Are you supposed to drag your knee while cornering on motorcycle?

[Timpo]

When you're riding a motorcycle, are you supposed to put your knee down like this?


This guy is leaning pretty hard and he does not drag his knee.

YouTube

also this guy is not even putting his knee down.


whereas these guys are trying to reach their knees down so hard.



In these pictures...well looks like dragging knee is sort of inevitable.

[zilley]

LOL, this thread made me laugh. Oh Timpo.

[SumAznGuy]

If you watch old motoGP bike races from the 90's, you will see them sticking their knees out when they are cornering.
The last pic is of Marc Marquez, who won last year. Basically, by riding in tight and on the side, you lower your CG and thus you can keep your bike more upright when you corner thus can corner with more speed.
More corner speed means faster corner exit which means faster lap times.

[320icar]

Yes and no. Some bro on the s2s waiting to lose a foot? No you don't need to drag a knee.

Motogp star? Okay maybe

[Vale46Rossi]

^ That is a fucking terrible answer.

What do you mean maybe if you are a MotoGP star?
You don't need to be a motogp star to drag your knee.
Do you even know what the reason is on dragging your knee? Doesn't actually mean "Cool"

There are many reasons on dragging your knee.


I actually crashed my bike last year because I did not extend my knee and body out and the bike ended up lowsiding... catching my pegs and lifting my rear wheel making me lowside.

[Berzerker]

If your cornering hard enough to drag a peg, it would be safe to assume that amount of angle is required to maintain your speed through the corner without high siding. If you dropped a knee your saying it would have held you more upright therefore preventing the lowside? Why lean that much in the first place?

Berz out?

[Berzerker]

Unless your saying you should have hung more of your whole body to keep the bike more upright? In which case yes I can see your point but it's not the knee drag that would have saved you but your overall position on the bike.

Berz out.

[46_valentinor]

I don't know, it just comes naturally for me. The faster you corner, the higher the lean angle you need. Half your butt cheeks on the seat, try and kiss your inside elbow and then the bike just drops and does its own thing.

[320icar]

Berz, you are on the right track. Getting your weight off of the bike and bringing the centre of gravity way down can help you keep the bike more upright in the corner while maintaining the same speed if not faster. If you lean in but keep a neutral body position you can lean too far and topple the bike over by either grounding one of the pegs, or even just running on the shoulder of the tire and well, just falling over.

What rossi is saying is that if he got his weight off the bike (by means of "knee dragging") then the bike could have been more upright eliminating the risk of clipping a peg

[multicartual]

Haha on my hipster fixie there are these sharp corners on the False Creek seawall where you can see if anyone is coming and usually at dawn nobody is out so you can haul ass around the twisties. Anyways when you're flying through those corners in your skinny jeans, if you lean your body out and keep the fixie upright you also have waaaaaaay more cornering available to you rather than just staying upright on the bike

[asian_XL]

you are supposed to do this on a car too, Timpo



and on your bike too




and other too