"When he brakes, push up against the handle with your hands to brace yourself," David Swarts says. "That's what surprises people most, is the braking."

I'm standing in the paddock of the New Jersey Motorsports Park where all the racing teams are fiddling with electronics and swapping out wheels. The MotoAmerica racing series, the premier superbike racing circuit in the United States, is here for the third of nine rounds of races that run from April to September. Swarts, an associate editor for Roadracing World, is giving me the rundown of safety info before I hop on the back of a factory racing superbike, a modified Suzuki GSX-R1000 that will be operated by retired racer Chris Ulrich. I'm reassured that Ulrich has more than 900 2-up rides on crazy overpowered machines like this one and has never dropped a single person (you can see a POV video of my 2-up ride below).

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I ride motorcycles on my own, but the kind of riding I do is about as different from superbike racing as paragliding is from BASE-jumping. I take weeklong trips through mountain roads and national parks, kicked back on my Triumph America and feeling like a badass whenever I happen to scrape the pegs. During the superbike ride, I gripped the handle bolted to the gas tank like my life depended on it—which it did—as Ulrich rocketed around the track, scraping his knees in the curves and pulling 150 mph wheelies in the straights. Swarts is right: the sudden braking is worse. After two laps, my hands were so stiff from holding on for dear life I could barely open and close them.

Superbikes are much closer to the stock motorcycles they are based upon.

My ride-along with Ulrich was just a taste of what it takes to be in MotoAmerica. The mental concentration, balance, core strength, and hand-eye coordination that racers need to operate a motorcycle while pushing 200 mph is truly remarkable—as impressive as any professional athlete. But when it comes to superbike racing, a team's mechanics and technicians can be just as important as the riders.

Superbike racing uses stock machines—such as the Suzuki GSX-R1000 or Yamaha R1—that have been modified for racing. This makes it similar to old-school NASCAR, although today's NASCAR race cars have almost nothing in common with their stock counterparts other than the shape. Superbikes are much closer to the stock motorcycles they are based upon, which makes the sport unique from Grand Prix motorcycle racing, MotoGP, where the motorcycles are designed from the ground up to be racing machines.

The regulations put in place by MotoAmerica—the governing body for American superbike racing—limit the modifications that can be made to the bikes, which presents an interesting engineering challenge for factory racing teams. You can, for example, completely replace the wheels, brakes, and the entire exhaust system. You cannot modify the frame or replace major components of the engine such as pistons, valves, and crankshaft (though you can tweak ignition timing and other engine controls).

M4 factory racing superbikes in the paddock at the New Jersey Motorsports Park. The closest bike has tire warmers on to heat the rubber up to about 170 degrees Fahrenheit, decreasing the amount of time racers need to run laps to warm up the tires for optimal traction. Jay Bennett

Engineers lighten the bikes, cutting them from about 430 lbs. for a stock machine down to more like 370 lbs. for a racer. They use exhaust systems with much better airflow, in part because they don't have to adhere to EPA emissions regulations. The superbikes put out about 200 to 220 horsepower compared to roughly 160 on a stock machine.

One of the things teams do to gain a competitive edge is upload different "maps" to an electronic control unit (ECU) in the bike. A map is a programmable set of instructions that can help with bike control in a variety of ways, providing traction and wheelie control, engine braking, and ignition timing instructions. For example, sensors send a signal when the rear wheel is spinning faster than the front wheel and the bike automatically reduces the power output to the drive train by limiting fuel supply, changing the ignition timing, or both.

"That's really the crux of what we do," says Herschel Auxier, the engine management and data acquisition technician for Yoshimura Suzuki Racing. "We find the balance of preexisting settings that we have used and settings that are specific to the track to find the fine line of using the aids effectively and not slowing the bike down."

Data acquired from a superbike race that shows wheel speeds relative to one another, throttle position, engine readouts, and plenty more information that helps technicians create customized maps for racers. Jay Bennett

This process is new for every race. The riders almost never go out on the track with the same mapping twice. Weather, temperature, track conditions, and rider style all have Auxier scrambling to come up with the best setup to give Yoshimura's riders an edge over the competition. "Normally, on a race weekend, I'll make 50-some odd maps," he says.

You can install an aftermarket ECU to use programmable maps on most modern motorcycles, and high-end bikes like the Ducati 1299 Panigale S even come equipped with sensors similar to what you would find on a racing superbike. But the variables are much more extreme for a racing team.

"When the bike is vertical, the suspension is moving," Auxier says. "When the rider leans it over at 65 degrees and hits a bump, all those forces are now lateral, so the suspension doesn't move as much, and you are relying on the flex in the sidewall of the tire and the flex of the frame and swingarm and everything else." All these factors have to be considered when programming a map for a superbike race.

"With cars it's a little bit more cut and dry. It's a cleaner math problem."

You might think motorcycle races would get canceled for rain and bad weather. The racers ride at insane speeds and lean the bikes so much that they scrape their knees in the turns, after all. But when the forecast turns grim, the teams swap out bald tires for grooved ones designed to displace water, adjust the suspension and the traction control on the maps system, and race on. Riders can even use controls on the handlebars to switch to different maps during a race.

Technicians do this same kind of thing in car racing contests like Formula 1. But while those cars are much faster than superbikes, the fact that motorcycle racers are constantly shifting their weight up and around the bikes presents a more nuanced challenge for the technicians.

"With cars it's a little bit more cut and dry," Auxier says. "It's a cleaner math problem. The driver in a car is very stationary, and as they drive around the track the center of mass and the center of gravity stay in the same place because the driver is just rotating the steering wheel and pressing pedals. The rider of a motorcycle climbs all over that thing, and they are constantly changing the center of mass and the center of gravity as they hang off one side or scoot back on a straightaway to get their knees behind their elbows so they can tuck in."

Watching the racers tear around the track, I think of how difficult it would be to shift gears and lean into a curve while inertia is doing its best to throw you off the front of a rapidly decelerating superbike. The riders are skilled athletes, the best in the world at an incredibly difficult sport, but ultimately it takes a technician like Auxier behind the scenes to let riders push the limits as far as they will go.

During the 2-up ride, a blind rise came up way too fast for my liking. As I shouted an expletive while we careened toward a series of S-turns, I decided that I just don't have what it takes to race superbikes. I also don't have the technical knowhow to be of any help in the pits. But as with any sport, the enjoyment of being a spectator grows significantly when you know a little bit about the competition. The racers became less vehicles going in circles and more of a series of decisions made, risks taken, and narrow margins resulting in victory.

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