Motorcycles

Chicane motorcycle seat helps you slide smoothly from kneedown left to kneedown right

Chicane motorcycle seat helps you slide smoothly from kneedown left to kneedown right
The chicane seat and tail unit
The chicane seat and tail unit
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The chicane seat and tail unit, fitted to a Ducati
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The chicane seat and tail unit, fitted to a Ducati
The chicane seat and tail unit
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The chicane seat and tail unit
The chicane seat and tail unit
3/5
The chicane seat and tail unit
The chicane seat and tail unit
4/5
The chicane seat and tail unit
The chicane seat and tail unit
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The chicane seat and tail unit
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A British company believes it has come up with a revolutionary seat upgrade for racetrack riders. The Chicane saddle unit ditches the traditional foam butt-pad for a series of rollers and gears to allow riders to slide smoothly from knee-down left to knee-down right in a tight series of corners without having to lift their entire bodyweight off the seat to do so. It's a fascinating idea, particularly for those of us that find track riding physically demanding on the legs - and the inventors believe it could help dampen the bowel-loosening sideways flick of a highside as well.

Motorcycle seats: they probably get less attention than any other part of a bike - at least from the manufacturer. That's why Corbin does such a great trade in aftermarket ones that are actually comfortable over the long distance. But long-distance comfort is just one thing a rider might need from a seat.

What about racetrack riders? What are their posterior priorities? Well, most racers run a very thin foam pad - comfort's clearly not the main focus. And that's because during high performance track riding, you're pretty much constantly shifting your weight around the bike. Body position and weight balance are of such crucial importance that you spend the majority of a track lap up on your toes on the pegs, with your butt hovering above the seat so you can smoothly transition from side to side.

This kind of thing takes some pretty well-conditioned quad and calf muscles over the course of a long race or track session - and it's one of the reasons why superbike and GP racing are such physically demanding pastimes. One or two 20-minute track sessions is enough for your average unfit rider (not naming any names here) to feel the burn - and even riders in better physical condition will tire and lose performance over the course of a long race.

It's primarily this issue that Brit Brothers seeks to address with its new Chicane racing seat.

The Chicane seat does away with the foam pad in favor of a series of rollers covered by a rubber track. Effectively, the seat is able to roll sideways to let the rider move around and hang off each side of the bike without having to lift his (or her) full weight off the seat to do so.

The chicane seat and tail unit
The chicane seat and tail unit

The benefits, according to the makers, are that you can conserve energy over the course of a track session, plus that since you're not lifting your body up off the seat during changes of direction, you're able to stay lower on the bike and out of the airstream more, so the aerodynamics are optimized.

A third benefit is that if the rear tyre spins up and goes sideways, and then grabs for a highside flick, the movable seat can help absorb some of that sideways energy and potentially help keep the rider on the bike.

I'm not so sure about the second and third points - for starters, you tend to keep your head and shoulders fairly level when you move your butt about, plus, when you set your body position for a corner it's usually during or after a heavy braking period where you're using your body to catch as much wind as possible - so any aerodynamic benefits are likely to be negligible. And the highside point sounds fairly speculative to me.

Then there's the issue of mass distribution on the bike, and whether keeping the rider's weight balanced low on the pegs might make for better handling dynamics than leaving it higher up on the seat - but I'll leave that one for the physicists to argue over.

The chicane seat and tail unit, fitted to a Ducati
The chicane seat and tail unit, fitted to a Ducati

But just the thought of a seat unit that helps take physical pressure off the rider over the course of a track session - that makes a lot of sense to me. In my physical condition (to coin a phrase, I have curves in places that other people don't have places) I find the average track day (six 20-minute sessions) quite physically demanding, to the point where lap times and concentration fall off towards the end of the day. Something like this could help a lot of riders enjoy their high-performance riding a lot longer.

The Chicane saddle system is adjustable for friction and the strength of recoil back towards the centrepoint. It's not yet in production, but when it does hit the market it will likely be either as a simple seat swap for a variety of different sportsbikes, or as a track bike kit including a rear cowl/subframe. Neat idea, we'd like to give one a try.

Via Asphalt and Rubber.

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5 comments
5 comments
HPIguy
God forbid you have to put forth a little bit of effort to drag a knee, or attend a track day. I hear the Moto GP video game is much less physically taxing on those that don\'t have the energy for the real deal.
robinyatesuk2003
does this seat massage your piles as well ?
Craig Jennings
Like a lot of things they can probably be improved on but the thing is... is it worth it? I like the idea of not having the seat interfere with a corner (when getting tired I might leave a back of thigh on the seat because I haven\'t hopped off enough) and this might help. But being tall it doesn\'t matter too much :P How bout just hinge the whole rear end and bring it with you?
waltinseattle
microseconds matter. Lifting just enough weight to make the shift smoothly is time costly. As in other sports, its every microsecond saved...
Pablo9176
As the writer states, when I\'m riding very fast around corners most of my weight is set onto the foot pegs as then when I feel the tyre slip getting out of hand I can adjust my weight corrections quickly and much lower down to effect the tyre more.
I don\'t ever see Rossi et al using this design as they are so fit anyway, they would have to learn to ride differently.