Electric motorbike racing

[Jonathan]

Thank you for the comments - I didn't see that coming! It was so tense standing near the finish line waiting for our bike, seeing the Mugen and Victory bikes go past and realizing that if Daley brought it home we would be third. As it happens, Daley didn't spot that Mc Guinness had broken down, so he was still going flat out, clipping the curbstones and letting the bike jump, until he was directed to the winners enclosure.

It was a shame we didn't get the second bike working for Peter Hickman to ride. We tried really hard as the new bike has a higher battery capacity that the Victory bikes and a better motor, which I'm confident will make it a challenger for Mugen. The motor drive was our own design. I did the current sensing and mechanical design, whilst Marco did the rest. I think we were having issues with static electricity damaging parts, as as soon as we got part of it working the rest would fail until eventually we ran out of spares and time just a few hours before the race.

Still, for Daley to get 3rd place on the old bike bodes well for next year. We messed up somewhere with how much power we gave him for the race, as the top speed was 10mph less than in qualifying, so only 121mph - yet somehow he still got an averegae of 99.9mph. Crazy...

I was going to post a few pictures of parts I made just before I left but didn't get time, so I'll post them now along with a few photos taken during the races. Except for the bearing mount, these are all parts I machined in the 1 week leading up to the TT:

Bearing mount (supporting front sprocket):

Rider's newborn baby - Daisy:


Various sprockets, water cooling manifold, front axles and chain guard:



Not every day you blow a 500 amp fuse:


How many engineers does it take to start a van?


I was disappointed by the coverage Sarolea got. We asked the team afterwards what happened and got a different answer from each person. They didn't go out in any of the practice sessions or qualifying and the riders looked like they expected not to start. One didn't even sit on the bike ready to go.