Words: Abhishek Pandey | Photography: Aditya Bedre
The joy of riding at a racetrack is one that’s been a rare opportunity for me, even though I’ve been riding motorcycles for a very long time now. And for the matter, going fast around a racetrack calls for a skill you can only develop with lots of practice. Shaving off even a few seconds from laptimes—a seemingly insignificant amount of time otherwise—calls for serious effort and commitment.
So when Abhay asked if I would like to attend California Superbike School, touted as the best riding school on the planet, at the Madras International Circuit, I wasn’t thinking of saying no, even remotely. As luck would have it, I landed in Chennai bleary-eyed, with barely any sleep, but the prospect of getting to ride on track for three days straight, while getting trained by some of the world’s best coaches, had me raring to get into my leather race suit.
To the uninitiated, California Superbike School or CSS as it is popularly called, was founded by renowned American racer, motorcycle coach and author Keith Code over 40 years ago, and since then not only has CSS taught people the art of going faster but also trained racers who have gone on to compete in the top echelons of motorcycle racing like MotoGP and WSBK. CSS came to India courtesy of passionate bikers and father-son duo, TT Varadarajan and TT Siddharth. In fact it’s now a decade and half since Sid (Siddharth) and his father have been running the school in India, and over the years they’ve helped hundreds of bikers ride faster on track and effectively, safer on the road, and also coached several racers who have gone on to become national champions.
So if you like motorcycles and riding on track, particularly, CSS is a school you need to go back to. KTM India stepped in to offer me the KTM RC390, a motorcycle I’m well-versed with and one that I was looking forward to riding on track. CSS has a simple format: a classroom session explaining the one specific drill to follow for that particular session, followed by a track session to let you put the theory into practice. Before the first session, I found myself reiterating the line “Empty the Cup”. Levels 1, 2 and 3 were split across three days, starting with basics like throttle control and riding without braking at all on day 1. We progressed to the importance of vision and training the brain to focus on the right things, followed by correcting our body position, and those three days made me realise that going fast around a racetrack is not a piece of cake!
Each track session was followed by a debrief with your coach (the ever-friendly and helpful TT Siddharth in my case!). He helped me understand where I was going wrong, where I could be better and even complimented me on things I was getting right after each session. Of course, maintaining restraint and not giving in to the temptations of riding as fast as I could was important to be able to focus on the drills better. By the third morning, I could feel aches and sores in pretty every muscle in my body, but the resolve to get quicker was helping me rise above the pain. Heck, CSS also made me acutely aware as to how terribly unfit I am!
I also realised the format used by CSS allows you to learn to ride better without you even realising it—and it’s not rocket science! Our final session on the third day was one without restrictions and would see us stitch the learnings from the three days together. And boy, the difference in my riding, as compared to the first day, was immense! I was feeling a lot more relaxed on the motorcycle, not stiffening up and was able to focus far better by merely stitching the learnings from all three days together around the very corners I now knew like the back of my hand. And the result was a laptime that was way quicker than I could have even imagined just three days ago! My cup was not empty anymore!
