Traction Control for beginners

Searched and didn't find good answer to the question:
How does a 1199 rider with no prior experience with electronics of any kind begin to use traction control on purpose? Or do you??
Me: 3 track days after California Superbike School, long experience with old bikes (Norton 750, Suzuki 1100, with no electronics, tires that were pretty humble compared to current OEMs, only want to go: Scaring myself minus 5%, having a good time as it is!!

1199S: stock tires, full Termi's with upmap, riding in OEM Sport mode settings so far

Slowly pushing up drive out of corners, 3rd gear, 7K, can make the yellow lite come on, don't feel a thing.

Have heard that some just pin the throttle in this situation and let the electronics work. Thoughts? I am not/will never be, racing. I do like to explore what the bike and I can do. Should I be satisfied where I am at?

Would appreciate how others approach corner exit/reliance on traction control in the modern era for non-racing track rider

I have found where the 1199 is happy. It is not going to the grocery store.

Thanks, Paul

This is just IMHO, and I haven't ridden street in years......but traction control is a safety net IMHO. I wouldn't intentionally try and activate it. It's just a byproduct of riding aggressively. As your skills mature you will bump into it more and more often and can adjust the settings from there.

Desmophile said:

Searched and didn't find good answer to the question:
How does a 1199 rider with no prior experience with electronics of any kind begin to use traction control on purpose? Or do you??
Me: 3 track days after California Superbike School, long experience with old bikes (Norton 750, Suzuki 1100, with no electronics, tires that were pretty humble compared to current OEMs, only want to go: Scaring myself minus 5%, having a good time as it is!!

1199S: stock tires, full Termi's with upmap, riding in OEM Sport mode settings so far

Slowly pushing up drive out of corners, 3rd gear, 7K, can make the yellow lite come on, don't feel a thing.

Have heard that some just pin the throttle in this situation and let the electronics work. Thoughts? I am not/will never be, racing. I do like to explore what the bike and I can do. Should I be satisfied where I am at?

Would appreciate how others approach corner exit/reliance on traction control in the modern era for non-racing track rider

I have found where the 1199 is happy. It is not going to the grocery store.

Thanks, Paul

Click to expand...

Pick a more interesting (read: slower, more drastic change of direction) corner, get some sort of data logging system (even a camera would do) and work on improving your drive out of the corner.

I do not/will never trust the electronics on a bike enough to just pin it.

shakazulu12 said:

This is just IMHO, and I haven't ridden street in years......but traction control is a safety net IMHO. I wouldn't intentionally try and activate it. It's just a byproduct of riding aggressively. As your skills mature you will bump into it more and more often and can adjust the settings from there.

Click to expand...

Well said.

TC is a safety net. It allows you to ride more aggressively, especially on the track, compared to without TC. It has saved me countless of times in the 2 years I've had this bike, some in situation that would otherwise have resulted in me losing my bike.
I found that panigale TC is very good, to the point I can twist the throttle with reckless abandon. It does result in slower laptimes though, but you don't even feel it. The slower laptimes however means there is an incentive to learn not to trigger it.
On the other hand, it does not mean you can ride nuts in wet or semi wet condition. It will provide you a certain safety margin, but if you feed it errors beyond that threshold rapidly it will still throw you off.
One of my friends just installed bazza with tc on his triumph. Condition was semi wet but he decided to go nuts. High-sided.
Having said that, Panigale TC is one of the best out there, and apparently much better than the comparable s1krr 's

The 1199 was my first experience with traction control as well. As a road rider, my approach to learning it was to turn it off to begin with, along with every other electronic aid the bike has. That would let me get to know the bike in as natural a state as possible with RBW. Rode it that way for a while, and in a way that was familiar to me coming from my last modern liter bike, an '08 Fireblade; hard enough to get the rear moving around a bit on corner entry and exits. Then I turned the TC on it's highest setting and repeated some test sections of road, gradually working my way down step by step back to zero, and then up again until I found a setting that let me ride the way I wanted with just the occasional blip of TC activation. With the OEM tires, that was level 3 for me at what I'd call a sporting pace on warm dry pavement. The exercise helped me understand what TC was going to do and how much variance there was between levels. I think much above 3 is probably only suited to significantly reduced grip situations.

As noted in other replies, in many situations you really can just whack the throttle and watch the magic light come on, saving your arse once again. It's fun to play with that like a game sometimes, but it's not going to be fast and you definitely cannot do it in truly sketchy grip conditions or you will end up on your head. Actually you might could if you had it up on 8 ala rain mode, as the bike is incredibly restricted at that level.

Where I'm going with it is that you should experiment with levels until you find one that only gives you rare intervention at what your desired pace would be without it. That way it will work properly to only intervene when you get a bit overzealous, and thus provide some comfort at the edges. Then since you're not worrying about the rear so much you'll have more mental bandwidth to focus on other aspects of your riding.

