Garage 13 Brooklands Road Weybridge Surrey KT13 0QN February 15, 2009

Dear Champ I assume that you are now ready for the second set of instructions on how to go fast. As promised, I will cover bike preparation, safety equipment and track psychology. Most riders turn up at the track with their bike looking like a tarts handbag, with every surface covered with endorsements from performance related companies such as Castrol, Bob Heath Visors, Ferodo, Girling, Wipac and so on. This tends to raise peoples expectations. You need to avoid this. You should have the bike painted, institutional brown (seen inside hospitals and government buildings) or Greater Glasgow Corporation green (park benches and lamp posts). You can do this quickly with a water based emulsion, and if you are careful you can apply it so that it is easily removed with Nitromorse or a blow torch and scraper. You need luggage: a top box and panniers. I recommend Givi. They are expensive, but its hard to go fast without spending money! You need to send the luggage away to a carbon composite company to get them remodeled out of carbon bre and lled with helium. When you get all this back, throw away the Givi stu. It really is tat. Now t the carbon luggage. I know this might sound like a contradiction Champ, but you do need stickers on the luggage. Again, this is only a recommendation but stickers from exotic places are good such as Scunthorpe, Bognor Regis, Nuneaton, Largs, Campbeltown, etc. To really confuse people try and get a Tarbet sticker. The luggage should now have negative weight (lift), and surprisingly will reduce drag. I assume you have removed the front indicators and mirrors. You need to t rear indicators, the large square ones popular in the 1980s. Wire these up. You need a large standard sized number plate with a lucky number (PTP 952 Y works for me). You also need a rear light. In particular you need a brake light. This should NOT be connected to the pedal on the right or the Jesus lever (more on that soon), but to a button on the handlebars so that the light can be turned o and on at will (more on this when we get to track psychology). Lastly, you need a small piece of wood, or metal, connected to the back of the Jesus lever so that you can squeeze the lever real hard without actually aecting your lap times.

Now lets turn to safety equipment. As you know, the primary design goal of modern safety equipment is to make the rider look and feel like a Power Ranger. You need to avoid this. First you need to paint your leathers matt black. A spray paint will work, but best results are to be had with emulsion and a brush. I assume you will have modern safety boots. These need modied. Cut a sleeve o the wifes wool lined suede coat (she will have one of these). Cut the sleeve into two equal parts. Prior to putting on the boots slip a half sleeve on each leg, wool side inwards. Now put on your modern safety boots. Roll down the half sleeve on each leg so that the top half of the boot shows a woolen exterior. I also assume you will be wearing modern safety gloves. Again, these send out the wrong signals. What you need is two cone like shapes cut out of thin board, painted matt black. Slide these up the arms, prior to tting the modern safety glove, large end uppermost. Now put on the safety gloves and carefully slide the cones down the arms until they cover your wrists. And now to the helmet. Again, we need to get away from the Power Ranger look Champ. You need to paint the helmet. If the bike has been painted institutional brown then liven things up by painting the helmet Greater Glasgow Corporation green. If the bike has been painted Greater Glasgow Corporation green then paint the helmet institutional brown. Now I know what I am about to say might sound like yet another contradiction Champ, but you do need a sticker for the helmet. Something along the lines of Mercury Motorcycle Club will do (Vic Devine should be able to help out with this) or The Caravan Club (surprisingly, brother Stan can help with this). Okay, those stickers will have exhausted the sponsorship fund but I am glad to say Champ that the bike and equipment are now up to scratch! So, now its time to move on to the rider, in particular track psychology. Track psychology is basically to do with attitude on the track, i.e. what you should be thinking and what you should be doing. Some will tell you that aggression is important, or concentration, or trying to be smooth. In my experience this is wrong!. What is important is being able to maintain the element of surprise, at all times, i.e. the unpredictability principle. Let me give you an example. Some riders always get on the bike on the same side, or have some ritual they perform at the bike. The key word here is always. Avoid always and replace this with all ways. That is, always consider all ways that you can do something. This may slow down the brain and reaction time, but the bike modication and earlier preparation should cancel this out. The rst example of this strategy is getting on the bike. Approach the bike from the rear. Stop about half an arms length from the back of the bike, or one thrust away (same thing really). Look to the left side of the bike. Then look to the right side of the bike. Look up for ve seconds at least and think of a number in the range 1 to 100. If the number you thought of is divisible by 3 get on the right hand side. If it is divisible by 2, i.e. even, then get on the left hand side of the bike. If the number is prime, then with one thrust jump on the bike directly from the rear. If the number fails to meet all of these criteria 2

(i.e. it is an odd composite number that is not modulo 3) then repeat the process from step 4, i.e. looking up for ve seconds. As you see, this procedure (actually a primitive algorithm with no guaranteed stopping condition) will provide random unpredictable behaviour that covers all scenarios: getting on the left side, getting on the right side, lunging at the rear, not getting on at all. This is our rst example of thinking all ways resulting in unpredictable behaviour. Most riders believe that there is a perfect line through a corner and that they should hit the same spot always. Again, Champ, look out for that word always. There are in fact an innite number of lines through the corner. Any schoolboy doing an advanced higher in mathematics could tell you this. So, put this to your advantage. On every lap and on every corner take a dierent line, i.e. you will cover all ways round the circuit. Not surprisingly, as any 3d year University graduate studying statistics will be able to tell you, this will eventually result in one perfect lap. Therefore, in time this strategy is guaranteed to bring the lap record home to Britain. How about that for a comforting feeling Champ! Champ, you will at some time come across a rider who is slower than you. You should see this as an opportunity to overtake. I will assume you are on a straight piece of road. Again, adopting the unpredictability principle, think of a letter. If it is a vowel, indicate right but move to the left. Keep close to the rider, less than an inch is good. If you are more than an inch away, fall back. If the letter you thought of was a consonant, indicate right and move right! Again, keep your distance, at most one inch. The other place overtakes can happen is in or approaching corners. Broadly speaking Champ there are two ways to do this. First, and most common, is to nip inside, i.e. if the corner is left handed you keep other the rider to your right, and if right handed keep the other rider on the left. Dont do this. This is the expected maneuver, counter to the unpredictability principle. You should go round the outside. This means on a left hand corner you want to keep the other rider on your left hand side, and on a right hand corner keep the other rider on your right hand side. Champ, I must admit, this is dangerous but it is classy. The most memorable, breath taking and spectacular overtakes of all time have been on the outside. Champ, it hurts me to say this but, there will be riders out there who are faster than you. This is where that button on the handle bars comes into play along with, of course, the unpredictability principle. Most likely you will hear, and maybe even feel, a faster rider approaching, from the rear (unless of course you are on one of the more unlikely lines through a corner, in which case the sound could be coming from any direction). Think of a number; call it x. Hold the back brake light button (well abbreviate that to bblb if thats okay with you Champ), whilst counting up from 1 to x and then release the bblb. Champ this is not guaranteed to prevent the overtake but it will delay the inevitable. However the uncertainty principle will play a part when you approach the corner, so in 3

theory the faster rider might never get by. How about that Champ? Yet more warm feelings? Champ, if there is any take home message it must be the unpredictability principle. By now you should have recognised this as a guiding principle through bike preparation, safety equipment and track behaviour. Take this on board Champ and you will be up there with the greats, like Bill Ivy, Jarno Saarinen and Bob Mac. There will be a third and last set of instructions. I dont want to go into details about this just now, because in some regards they are hard to comprehend, so you will need a rest period to prepare for these. Yours in ill health

Ace, BSc PhD