The 2016 series of MotoE started a few weeks ago with races at the Zolder Circuit in Belgium. We will be highlighting updates from the races, including blog posts, reviews, race results and images in successive blogs.
Rupal Patel - Series promoter sent in this report:
"The opening round of the MotoE 2016 has proved to be challenging for the majority of teams.
None more so than last years champions University of Nottingham (UoN) who arrived at the circuit with a mamouth task ahead of them. No only content at running two separate bikes this season the team had also employed wholly prototype technology."
Marco Degano, UoN team power electronic engineer went onto say:
“This season we are using our own drive; from design to manufacture to coding, everything is of our own making. In addition, for the new season, UoN 02 is being built using parallel drives. We are very aware innovation comes at a price, especially when you are testing something that didn’t exist before. We also know there were going to be some serious technical challenges when using two drives in parallel.
Unfortunately we have to run the 01 bike heavily limited and for this weekend we are going to do our best to get the 02 bike out using a single drive system instead of a twin.
When you start from scratch, most of the time it is very hard to track problems and so at minute we are changing components…. We are going to try using a single system tomorrow, but to avoid any possible hardware issues we are actually putting one together from scratch. The team will be working for the third consecutive night to do our best to get Jeremiah on the grid.
It was not all doom and gloom for the team and the hard work is paying off: taking home the podium’s top step one of the teams riders,"
Daley Mathison the rider in question had this to say:
“Its great to win again for the team, they boys have worked really hard not only this weekend but in the lead up to the season. Of course its good to start the championship in the lead, I already rode the new version of the bike it at Isle of Man TT, teething problem with the controller means we have limits on the power we can safely use, so that we are not currently as fast as last years bike but developing our new tech at a rapid pace. I couldn’t fault its performance in the race and am pleased with the result.”
The first race of the MotoE season has also proved to be painful for a team new to relatively new to Electric Racing having previously only raced at the TT Zero.
Louis Flanagan from Bath University team didn’t make it to the grid this weekend.
Due to the configurations of the power train at the TT, the bike required some rework to make it more appropriate for circuit racing. During this rework, we encountered a number of issues that meant it took longer to get the bike ready than anticipated. Despite working through the night, we made the difficult decision to withdraw from the first round, in order to ensure the motorcycle is safe to race in the next round. Despite not racing, it has been great meeting the other teams and sampling the local beer. We are really looking forward to beating the competition in the future”
The team from Bath University were joined at the sidelines by their counter parts from Delft University who are also not yet ready to race.
“we have a strong legacy in Motorcycle championships and are focusing on building a bike we can be proud f - we should be ready By Assen - this is our aim"".
The Zongshen team were relatively happy over the weekend. Sporting a new livery and brand
name the team looked energised for the season ahead. Unlike last season, both principal riders are in good health and in positive moods. The team scored a comfortable podium finish with #59 Chi Fung Ho.
“ I’m happy with the way the bike performed. The team had made the decision to upgrade our motors from the 95R’s to the all new Saietta 119R’s. I have to say, the improvement was immediately felt with a more powerful and consistent performance. I really think this new motor has resulted in a much better bike overall. Very pleased with my second place. Looking forward to racing in Germany next."
Race gremlins also plagued new team from Germany, the Gauss Project. Rolling into the paddock with a great looking lightweight well balanced bike and putting in a qualifying time that placed them in third place on the starting grid, the team were fairly confident of a podium going into the first race. Sadly this was not to be the case, the teams race hopes were dashed in lap three when the bike safety mechanisms meant it came to a grind holt. As soon as the bike came into the pit, the team knew what was wrong, a simple error cost them the podium but didnt dampen their spirits for long.… expect to see more from this exciting team in the coming round.
Results:-
Race one:-
1. Daley Mathison, UoN #1
2. Chi Fung Ho, Zongshen Racing #59
3. Mathias Korioth, Saietta Racing #77
Race Two:-
1. Daley Mathison, UoN #1
2. Chi Fung Ho, Zongshen Racing #59
3. Chun Kay Kwok, Zongshen Racing #27
Jeremiah Johnson the UoN 02 rider also posted this blog:
"Ok, after a very valiant effort by the Murata Electronics/ UoN EEE Emoto team, we are having to call it a day for this race weekend. I woke up at 5 am to find the crew still fighting to give me a shot at the race today. They had been up all night with the bike. They finally tracked down the culprit. Turns out they hand made their first prototype gates drivers (that is what is in the UoN-01), then sent it out to have a bunch replicated to their design. They then hand installed all the important pieces on the board. But we kept having a bunch of weird noise and kept blowing up small components. They spent hours pouring through the programming to insure that it was exactly the same as the UoN-01 bike. They replaced a bunch of the parts that kept repeatedly blowing.
Then, early this morning they realized that out of the 60 or so tiny capacitors that were pre-installed from the outsourced company, one of them (the same one on every board) was a slightly different value than all the rest. I've taken a pic of the board with a mini zip tie pointing to the culprit. They changed it out and tested it, and the issue was gone. I got all psyched up to go out and push as hard as I could on an unknown bike on an unknown track just to try to pay the team back for all their hard work. But then we noticed that one of the other parts was getting weak from all of abuse and re-tearing down/re-building multiple times. At this point we were out of spares and couldn't get the other parts right. I can't thank the team enough for all the sleepless nights they put into getting us on the track. Look forward to doing continued testing and getting this bike dialed in to get the chance to twist the throttle in anger at the next race.
Thanks to all my friends and fans who continue to support and follow my adventures, and to all the sponsors for getting us such great products to work with. Once we get this dialed in, it is going to be a beast. Looking forward to watching my teammate, Daley Mathison, continue dominating in the long race starting in a few minutes."
University of Nottingham have provided this onboard footage from Zolder circuit.
The images from the race are courtesy of Andreas Weinand.