The Motorcycle Road Racers Handbook - A Twist of the Wrist

I have read, in forum discussions, that this book is helpful for improved riding technique whether track or street. I saw no street application at all. And I don't think there was any profound information about riding on a track. This is a text book ment to be used when taking a beginner's racing course.

As an experiance rider, I found the information contained in this book to be excellent. From braking, steering, handling curves, attention span...
I strongly recommend this book to all riders regardless of level.

Great book for the weekend rider to the begining roadracer, easy reading, and easy to relate to. I enjoyed reading a chapter or subject topic, then going out and applying what I learned to my riding technique. This book covers things you should be thinking of while riding and makes you think about what you already do but, don't know why.

This was by fare the worst motorcycle book I have ever read. From the start to the finish Mr. Code tried to explain the basics of how a motorcycle operates. But what he really did was take a hundred plus pages explaining that you should pay attention while riding a motorcycle. The tips that are given in the book are common sense tips that if you have ridden a bike once then you already know them. I would not recommend this book to any rider.

The two books and accompanying videos provide excellent training on how to ride safe----fast!

The best part for me was to combine the theory of physics (explaining why) with the practical word + picture impressions to show me how to do it in my own practice. Some of my favorite quotes:

Your line through a turn is determined by where you want to be coming out of the turn. You ride a turn from the beginning with a plan for coming out in the right place with the right speed

1. Plan to do something

2. Can it be done on this road no?

3. Sequence of actions

4. Implement

5. Evaluate and revise plan

You set up what you want to do, practice until you get the timing right, then add speed.

Plan, timing, speed. It is not what you do, but the timing of when you do it.

This is a great service to all riders.

Can you improve yer motorcycle riding skills by reading a book? No doubt about it.
Keith Code is founder and director of California Superbike Cornering Schools and has published a number of books on the subject of racing motorcycles on speed tracks. Although most of this book's focus is on handling race bikes, only the last two of its sixteen chapters are exclusively dedicated to racing.
The book concentrates mostly on better controlling your speed while maneuvering your bike over varying racetrack conditions.
As you'd expect, there is a major emphasis on turning: getting through the turn with increased mph and decreased time spent in [the turn] and [maintaining] adequate control of the bike.
Code's overall approach to improving riding skills is to define the basics, and then to investigate the decisions you must make to ride well.
He uses a great analogy: Each person has a fixed amount of attention while riding a motorcycle. This is represented as a $10 bill worth of attention. If you spend five dollars of it on one aspect of riding, you have only five dollars left for all the other aspects. Spend nine and you have only one dollar left, and so on.
The aspects of riding he talks about are things like:
Road characteristics: Constant-, increasing-, and. decreasing-radius turns, crested turns, series turns, positive- and negative-camber turns, and road surfaces.
What you do: Riding is one thing; riding plus being aware of what you are doing is quite another. Making an effort to look at what you are doing while you are doing it.
Your own evaluation of what you just did and what just happened: Things that can be thought over and changed if necessary.
I like his teaching strategy. After isolating several specific principles, concepts, and techniques, each subsequent chapter effectively builds on what was previously presented to the point that if you didn't understand the concept and haven't yet experienced it,
you'll want to get back on the road and try it out, read the book some more, then evaluate what you understand.
The books's worth buying.

If there is one way to teach people through writing that works better than any other, it's getting them to confront ingrained, entrenched beliefs to allow your thinking to change. And that's exactly what Keith Code does in this excellent book.

No matter how long you have been riding, seriously questioning yourself through the questions and proposals that fill this book will allow you a fresh angle on something you thought you knew, and as like as not will allow you to move ahead in your riding skills, even if you were stuck at a plateau for some time.

I'd say that this book, combined with time at Code's California Superbike School, is the best money you can possibly spend on your motorcycle. What makes a rider fast? It's what's between his (or her) ears.