Default wet mode for wet condition, 4 for weekend sport riding or general dry condition (default sport mode), 2 for track with super corsa SP/SC (default race mode), and 1 for slicks. I've tried pushing those and am very happy with the results. Coincidentally they are the recommended settings in the manual too. Haven't got any reason to change them from those as I've always been using pirelli s.
I've raced in the dry with wet TC mode (forgot to change), and it was horrible to the point I almost crashed a few times since I was expecting to control the line through corners with throttle (as I normally would) but unnecessary TC intervention (barely leaning!!) slowed the bike down so much I ended up oversteering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXQ-pLR0LQ

Traction Control

Thanks guys!! Your opinions make sense to me, and your suggestions are usable. Paul

Whacking the throttle isn't a good idea...

first, TC isn't perfect.

Second, banging the throttle with abandon doesn't feel like I'd be developing skills I'd be proud of. While I'm not totally anti-electronics like some people are (mostly the guys who can't/don't want to afford it), but on the spectrum of zero electronics to having a bike that can drive itself (a la a roller-coaster), that doesn't feel like fun to me.

Third, with all that muscle memory you'd develop of a super-bad habit, if you ever switch to a bike that doesn't have TC, you are in trouble (even if it's taking your buddies bike out for a lap or two, or doing a demo ride, or your TC breaks).

I've taken the Penguin Roadracing School quite a few times, and Eric Wood will tell you dozens of times throughout the day "90% of highsides are caused by improper bar input, not improper throttle input".

Having a bike that isn't squatting properly now (see this thread) I can tell you that on setting 2, or even 3, I can feel the rear slide quite a bit and the front turn-out to counter steer before the TC turns in IF I am light on the bars.

I'd follow Ducati's recommendation on how to find the right setting for you (at least as I remember it from my 1198's owner's manual).

Set it really high (probably not necessary to go to 8, but let's say 4 or 5), take a few laps (with a gopro trained on the light or some other data acquisition method) come in, see how often it was triggered, take it down a setting take a few laps and repeat until it rarely ever triggers under your normal riding. As you improve with time you may bring it down a level, but I personally don't think I'll ever turn it all the way off. I think setting #1 will allow you plenty of spin to get a full drive while still having some safety net to help tame that 195hp beast.

Marmoot said:

Default wet mode for wet condition, 4 for weekend sport riding or general dry condition (default sport mode), 2 for track with super corsa SP/SC (default race mode), and 1 for slicks. I've tried pushing those and am very happy with the results. Coincidentally they are the recommended settings in the manual too. Haven't got any reason to change them from those as I've always been using pirelli s.
I've raced in the dry with wet TC mode (forgot to change), and it was horrible to the point I almost crashed a few times since I was expecting to control the line through corners with throttle (as I normally would) but unnecessary TC intervention (barely leaning!!) slowed the bike down so much I ended up oversteering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXQ-pLR0LQ

Click to expand...

It looks like the guy in front of you in the beginning had his brake light and plates still on the bike?
On all the tracks I have ridden on, even on on track days, they have required the headlights and taillight and or turn signals etc. to either be taped over or removed.. That guy had his brake light lighting up in the corners LOL..

Speedy

Same thing I noticed as well. And street bodywork?

Plates were removed. The red light was probably the rain light, because it was raining very hard in the morning the race was almost declared wet race which would require red light at the back. Street bodywork is ok yep. Mine was those cheap chinese set.

Marmoot said:

TC is a safety net. It allows you to ride more aggressively, especially on the track, compared to without TC. It has saved me countless of times in the 2 years I've had this bike, some in situation that would otherwise have resulted in me losing my bike.
I found that panigale TC is very good, to the point I can twist the throttle with reckless abandon. It does result in slower laptimes though, but you don't even feel it. The slower laptimes however means there is an incentive to learn not to trigger it.
On the other hand, it does not mean you can ride nuts in wet or semi wet condition. It will provide you a certain safety margin, but if you feed it errors beyond that threshold rapidly it will still throw you off.
One of my friends just installed bazza with tc on his triumph. Condition was semi wet but he decided to go nuts. High-sided.
Having said that, Panigale TC is one of the best out there, and apparently much better than the comparable s1krr 's

Click to expand...

The Bazzaz TC is a very basic system at least the one I fitted to my RSV4 it works off the crank and really is not that good .
I high sided turn 11 at Phillip Islandwith TC set on 2 in race mode . It really ...... hurt .

shakazulu12 said:

This is just IMHO, and I haven't ridden street in years......but traction control is a safety net IMHO. I wouldn't intentionally try and activate it. It's just a byproduct of riding aggressively. As your skills mature you will bump into it more and more often and can adjust the settings from there.

Click to expand...

Perfectly said.

"The red light was probably the rain light, because it was raining very hard in the morning the race was almost declared wet race which would require red light at the back. "

I have never seen a race where they had a red light on the back of a bike? What track were you on?

New zealand track.