Local e-bike racetracks

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SoSauty

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Looks like e-bike racing is ready to be born. LiveForPhysics has a place up in Washington Statehttp://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19042, Dogman braved an e-appearance at Spooky Tooth (Tucson)http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17801 earlier this year. Struck out scouting my summer residence Chattanooga, TN, yet Bakersfield California has a viable track. Also, Button Willow Raceway is nearby, yet is pricey and doesn't look to have as many fun turns.http://www.buttonwillowraceway.com/Click on the Karts/Solo button.

Bakersfield has a dry climate, just too hot in the summer and too foggy in the winter.
Harley Biker beer bar across the road from track.

I don't know where folks could spend a nite except for hotels.

Nearest major airports, Burbank 1 & 1/2hr; LAX 2 & 1/2hr.

The Bakersfield track is .25mile, Indy style with a 100yd straight linked to a 50 yd slightly sweeping bend in the middle. 40mph?
BksKart.jpg
Don't know about Bks Kart Club, yet ButtonWillow Raceway charges $900 a day not including the $5million insurance policy required.

So, do you have a local track that lends itself to a bunch of e-bike fanatics traveling to for an e-bike adventure? If so, list;

1 where are you & proximity to large airports,
2 overnite campgrounds, possible private estate, RV hookups at track,
3 track type/length w/ links & present use
4 rental $$ and estimates of insurance concerns in your region

What's around your hometown?
 
Nothing close to me in the way of asphalt surfaced tracks, i do have
one of the better BMX tracks not 1/2 a kilometre from my door, unfortunately
of little use to me now haha...

KiM
 
In terms of the track cost, nothing can beat the racing in Tucson. Lucky me I'm closeish. Last year they ran three times, Halloween, midwinter, and the spring death race. I haven't heard yet of any upcoming racing there though. But the strong local contingent of gassers there would make paying for a track day much easier. The death race may have been paid for just from racer fees with that many showing up.

It would seem to me that the best bet for a cheapish race on one of the other tracks might be some kind of tie in to a regular cart race day. As a clownish interlude between cart heats, ebikes could run as comic relief? You'd have to practice on another day though, or squeeze in just a few practice laps between heats. No telling if any track owners would have any interest in allowing you to squeeze in cheap. But untill you have a field of 30-50 riders, track time will be pretty expensive. Hopefully if you squeezed into the regular race day schedule, you could get in the door for regular race day fees. Or at the most, the rate for one hour of track time.
 
Dogman, mixed venues make for economic feasibility :) I'm keeping my ears up for Tucson Spooky Tooth. Though I'll never be a speedy Gonzalez, I can be one more tally toward that someday 30-50 participant level.

The Adams Raceway in Riverside CA has me curious. Talk about chuckes, do adults racing Pocketbikes have the grounds to laugh at our 40mph e-bikes? Hope those itty-bitty tires don't carry 'em at 40+mph :!: If their scedule includes racing events, then there lies the possibility of e-bikers piggy backing and sharing expenses. Knowing CA, insurance requirement could kill you.
 
Yeah, piggy backing on another event is the only answer, aside from 10 guys each putting up $100 each for an afternoon of track rent. The track wants you to provide additional insurance? Ouch! I thought that insurance was about 50% of the track rent cost.

The track close to me can rent by the hour, but it's too big and long, designed for full size cars and motorcycles. But it could be rented for as little as 1 hour at a time.

The place I'll be practicing at is a large fairly fresh paved parking lot at the high school football stadium. A private owned parking lot is often where they stage electrathons, and could possibly be used for a short oval, or triangle shaped track using cones to designate the track. But it takes a nice lot, and knowing the owner. You'd have to come up with insurance, of course. For practice, I'm just going to poach that school owned parking lot.
 
Here is a fairly recent track in the Seattle WA area (Kent WA).

http://www.pacificgp.com/

It was built fairly recently in the old parking lot of track I normally drag race at.

It's pretty snazzy though... Like multi-thousand-dollars to rent snazzy. :( There are some other tracks in the area that would serve the purpose just as well, but be in a reasonable price range.
 
What's the insurance for, damage or breakages to the track facilities?
If it's for injury, what happened to ride/drive at your own risk?

There's a few cart tracks around Brisbane, this one's probably the most centrally located;
http://www.kingstonpark.com.au/kartinginfo/
http://www.kingstonpark.com.au/pdf/track_map.pdf
no mention on the website of any extra insurance.
Looks like cost might be $95 per racer for 4x 10 minute races on the Le Mans track, free spectator entry. Would we have 20 riders around SE Queensland?
 
