested in improving. They’re coming to the school for the right reason. They’re not coming here just to ride around the track. They want to make some improvements; they’ve seen that we’ve been able to make some major changes in riding for them to the positive side. And I think that 95 per cent of the students have continued to be more alert, more aggressively interested in improvement. They have become converts now. They know that what we are teaching is good material.

BI: On the international scale what do you think is the potential of the Indian riders?
KC: That’s very difficult to say. We have a lot of guys on small bikes who may look completely different on 600s. Some people don’t get along on small bikes; they ride big bikes better. Some people need to learn the lessons from small bikes, so that they can move up in an orderly fashion up to larger ones. When we go to places like South Africa or Greece, we have, say, 85 per cent of students who have already done many track days. That’s not so here. Students here don’t have that track experience, so it’s just starting off the game. Because of the fact that we have just one track here, because the things are so expensive here, because of the fact that riders don’t have the facilities to ride like that here, I would say that we are starting at, maybe, a little lower level. But then we also have some students who are good and are right up there in a good range already. They are definitely above the middle.

BI: Going back to the history of CSS, how did it all start? What was the driving force behind starting the best school?
KC: Well, there really weren’t any schools back then. Preparations for a race included ‘how you prepare the bike, take the mirrors off’ etc. Very little riding technique was taught. There was nothing defined. There was nothing like, ‘This is one technical point, this is another’. The world was blank. So, while I was still racing superbikes in the 1970s, I started to develop some ideas about training people. I actually started doing that in the off-season from professional racing. During winter I would take a few students and teach them some theory, go through what they wanted to fix. I didn’t know many things then, but I discovered a couple of points that were key points. So when I retired from racing in 1979, I wanted to continue training and generating enthusiasm. That was a blank slate. No track days. So I started the school, I had the vision – bikes, leathers, helmets, boots. I got a lot of help from Kawasaki. They stayed with me for 30 years and so was with Dunlop. The economy got bad and Kawasaki had to withdraw. But then came in BMW and we have these awesome motorcycles called S1000RRs.

BI: You started back in 1979. The bikes then and the bikes now are completely different. Speed has gone up, tracks have improved. Have the techniques been modified to suit these changes?
KC: The fundamental techniques are the same. Now, you can do different things with motorcycles. You can do the same things that you did back then, but the motorcycles now are a little bit of help. However, with the same idea in mind, the bikes can also get you into trouble pretty quickly because they are short and tight. None the less, they have a certain amount of forgiveness in them. Our S1000RR are fantastically forgiving. They have ABS brakes, they have traction control. When we changed from the 600s, which we had had for decades and decades, to the 1,000-ccs, our crashes went down by 40 per cent. And that’s the bike. ‘Cause we put these guys on the bikes that were 100 PS earlier and now they are 193 PS bikes. And it’s safer. So, it’s one of the things that I have said for years and years. It’s not the power that gets them in trouble, it’s not the speed, it’s their mistakes. Mistake – they try to fix it, fix doesn’t fix it. So now it’s a bit worse. Then they try another fix and another fix. It takes several such cycles to crash unless you hit oil.

What I found is that the fundamental techniques remain the same. We have refined them for sure. When I started off I knew a little bit. Now I know a little more. Where everything else goes, I don’t know. Every few months we improve, almost every year or so I find a new way of teaching something. We have schools in Australia, New Zealand and England. We have started two in Spain and Greece. So the amount of information I get back when I want to test something is huge. When we develop a new technique, we go about in a scientific manner. It’s not like ‘Hey, that turned out well for that rider, so let’s use that technique’. No. We wait for a long time, test it, maybe for a year or longer before we can say, ‘Okay, it’s good for stating as theory’.

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BI: What’s your pick, MotoGP or WSBK?
KC: I think WSBK. My heroes, for sure, Pedrosa, Rossi, Lorenzo love the equipment, but it’s so expensive that there are not enough guys to fight it out at the top. To me as a spectator, if I want to watch a race, world superbike is better. There are a number of riders, the competition is tighter, they are fast, there is a lot of talent. It’s not like MotoGP, where the top five guys are within half a second with the qualifying tyres and then when it comes to the races, it’s just brrrrrrruppppp, it stretches out. As an enthusiast, it’s WSBK for Keith Code.

