Yamaha champions riding school
I previously attended the YCRS (Yamaha Champions Riding School) at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Arizona. In this blog post, I will explain some of the main takeaways from the 2-day course in addition to my overall feedback about the course. If you have been wanting to attend one of their courses, keep reading!
My riding experience prior to the course consisted of a couple years on the street and several trackdays on a Yamaha R6 race bike. Since I was coming from the opposite side of the country for this course, I opted to fly-in and rent a bike. Spoiler alert, I ended up paying a little extra cash for some minor damage to their bike…whoops!
The beginning of the first day consisted of classroom and driving around the track. The main instructor was Chris Peris. Chris explained all the ins and outs of the Inde track including his reference points since multiple corners are blind and have elevation changes. My previous experience had nothing to pull from when it came to blind apexes, and cambered turns. The midwest is very flat, and even tracks like Road America are wide open with plenty of time to see upcoming turns. Inde is tight and technical.
I was already at information overload with all of the reference points and key things to look out for. During the initial session out on the track, I already missed a blind apex uphill left-hand turn and ran wide almost off the track. This was humiliating but humbling as well. It was at that moment, I knew my riding was going to reach a new level…or I would retire because this was significantly harder than I thought (obviously I did not retire).
My previous years of riding, I didn’t have anyone to teach me proper skills. I was forced to watch Youtube videos, read books, and follow other riders at trackdays and street rides. This brings me to my next learning point about YCRS which is trail braking. I had only used the brakes straight up and down. I knew nothing about creating grip, loading a tire, compressing the suspension optimally, and etc. Therefore, you can see a pattern of my previous lack of proper motorbike skills coming to fruition here at Inde.
The first day, I was so focused on reference points and trailbraking technique that I was mentally and physically exhausted. I took notes on my track map but there were so many learning points that it was hard to really dial in on what to work on. For example, how you load your feet, position of the feet, and other body position points as well. It felt as though I never rode a motorcycle before with how much I was learning/adjusting techniques.
This is a perfect opportunity to talk about my crash during the class. This specific section of Inde, I had made through all day without issues. However, after the coaches followed me around, they saw my lines and technique which encouraged me to step up the pace a little more. The section involves an uphill, downhill decreasing radius corner. You have to be pointed towards the apex before you even crest the uphill section or else you will miss the turn and run off track. After cresting the hill, I did not let off enough front brake at lean and lost the front. I felt the front suspension bottom out, and then in a flash I was sliding on the track. What I didn’t account for was the additional load on the suspension while going downhill (suspension is being compressed more) and with my increase in corner speed, led to the front tire slide. Fortunately I was able to get up and continue on. The only thing that hurt was my pocket book for the additional fairing damage deposit. The benefit was the pressure of not crashing their bike already happened, so now I was more relaxed the rest of the time there!
The YCRS class definitely changed my riding and significantly improved it. I have not been to a class since I started racing, but I fully intend to take their racers only course. With how much I needed to learn that first time, I wish the course was 4-days to give myself more time to take everything in. YCRS now offers online training which I have signed up for just to keep the information as a reference. If you want good training, YCRS offers a great program. I can only speak to their core curriculum class, but there were other expert level club racers with me who learned new things. They just learned a lot less than I did since I was basically starting from ground zero.
For more information, follow up on the YCRS website. It should be noted that I did not receive any special perks or kickbacks from YCRS for this article.