Forget drawing the prettiest arc through a corner. The best line is simply the one that lets you roll the throttle on early and never lift off again — Code works backwards from the throttle, and the geometry sorts itself out.
Ask ten riders to draw the "perfect line" and you'll get ten pretty arcs. Code throws all of them out and asks one blunt question instead: which line lets you get on the gas the soonest and stay on it?
That's the whole chapter. Back in Chapter 3 you learned Throttle Rule #1 — once you crack the throttle open, it only ever rolls on, smoothly and continuously, all the way to the exit. A line isn't good because it looks fast. It's good because it obeys that rule.
So we'll build the line from the throttle outward: why "out, in, out," why the apex wants to be late, how the corner's shape changes the plan, and where the street quietly rewrites all of it.
Forget drawing the prettiest arc. The best line through a corner is simply the one that lets you get on the gas earliest and never lift off again. That's it. Everything else is detail.
Code calls it "the ideal line" — or, more honestly, everyman's ideal line, because it isn't some secret only racers can ride. He derives it directly from Throttle Rule #1: pick the path that lets you crack the throttle open as early as possible and keep rolling it on, smooth and continuous, all the way out.
Notice the logic runs backwards from how beginners think. They start with geometry — "what's the smoothest curve?" — and hope the throttle cooperates. Code starts with the throttle and lets the geometry fall out of it. Obey Rule #1 and the line draws itself.
The shape of a good line is easy to say: out, in, out. Enter wide on the outside of the corner, swing in to brush the inside at the apex, then let the bike drift back out to the outside on the way out. Using the full width straightens the corner — it makes the curve as gentle as the road allows.
But where you touch the inside — the apex — is the real decision, and the answer surprises people: aim for a late apex. Instead of clipping the inside at the geometric middle of the corner, you carry your turn a little deeper and touch the inside past halfway, pointed already toward the exit.
Why later is better: a late apex points the bike more down the exit road by the time you reach the inside. The exit "opens up" in front of you — it gets straighter — so you can stand the bike up and feed in throttle sooner and harder. An early apex does the opposite: you arrive at the inside too soon, still aimed across the road, with the hardest part of the corner still ahead.
Here's the same idea from the tyre's point of view. As you go through a corner, the tightness of your arc is constantly changing — and you want it changing in one direction: opening up from the apex onward. A line that keeps getting gentler is one the throttle can keep rising through.
Riders call this an increasing-radius line — your arc gets wider and wider toward the exit, so lean angle bleeds off and grip comes free for the throttle. That's exactly what a late apex builds.
The trap is the opposite: a decreasing-radius line, where your arc keeps tightening as you go. That's what an early apex forces on you. You arrive at the inside too soon, then have to turn the bike more in the back half to make the corner — right when you wanted to be opening the throttle. So you roll off mid-corner to tighten up, and that breaks Throttle Rule #1. It's the single most common beginner mistake there is.
Back in Chapter 7 we made the turn point a real, planned spot on the road — the reference where you start steering. Now you can see why it matters so much: where you turn in governs the entire line. Pick the turn point and you've all but drawn the apex and the exit too.
Turn in too early and you cut to the inside too soon — that's the early-apex trap, and you'll run wide on the exit fighting a decreasing radius. The fix is almost always counter-intuitive: wait. A later turn-in is what sets up a late apex. You hold the outside a beat longer, then steer.
This is also where Chapter 8's vision pays off. Your eyes find the turn point, snap to the apex, and the bike follows. Good vision and a good line are the same skill seen from two angles: see the right marks, hit the right line.
Real roads don't hand you one tidy bend. They throw a handful of recognisable shapes at you, and each one asks something different of your line. Learn to name them and the plan comes faster.
Constant radius — a steady, even curve. The textbook out-in-out with a slightly late apex works cleanly. Decreasing radius — the corner tightens as you go; apex late and be patient, or it'll run you wide. Increasing radius — it opens as you go; you can apex earlier and get on the gas hard and early. Double-apex — a long corner you treat as two clips with a straighter bit between. Linked corners — a chain where each exit feeds the next entry, so you can't ride them one at a time.
A long, sweeping corner is too big to clip in one move — if you apex it once in the middle, you either run wide at the start or wide at the end. So you treat it as a double apex: brush the inside early, let the bike float out a touch through the middle, then brush the inside again before the exit. Two clips, one corner, throttle rising across both.
Linked corners are the other side of the same coin. When bends come in quick succession, you can't ride each in isolation — the exit of one is the entry to the next. Sometimes you'll deliberately compromise the first corner — a worse line through it — to be perfectly set up for the second, especially if the second one leads onto a straight. You sacrifice the small corner to win the important one.
Print this in your head. Tab one is the line itself — out, in, out, and why the apex wants to be late. Tab two is the quick read for which line suits which corner.