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I have taken the pridmore school a number of times and had my racing sponsored by one of his instructers (also a team manager of his AMA team). This is my understanding of the reasoning and the technique.
To execute it the Pridmore way:
1. complete your downshift before braking (more or less, but at least start the downshift before braking). They want you to prepare for a corner roughly in this order: shift weight, downshift, brake, set corner speed.
2. Do not blip the throttle (this is a waste of time and energy and eliminates the advantage of engine braking. The primary disadvantage of engine braking--sparing the engine--is not much of a consideration when racing or trying to lay down fast laps. The other advantage: minimizing wheel hop, can be just as easily accomplished with the clutch, you just have to practice. Wheel hop happens when you dump the clutch).
3. Smoothly let out the clutch. This is absolutely key--you must learn to modulate traction with the clutch, in fact, you should know how to do this anyway. If you can't do this properly there is no advantage to be gained for the reasons you say: your rear wheel will likely be hopping which can potentially cause problems. I don't think wheel hop is really a big deal--I don't know anyone who has crashed from wheel hop. But it doesn't slow you down any quicker or make it any easier to set up for your turn).
Learning to modulate the clutch is not just necessary for corner entry, it is also necessary for fast starts and, of course, wheelies. In short, there are all kinds of reasons to be good at modulating the clutch IMHO. Someone was once describing a Chris Walker (British SBK) start. He pins the throttle when the lights go out and prevents himself from looping the bike by feathering the clutch. Of course many other people do this but to a less extreme degree which is why you see guys dropping out of races with clutch problems when the start takes too long or there is a red flag.
Advantages:
1. you get maximum benefit from engine braking. This is somewhat limited with a 4, but is significant with a triple and especially a twin.
2. If you are a badass like Pridmore you can back the bike in (you probably aren't so don't try, but this is how you do it--break traction with the clutch. Supermoto guys do this routinely as well as most top AMA/Moto GP racers, at least some of the time. The truck driver at the Pridmore school can do it). The other way to do this is with the rear brake, but near as I can tell this was primarily the method of people racing two-strokes who had no engine braking (i.e. Mick Doohan).
3. Using engine braking has the advantage of lowering the bike's center of gravity before you hammer the front brake which significantly increases stability under braking.
4. This is not to say there aren't times when you would want to blip the throttle. For me they are extremely rare. They are those times when allowing the engine braking to operate overbrakes me going into a corner. This is a rare occurrence but it does happen (though keep in mind I race a twin).
I hope this clarifies the issue a little.
[ This message was edited by: sabocat on 2006-06-21 07:52 ]
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