Sometime very slow club racer, and fast group trackdayer. A few years ago, I was at Cartagena on my totally stock 749s road bike on Supercorsas. Johann Zarco was there on his training bike, think it was his last year of Moto2 so he was running a supersport r6 on Moto2 tyres. I was going well, doing 1:48s, so comfortably in fast group pace. Zarco comes past me on the exit of the 3rd last corner, I get the red mist and decide I'm not having it, and follow him to the penultimate corner, a 2nd gear L/H hairpin. I hold it flat through the preceding kink which I'd not done before, and think oh f**k I'm way to hot here and grab the brakes, think I've run a little wide, but look at the apex and throw the bike on my knee, while trailing as much brake as I dare to scrub off speed. The bike reacts beautifully, as the trailing brake makes the tyres and chassis work properly, and I find myself at the apex knee on the inside curb, right on Zarco's back tyre, still recon I took a meter or two out of him. Feeling good and under control, I start to feed the gas in and have Ideas of staying with the Frenchman for a few corners... Zarco however nails the throttle wide open at apex, and has 25m on me before I've got anywhere near full throttle. And that is where the difference is. I still to this day have never negotiated a corner as well as I did that one. I don't have the balls to brake that deep, to actually load the chassis up to work correctly on entry, and certainly can't program my brain to transition from brake to full throttle as quickly as a pro. If I was younger and still had the processing speed, maybe I could train myself, but then I need the budget to pay for the repairs,and ac rew of Mechs to bolt the bike back together, and the time off work to heal, and...and...
To improve at an older age you have to scare yourself regularly. As a kid, it’s not scary, it’s fun and exhilarating. Imagine jumping from a roof: as an adult you like ‘fuck that’ and are terrified of breaking an ankle. As a kid, you’re think ‘yahoo’ and wondering how many forward rolls you’ll do
Perhaps the fast guys don't need balls or even think what they need to do because they can just feel whats going on underneath them.
