Isle of Man - Day 4

Isle of Man - Day 4

Things are moving fast now. Including our bike. :) These are all from yesterday, but I hope to get a few more from today up later on.

Allan had a good practice on Monday night. The session was flagged right towards the end due to bad weather on the mountain part of the course, but Allan still got in two official laps.

Here he's going through scrutineering before his practice session. Race officials check over his bike to make sure it's safe to ride on the course.

Waiting in the Parc Ferme for his race. Lately Allan's ridden mainly classic bikes, so he's still adjusting to the speed of a modern 600cc superstock bike.

I'd say he's doing pretty well... he hit 143mph at the Sulby Speed Trap the first time around the course.

Coming back through the start/finish area he clocked 136.6mph. That's faster than I've ever been on a motorcycle.

Allan ran another practice session last night, and now he's got four laps under his belt. His second lap would have been at an average of over 110mph if he hadn't slowed down behind a rookie rider towards the end. We've come up quite lucky to find him, as he's got the right combination of ability on the faster modern bikes (with wider tires like our bike) and experience on classics which have a similar power output to eSuperbike.

We also picked up a new set of race tires (tyres) while we were in the paddock.


Back in Ramsey, the guys have been working hard. We finally got the bike out for a test run after lunch. Lennon got suited up in one of Allan's old riding suits for the practice.

Allan suggested heading out to some quiet roads on the north part of the island where he sometimes tests his classic bike. The road had some nice bends in it, and allowed us to ramp up the speed quite a bit.

We got a bit of video too... take a look at youtube for that.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lennonrodgers#p/a/u/0/ax6KNE1eZx4

After a few runs, Lennon handed over the controls...

...and I was so excited to get on the bike that I left my (non-riding) boots on the side of the road.

It was only a little taste of what it must be like on the course, but to scream past tall green hedges like that was pretty cool. Lennon and I both remarked on how we could see this getting addictive.

We topped out the session at 103mph and the bike did great. Our motor temperature readings were a different from each other, which caused a bit of concern. We hit full power though, and everything held together just fine.

This is what it looks like when a couple of guys go grocery shopping for food for four guys. I think this will last us for maybe three days, if that.

A reporter friend of Lennon's had arranged for us to meet Dave Roper who, until last year, was the only American to have ever won a race at the Isle of Man (last year Mark Miller won the electric race).

He and Lennon got a photo op with Dave on an old Indian motorcycle from the very early 1900's.

Back at the garage, Radu cranking away on the fairing.

And then back out on the roads to try and answer that motor temperature question.

The goal was to heat up the motors again and take measurements. We did such a good job that the bike didn't have quite enough juice to make it back to Allan's house. We were less than a mile away though, so the pickup was pretty easy.

Gotta run again... we're heading off to the start/finish to meet with the chief scrutineer for the electrics. We won't officially go through scrutineering until just before our qualifying session on Saturday, but we don't want any surprises at that point.

-Mark