BI: Then, WSBK or Isle of Man?
KC: Ah, that’s like chalk and cheese. They are so different. IOM is the real road racing where it all started. There were no racetracks, so Isle of Man is pretty much good. Do I think if it’s insane or not to ride 200 mph bikes on narrow roads over an island with no run-off areas and all, well, ummm, I see it two ways. It’s quite a challenge. I know the feeling of mastering something like that. It’s very satisfying. Everybody goes there to do that. It’s a completely different mindset. I respect it, I appreciate it. And I hope the reasons for what it is, it continues to be like that for all of them go there for that.

BI: From all the MotoGP racers, who is your all-time favourite racer?
KC: It’s got to be Rossi. I respect many other riders – Kenny Roberts, Mike Hailwood. These riders are incredibly right. They changed racing quite a bit, but nobody has the spirit that Rossi has. He is the reason why MotoGP is alive and well. He is an asshole, maybe, normally, but what he gives to the sport, he has been the biggest asset ever. He has been the most popular rider.

BI: So what do you think is going to 1happen in 2011?
KC: I have no idea. I don’t have a crystal ball. It’s absolutely unknown. As for myself, because Rossi has contributed so much, I would love to see him get onto the Ducati and win the championship. Even if he doesn’t win the championship, I want to see him stand there on the winner’s spot a lot of time. But, by the same token, I want Dani and Jorge to do well too. And I hope that couple of other guys can get up there and compete with them. Will they? I don’t know!

BI: Coming back to the Indian scene, you have heard of Sarath who is going to be riding 125 cc GP? What do you think about him?
KC: Yeah, it’s gonna be a big jump for him from a 150-cc, four-stroke to 125-cc, two-stroke GP bike. It’s like 25 bhp bike here, a 60 bhp there. It’s going be quite different. But I have seen some of our younger riders whose transition from the 150s to 125s has been smooth. They have picked those up pretty fast. But I don’t know him. I don’t know his riding.

BI: What is your favourite race bike?
KC: Well, you know, when I raced superbikes back in the 1970s, the superbikes were horrible. They were weak, the frames were weak. There was a fair amount of horsepower like 140 hp, but those were like big bicycle frames. So we had to do all the modifications on the bike and I did them myself. I was the main mechanic on my own bike. It was not like, ‘I got the frame’. I had to continuously modify something, weld something. It was never perfect. You were chasing the problem all the time and fix it to find another one. We didn’t know much about suspension then. It was a lot of power and horrible handling. So I wouldn’t say that those were my favourite bikes. I had some great rides, but, for me, I think I have had the best time on the 250-cc GP bikes. That was great fun! But then we don’t have them any longer.

BI: One last question. Will you be coming back again next year?
KC: Yes, we intend to come back. No schedule has been set as yet, but we are very enthusiastic about this thing.

Let’s get retarded
Words: Gasha Aeri   
Photography: CSS (Preethi)
The corner is approaching fast, plan the turn, roll off the throttle, brake a little, lean to the side with the bike and bend forward, roll on gas gradually and pin throttle by the exit.

These commands did the rounds in my mind the night before we left for Chennai to attend the second year of the California Superbike School (CSS) in the country. A complete rookie to the world of track days and passion for cutting the lap timings by a fraction of a second, I think these commands were somewhere in my subconscious because of the MotoGP races I had watched on the television. If I had the passion, then the techniques to put that passion in place was what CSS had on offer. There’s a lot of understanding, a lot of learning and even more practice that went in to make the end result possible, but the simple ideas imparted by the trainers to make that possible is the least I can share here.

What follows is a list of 10 steps which made a good rider out of a rookie. If followed correctly, these drills will prove beneficial to almost everyone with a motorcycle and a zeal for learning. So, let’s give some throttle now.