I know that they insure the ice car races in the winter but it is too expensive to ensure the motorcycle racing. Most people that come to these races are coming for the motorcycle events but you cannot sanction them - just make sure that the local ambulance driver is there watching the races. Its funny how when you come to one of these events you will find only one person their - they are directing you to where the real races are being run - asphalt - ouch! = must have a cowhide rear end.
 
The insurance isn't about damage to the track, or damage to any physical property. It's to cover the potential lawsuits if a racer or spectator gets killed. No amount of waivers ever mean a thing in the event somebody dies, the family generally will sue the crap out the facility owner.
 
What about a race at Qualcomm stadium in San Diego? I was just there last week and they were racing shifter carts there and they have done Autocross there for as long as I can remember...?
 
Yeah, spectator looking at the race while walking twists their ankle, result, track sued for $100.000. Our local balloon rally was killed by rising insurance costs. $5,000 to insure us to let people walk across a dirt lot.
 
That's why I am recommending a place that already does similar things? I am sure they have insurance for the venue.. We would just need to find out how much it costs to rent the track. Best thing about San Diego is the temperature never varies more than a few degrees, mid 70's almost YEAR ROUND!
 
Where do you draw the lines between a road racing bicycle, all the way up to an electric motorcycle?


There must be some kind of motor power limit?
 
I say do it like F1 racing, use the tires as the limiting factor. Basically you can only go as fast as the tires allow. Also you COULD do a battery limit as well, that would still allow creative minds to think up custom wound motors and such to increase efficiency (which is the whole point of E-bikes) and yet still limit them! If you mandate a maximum wattage, first how could you police it? And second, it kind of ruins the fun, I mean racing is ALL ABOUT innovation, if you take that out, it sucks. Just like the stupid crate motor classes in NASCAR = LAME.
 
veloman said:
Where do you draw the lines between a road racing bicycle, all the way up to an electric motorcycle?


There must be some kind of motor power limit?
Click to expand...

If it's under 70lbs, and has functional pedals, it's an e-bike.

Easy as pie. :)
 
We don't draw the lines yet because we want as much participation as possible. After all at this stage of organization volume of participation is what makes the event. Sure it's fun to win but being among fellow e-bikers makes the event. OK... maybe a college bus full of cheerleaders would add alot. :mrgreen: Make it 100 lbs and those above that are also invited for next class of racers.
 
Evoforce said:
We don't draw the lines yet because we want as much participation as possible. After all at this stage of organization volume of participation is what makes the event. Sure it's fun to win but being among fellow e-bikers makes the event. OK... maybe a college bus full of cheerleaders would add alot. :mrgreen: Make it 100 lbs and those above that are also invited for next class of racers.
Click to expand...


We've had threads with extensive discussion on this.

Heavy bikes = Extremely expensive to be top-tier competition, and really out of the spirit of an e-bike race.

However, cheerleaders always = win. ;)
 
Here we go again. Limiting wattage to around 1500-2000 made the most sense to me. Enforcing such a limit is the sticky part. A weight limit is easy to enforce, but makes participating competitively hard for a few select types of bikes, notably 5300 hubmotors. 1500 watts is plenty to make cornering ability the limiting factor in the race on a tight cart track. At 1000 watts everybody should corner good enough, and it becomes a drafting strategy race. boring.

The death race has rules geared for gas bikes, and the equipment limits are basicly functional pedals and protective gear. I suppose eventually somebody will ruin it by showing up with a 500cc motorcycle with pedals attached. The spirit of that race is to encourage invention by not limiting much, and even production motorcycles with pedals like the whizzer are quite welcome there. Beating them there will not be easy, my goals are only to grin like a madman while sharing the track with em, and staying in the top ten or so. At about 35 mph, the issue becomes not being faster, but crashing less on that track. At about 30 mph, those corners get really hard. The winner claimed 45 mph on the longest straight, of 700'

At some point, it may be easily possible to piggyback an electric only race at the death race, if enough are going to show up. The organizers seem pretty cool, and we may only have to pay the normal fee. If only a few show up, we will of course still be keeping track of who was coming in when within the ebikes competing. So we still have our own unofficial death race for electirc if two or three show up.
 
dogman said:
Here we go again. Limiting wattage to around 1500-2000 made the most sense to me. Enforcing such a limit is the sticky part. A weight limit is easy to enforce, but makes participating competitively hard for a few select types of bikes, notably 5300 hubmotors.
Click to expand...

1,500-2,000w limit would also give the 530x series motors a huge disadvantage over using something like a 9C, which can easily handle those power levels, and do it at half the weight.


In fact, it pretty much means an RC motor build geared correctly can accelerate about 2x harder than the hubmotors for the same power input (efficiency differences), kinda bumping the hubmotors right out of the game.

