From the pit, Mike takes us through the journey of this year and how they used data to improve the performance of their physical asset. As the season draws to a close, I thought a quick recap or review of what we achieved in this season. The Class: The Power sport class was developed to keep the sport affordable and to help develop riders coming from the short circuit to the main circuit. As the class grew money was pumped into the bikes to make them faster and so the affordability went out the window. As a result a Power Sport class B was developed whereby the same bikes could part take, however they had to adhere to strict rules to keep the bikes standard. This class is completely standard, meaning there are no performance upgrades or modifications done to the machines. As one of the objectives to this class was affordability we decided to get a road going power sport bike and go and join the fun. How: The question was…How could we contend with the front runners without performance upgrades and stand a chance for a podium finish starting so late in the year? After the conversion to a track bike, we took to the track to start. We used on board video footage and a free downloaded app to analyse where the bike is strong on the circuit and selected the gearing(sprockets) to suit. We played with tyre compounds and pressures and with the data recorded from every corner and every sector of the track we could see where to be more aggressive (from the riders point). Knowing we would be up against modified machines we looked at where we could catch them. Braking later would be the way but we would need the bike to handle under brakes, so we looked at suspension. As no modifications to the suspension is allowed we flushed and cleaned the internals of the front forks and looked at what oil thickness to use and what air gaps to use. This was all measured to suit specific braking points and control over the bumps in the corners. The results showed after we recorded every session out on the track. The result: In the end we made the machine out perform a number of bikes in the modified class. We started with a best lap time of 1.23.6. We have so far managed to achieve 1.21.50. The results have spoken for themselves and has raised a number concerns from the modified riders, whether or not the bike has in fact been modified. Therefore all the bikes were sent to be put on the dyno to see once and for all which machines had more horse power. Our machine proved to have far less power than those bikes which were modified. We took a standard road going commuting bike and made it perform……we used data rather than money. We are still learning and recording and are confident there are quicker laps to get out of the little bike. Having the biked displayed under a banner that says…”improving the performance of physical assets” is brilliant, because this is what we do. We take the little machine to PE in 2 weeks’ time and will be racing it against superbikes. We do not intend to win but we are confident of a top ten finish. We end the season off with the final race back in Cape Town on the 6th December chasing for that spot on the podium. Pragma THANK YOU for the support this season on and off the track. Without your support we would not have achieved what we set out to do Mike, fingers crossed for the 6th of December. Looking forward to the end results.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:27:34 +0000
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