Thompson Speedway road course · 11 corners · 20 clean-pace laps on the Tiger Sport 660, 8 Sep 2025 · the ZX-4RR on Monday
Thompson on the ZX-4RR: a corner-by-corner plan from your Tiger day.
Eric Wood's framework sorts every corner into a roll-speed, drive or entrance line from two things: the corner's minimum speed against the bike's threshold-of-traction speed, and how much straight the exit feeds. This page runs that on Thompson's measured geometry for the ZX-4RR, puts the lines you rode on the Tiger beside it, and turns the differences into what to try on Monday.
The circuit, sorted
roll speeddriveentrance
How the sorting works
Vmin vs VTOT. If the corner's minimum speed is above the speed at which the bike can spin the rear at full lean, horsepower can't hurt you there: take the roll-speed line — maximum radius, apex at the arc's centre, slowest point at the apex, light trail brake to it. Below VTOT, the throttle becomes the limiting input and the corner is about the exit.
What follows the exit. A long straight rewards exit speed for many seconds: drive line — enter wide, apex late, gas-on-bike-up to the outside edge. Another turn right after gives the exit nothing to cash in: entrance line — brake deep, apex early, slowest point after the apex, set up the next turn.
The advantage runs to the next corner you brake for. A roll-speed corner in between is not a stop. At Thompson this is why the two maps differ so much: at 70 km/h T11 (Vmin 74) becomes a corner the ZX can't spin in, so the speed you carry out of T10 pays through T11 and the whole main straight — 29 s of advantage, and T10 turns from an entrance corner into the most valuable drive corner on the circuit. The same chain makes T1 pay through T2 and T7 through T8.
Two thresholds are ours, not the framework's: "long straight" = at least 5 s to the next braking corner on the median speed profile, and "linked" = the next turn-in within 80 m. VTOT for the ZX-4RR is 80 km/h as set in the app (the framework's 400-class figure); the app's modelled value from your own WOT curve is 66–73 km/h, and the second map shows what 70 does here. Why the Tiger day transfers: the Tiger 660's measured wide-open-throttle curve is in the same power-to-weight band as the ZX-4RR (its modelled VTOT at Thompson is 70–73 km/h), so the corner classes are the same on both bikes and your Tiger minimum speeds are a fair baseline. What the framework can't see is the rest of the bike — the ZX's shorter wheelbase, sportier geometry and higher revs — which is exactly what to feel out in the first session.
Corner by corner: the book vs your Tiger lines
"Your line" is the median of the day's 20 clean-pace laps, read in the road frame: where your apex sits against the arc's centre, and where your slowest point sits against your apex. A drive-shaped line apexes past the centre with the slowest point before it; roll-shaped apexes at the centre with the slowest point there; entrance-shaped apexes early with the slowest point after. Lean-corrected to the contact patch and aligned for each day's GPS bias.
Each corner
Strip: your median line through the corner per session, inside limit at the bottom, outside at the top; the tinted band is the tarmac, warm ticks are kerbs, the dashed vertical is the arc's centre. 10:36 (first session) dashed, 16:39 (last) bold, the others grey. Targets: the bar is the share of laps meeting the framework's target for the corner's strategy; the number is how much faster (or slower) those laps exited than the laps that didn't, relative to the day's median — the framework's prescription checked against your own data. "—" = fewer than 3 laps on one side.
Does the book pay? All corners pooled (Tiger day, 20 laps)
Per target: the median across corners of "exit speed of laps meeting it minus laps not meeting it" (each relative to its day), and how many corners it helps or hurts by at least 1 km/h. Read this before taking any single corner's number seriously.
What this says
Grain of salt
VTOT is the softest number on the page, and at Thompson it decides the map. The Tiger sessions here bound VTOT at ≤ 122–152 km/h (loose — you weren't driving hard at lean) and model it at 70–73 km/h; the ZX-4RR's modelled value at Palmer is 66–73. T2 (Vmin 72), T8 (78) and T9 (70) sit right on it. The two maps above are the honest range.
20 laps. The Tiger day gives one day's worth of lines; the σ on apex placement and the "does it pay" deltas are correspondingly rough. Read shapes, not decimals.
The arc centre is not a recommendation. It is the framework's reference point ("apex 5–20 ft later than the centre" for a drive line). On a 150° hairpin the centre is mid-arc by construction; what a coach would call the apex may legitimately sit elsewhere.
Exit speed relative to the day's median is a blunt response. GPS is good to ~1 km/h; most per-target deltas are 1–3 km/h on 10–40 laps. The pooled table is the honest read; single-corner numbers under ±1 km/h are noise.
Body position, bar pressure, vision — the framework's other half — are invisible to a GPS/IMU/OBD logger. What is measured here is the consequence: lean re-added after the crack, throttle closures, roll-off shape.