Let’s get retarded
The title comes from the fact that not everyone understands the madness for motorcycle racing and the ones who do fail to crack the Da Vinci Code. But we had the best of both the worlds. The session began with the legendary Pharaoh of cornering, Keith Code, addressing the tribe and giving us the first shock of the season with the words, “We won’t teach you to ride fast”! I felt cheated! But the depth of those words was revealed later. “You’ll get faster yourself,” he said. And sure we did.

1. As Keith would say, “Twist of the wrist”
The first day was like tiptoeing towards the destination, which was later followed by giant leaps. The session began with the Pythagorean theorem of riding: smooth throttle control. I know it is not a big secret, but the results of a smooth and gradual throttle inputs are astonishing. I stand witness to the same. No special advice for straights, but throttle control comes into play in corners. While entering a corner, the throttle must be given off just a little for that apt entry speed. A moderately slower speed at exit means a considerably fast exit. In the middle of a turn, the rider must go back on gas just after he gets into the direction he wishes to go in. The reason for keeping throttle smooth is because a smooth throttle input keeps the bike smooth and stable and that’s what is expected of a good rider. And since we were barred from using any brakes at this stage of the training, smooth throttle just had to become a habit very quickly.

2. ‘Counter steer’ the ship, Captain!
Fancy words, but simple physics defines them well. This is how counter steer works: a little push on the inside handlebar leans the bike down and puts you in the direction you wish to go. Counter steer must then be followed by weight transfer to the respective side and a little lean in order to balance the bike and smoothen the curve. The bike tends to get upright as it is powered. Roll on gas as you hit the apex and there you have a fast exit. Counter steer when combined with throttle control made for a good kick-start to my cornering. Using counter steering, I could turn into the corners quickly and that too without compromising much on the entry speed.

3. Of every nook and corner
Throttle was a friend by now, but corners still looked scary. Our trainer for this drill, Steve, gave an answer to that too. Fix the turn points and attack the corner right on them. Felt easy, as the fear to enter into a corner at a reasonably high speed seemed to be fading away. By now, it got easy to weigh when to ease out on throttle and when you get on gas again with the set markers. Then came the golden words from Steve and life was much simpler than before – straighten the corners. Instead of swaying with the curves, just slice them through the middle and you have a perfect way of attacking the corner at hand. This drill also taught me how to make use of the entire width of the track. It is always a very comforting feeling to have some extra tarmac on the outside and that happens only if the rider makes use of the whole space available to him/her.

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4. One step up and ‘two-step’ fast
He isn’t what he is for no reason. Keith, with every exercise of the training programme, pushes the rider a step above and that too in a way that the drill becomes a part of his habit even before s/he realises it. The ‘two-step’ theory is another such example. After throttle control and turning points, this drill called for you to fix the turn point in your mind and then shift the visual focus to apex. To master two-step, the rider must first give gradual input of throttle, counter steering and, most importantly, the points of visual focus. A little goof-up with the focus and the bike follows where you look, which isn’t the right path always. I also got a little easy with swift leans and weight shifts as my body was now working in harmony with my mind. The perfect leaning posture, however, was still to be achieved.

Thus, the drills undertaken on the first day gave a little flavour of what the ideal basics look like and our task for the upcoming days was to get better on those, using some add-on techniques. I could see myself getting smoother and thus quicker.

5. For thy reference
The tips from day one seemed somewhat fading the next morning and the solution for that came handy too. The next drill was about setting reference points near the curves, which may help the rider to get a hint of when before/after the curve must the throttle be played with. Also, the view must always be kept as wide as possible. You never know when a nasty one decides to brush shoulders with you. Techniques on taking quick turns, leaning the bike to just the right angle and picking it up with optimum throttle input were other important drills of the day. After getting familiar with the track and in tune with my bike, I found myself not looking away from my apex in search of the reference points for very long. Instead, an approaching corner and my entry speed gave me a fair idea of when to roll off the throttle, without using any reference points for the same. Doing this gave me a better focus round corners. If one must keep a reference point, it must always be in the same line as the apex in order to avoid any distraction.