My $0.02
 
True enough, these days an x5 is no longer even close to cutting edge. Or any hubbie for that matter. The only real advantage of watt limiting as opposed to weight limiting would be not discouraging anybody from entering. It could be all about getting as many guys as possible to pay an entry fee, unless a deep pocket sponsor is found. On the other hand, if running it unlimited draws more folks, do that.
 
I still say let the tires be the limiter, and MAYBE AH of battery, because if you limit the AH to say just barely enough to finish the race safely, you will be limited to how many Watt Hours you can dump into the motor during the race and thus limit the speed/acceleration you can achieve. This actually (now that I really think about it) is the only good way to limit them, if you are going to limit them at all. It will encourage people who really want to win to try different windings and gear ratios ETC. which is what RACING is all about, DEVELOPMENT.

I have raced just about every vehicle you can think of (Motocross, Jet Skis professionally, Off road, Drag Cars, Nascar, USAC, ETC.) and I assure you I know how the rules are set up most of the time. They do it so the teams can have room to play with things but still make it hard to beat the other guy. If you limit watts, you will just have a guy with a kickin R/C setup kick everyone's butt and eventually that will be the only thing there, R/C, and we don't want that, diversity is what makes it fun!
 
dogman said:
True enough, these days an x5 is no longer even close to cutting edge. Or any hubbie for that matter. The only real advantage of watt limiting as opposed to weight limiting would be not discouraging anybody from entering. It could be all about getting as many guys as possible to pay an entry fee, unless a deep pocket sponsor is found. On the other hand, if running it unlimited draws more folks, do that.
Click to expand...

Power limit discourages anyone who is interested in pushing e-bike tech to new levels IMHO.

Whiplash said:
I still say let the tires be the limiter, and MAYBE AH of battery, because if you limit the AH to say just barely enough to finish the race safely, you will be limited to how many Watt Hours you can dump into the motor during the race and thus limit the speed/acceleration you can achieve.
Click to expand...

The weight limit naturally is a battery limit. Batteries have weight, if you want more batteries, you gotta save weight elsewhere. If you give up some battery capacity, you might save the weight to run the scooter tires with excellent cornering grip, but have to use a lower average power level because of it. Or, if you're running little 700c road bike wheels and tires, you can fit an extra LiPo pack or two on the bike to give you the ability to have more range. etc etc Want suspension? Gotta decide if it's worth trading in the ability to run extra grippy tires? or carry more battery? etc etc.

A weight limit is a natural performance limiter, and a natural way to force the choices in design that make racing and setting up a racing machine so exciting and fun. Keeping the weight limit low essentially means the cost of the battery, controller, motor to be competitive stays decently low. The way I saw it, going from a 70lbs bike to an 80lbs bike, and trying to stay competitive means adding another $500 or so roughly to the bike. Going from 70lbs to 90lbs adds $1,000-1,500 to the bike stay top-tier. Going to 100lbs puts it out the budget I'm willing to spend on an ebike race.




Also, I should add that I plan to win with a brushed hubmotor, and I think my biggest competition will be coming from common off-the-shelf cheap hubmotors. A well chosen $100 roadbike off craigslist + $200 9C hubmotor +$200 controller (tweaked) and $500-750 in LiPo is a recipe to be a serious contender in a bike race at 70lbs, and I think Tiberious plans to fly over here and win with a setup just like that. RC done properly can have a substantial advantage, but it also has it's own share of disadvantages, such as much higher potential for mechanical failures, etc etc.
 
Hee hee, here we go again. My race setup is pretty close to what you just described, 9c motor, 72v controller, lipo, etc. Don't know if it will win, but I hope it's likely to finish. At the death race, quite a few dnf's almost all due to chain and sprocket issues. It's bike stuff, and they are pushing it to the limit. What fun!

As said before in the previous threads, any kind of limiting is likely to just discourage participation for now. With enough competitors, you could have classes for each type of hubmotor, Rc motors, etc etc. But for now the name of the game should be getting people to show up. BTW, at least 70% of the people at the death race knew they were not competitive and didn't give a damn. Just having fun. I was one of them. Great time just getting to ride on the track for cheap. I don't know if ebike racing is really mature enough for the kind of "world championships" Tiberius wants. Most of the competitions I have seen so far are more like exhibitions of efficiency type competitions. Not get outta my way in corners type racing.

Pretty dang hard to settle on the perfect rules for what would essentially be the 1st real fast ebike race in the US. Must have pedals seems to be the only rule we can agree on.

Tires definitely limit performance on a kart track. Not crashing in the death race is goal 1, and most of those guys out in the dirt had something funky on the rim that most likely gave em a problem. Most of the fast guys were running fat semi slicks. I forget the name of em, but the same thing lots of you have put on street bikes.

edit, Schwalbe big apples, or something similar was on lots of those bikes that finished in the top 10.
 
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