This book puts many techniques familiar to experienced riders in a technical context such that it becomes easier to improve your riding and analyse and change bad habits. New riders will gain an enormity from reading it too. It is highly recommended to take the knowledge learned from these pages to a track and apply the techniques in a safe yet challenging environment.
If you have the patience to stay with Mr. Code's oblique approach to the subject you will learn not only a treasure trove of techniques but also the fundamental tools of analysis to be able to continue improving on your own.
Get this book (or Twist II) and revisit it again and again, you will probably never need another text on riding.

This book is OK, but focuses almost entirely on road racing. The sequel "Twist of the wrist 2" is a much better book for most readers. Twist 2 is the standard and often-cited work in the field. It's a better book in every way, and is very good for advanced street riders as well as for racers.

Keith Code teaches you to read the road. He explains camber, radius, series of turns, elevation (uphill, downhill, crested track) and straight sections. Observe your products (measureable events) such as speed, lean angle, gear and RPM. Understand you controls: brakes, throttle, handle bar movement and where your body exerts force on the motorcycle. His explanation of Reference Points is invaluable, even if you are a car enthusiast. At speed, location is a moment in time. You have to use the correct control and the correct place. He explains counter steering (push right to go right) in straight forward and easy to understand detail. For the adventurous he explains sliding, hanging off and (you may need this) falling off. My riding improved considerable after reading this book.

This book started it all, back in '83. Concepts and terms in the book are now part of the motorcycling vocabulary--like "reference points" or Code's analogy on how much attention a person has ($10), and the things that cost attention to a rider. I still go back and review this book, and I've also got his 2 other books--and they are all different. On top of that, you get the comments by Eddie Lawson. $20 bucks well spent.

I'm disappointed with this book. After hearing so many good things about this book I was expecting and hoping for the motorcycle world's equivalant of Carroll Smith but what I got seems more like a high school motivational speaker. He's shorter on the technical info and longer on his own little mental approaches. There is definitely some good information and experience in this book, but it's diluted with a lot of boring and sometimes childish fluff. And the "comments" by (I think) Eddie Lawson are downright retarded ("Will it work?" he writes).

An example: In one place he wrote that motorcycles and riding had changed over the decades with tire and chassis technology and that that's affected riders' techniques and lines through corners. I was hoping he'd then go into reasons why with explanations of the technology and specific examples of the effects on riding, but instead he went into some nonsense about "a product is something that is produced. It is something you can hold in your hand blah blah blah." Is he writing for first-graders?

And I can't believe that people are still writing articles and chapters about counter steering. Don't you have that figured out after being on a motorcycle for about nine seconds? That is, if you didn't already have it figured out from riding a bicycle since you were six years old?

This guy is no Carroll Smith and there are better, denser, and more sophisticated books to spend your time with.

It seems like some reviewers have missed the point. It's the simple, fundamental things that a lot of seasoned riders get wrong. I know-I was one. Take the information and think about what you are reading. Analyse your own riding- see how much better you can do. I had been riding for 20 years when I came to this book. It made me a better rider for the price of 3 tanks of gas. It's that simple.

If you ride any motorcycle this book is for you... anyone can go fast in a straight line.. this book reveals the essence of cornering...ever gone into a turn too quick ? ever wondered why you ended up off the road ?? really not feeling comfortable or stable in a turn?? having to make steering corrections through a corner and why your freinds seem to get on the throttle sooner ?? buy the book.....you won't be dissapointed .....

This books gives all the basics of riding a motorcycle. You can't help but think about your own riding and how to be a better rider when you read it. When anyone tells me that they want to take up riding motorcycles, I always say get and read A Twist of the Wrist. This book cuts through and dissolves all the bad advice and myths that circulate about riding a motorcycle.

This race-oriented book focuses on providing a methodology to analyse any racetrack allowing you to select and ride the lines that best suit you and your bike. Very little here for streetriders ... Flick of the Wrist II has much more on actual riding technique. If you're new to racing, buy it. If you don't plan on racing, don't buy it unless you're curious about racing strategies.

Not the best written book on motorcycle safety. The writting style is clunky and the author appears to "talk down" to the readers. Overall, while it is the first book on motorcycle safety, better books have been written.