6. ‘Three-step’ cha cha cha
An extension to the two-step drill, three-step takes care of the exit too. Keeping in mind the exit line takes care of hassle-free and speedy exit. Also, it lets the rider’s mind proceed from the whole task of taking a corner gradually – from looking at the corner, fixing the apex and then looking where you want to exit. Doing all this before approaching the corner gave me more time and space to execute the turn and thus more speed too! Sounds simple and it is even more simple in practice.

By the end of day two, the drills followed for both the days made me faster round the corners, crisp with the lean, and exact with riding lines. Yes, I was now hitting almost all the apexes and was definitely more confident!

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7. Get ‘hook’ed
The last day of the school revolved round riding posture, getting the body in the right position and removing all the errors attached with it. This began with the ‘hook’ turns. Description of a hook turn –  duck down on the bike and push your head and shoulders out in the direction of the curve while keeping the bike stable. Even though I have written about hook turns a little late in our list of 10 steps, it doesn’t take away its importance. For a sharp line, faster speeds and comfortable posture, a rider must always take a turn in the hooked posture explained here. Moreover, the hooked posture gives better aerodynamics to the rider and the bike and thus better supports higher speeds.

8. Shake your booty
One thing we all knew as well as our names by now was that stability of the bike is the most important. Something which cannot be compromised for even that one extra km/h and the easiest way to keep the bike always stable is by pivot steering instead of moving the bike every time. In simpler words, the rider’s tool for a better lean on corners must be following this little advice: keep the thighs and knees clamped to the fuel tank on straights with hands comfortably resting on the handlebar and not suffocating them and the upper half of the body ducked down for better aerodynamics. On corners, the counter steering must come in a way that your waist acts as the pivot, inside knee hunting for the tarmac while the other one still clamping on firmly to the fuel tank. This most certainly keeps the bike stable round corners, makes cornering better, relaxes the arms and upper body and enables the rider to take the best possible line. I realised that every time I sat firm on the saddle, I couldn’t feel myself as a part of the bike and the same stiffness made me nervous and adversely affected the speed. As a result, stiffness and me parted ways for good. Just using my legs as an additional shock-absorber and my arms for steering, I found riding fast becoming a more natural behaviour.

9. An ‘attack angle’ with no defence
Another factor that determines your exit from a corner is the way you enter one. So, attacking the corner at an accurate angle becomes equally important as other steps. The attack angle must preferably be larger for a smooth exit. A tight attack angle generally needs multiple steering inputs in the middle of a curve, not to speak of the anxiety it brings to the rider’s mind. In case of consecutive turns, the exit line of one turn determines the entry of the next one. Therefore, the rider must calculate in his mind beforehand where his chosen line will take him towards the end of the curve and thus enter the next curve in the correct line.

10. One and only
This may not make for a strict practice drill, but it is by far the simplest and the most important thing to keep in mind while riding: be one with the bike. It not only offers better handling and stability, but takes care of that fraction of chance of the bike going against your wishes. However, while doing so, the rider must not forget to sit light on the bike. As one starts accelerating, the bike starts coming upright and then it is left for the rider to make use of the full width of the road, both on straights and curves. A rider, just like a good jockey, just has to steer it. Gripping the handlebar too tight is a strict no-no.

Three days at the Chennai race-track under the sound guidance of trainers from the California Superbike School gave me the determination and strength to test and challenge my limit and, much to my surprise, I discovered that the limit lay far beyond my imagination. Riding a TVS Apache RTR 160 and pushing the bike to the maximum power that I could became possible only because I knew what I was doing and had the technique to rectify mistakes handy. Laps got faster with every passing session and I knew exactly which correction made it possible. From a snail crawling two minutes 50 seconds during the first day’s sessions, the lap timing miraculously came crashing down to two minute 36 seconds towards the end of the school on that 3.7-km-long race-track. Some moments are just beyond any words and that one was the best of them all.

An additional bonus I earned after attending CSS is that apart from being better at the track, I have grown in leaps and bounds as a rider on city roads too. Now that the school is over and further improvement depends entirely upon my practice, I would make sure that I twist the wrist whenever I get a chance!