Man that was a blast. Met a bunch of the Brammo guys and saw Brian Wissman again. Met up with Ely Schless after not seeing him since the days of Barefoot motors. Finally met Luke (Liveforphysics) and Screamingflea (VT Bolt team). Got to hang out with all of the teams quite a bit and got some fun footage of the bikes.
The bikes ran well and it was really fun to watch the Brammo and Motoczysz bikes fly down the track. Just the practice on Saturday was a blast!
The MC bike was beautiful (and fast as hell) and it was the first time I've seen their bike in person since 2009. The design of the new bike was really well executed and it seemed that the bike ran well in practice. Unfortunately, there was a catastrophic failure of the battery pack. Due to concerns about the battery, Michael bowed out from the race on Sunday. I was bummed, I really wanted to see Michael race.
The Brammo bike is awesome and really takes off out of the corners. They've really done a great job and have some great people working with them on the project. Saw a few familiar faces on their pit crew. So nice that another of the big players in this arena is from Oregon.
The VT bolt bike is barely recognizable as an electric! It was fun hanging out with the team, it was like being back in Blacksburg. I wish I could be back there now and work on projects like this. They had the Kollmorgan people there and they were giving full support. Great to see large companies like that take interest in college teams. That is exactly the thing that will help push the tech!
The Zeros were all bone stock with lights and charger removed. They all ran consistent times and were usually within 1 second of eachother's lap times. The motors stayed cool, there weren't any issues that I heard of or saw. Really good to see that a production bike is basically race ready.
Ely's RS150 had Brammo batteries in there with an AC15 and was running with a water spray to cool it, liquid cooling on the controller, Cell-logs to monitor charging with a deltaQ.
The EV live thing was nice. Got to see John Wayland's Zombie, Bob Simpson's BMW and a conversion of an offroad sand dune 4-wheeler with headway and synkromotive controller. There were a few Leaf's and a couple Volt's (One was Brian's).
I got to take some footage at the corners of the track in the media area and I'll work on posting those along with a few pictures.
It was really great to see the turnout from all of the teams. 9 bikes at the practice and 7 in the race, I think it was a success, even if it didn't turn out well for some, that's racing! I'm sure Michael will turn our heads again.... he doesn't give up, that's for sure.
