Snetterton - Another rider monkey's view (long)

Having dragged the bike up on the Saturday afternoon, I was really
looking forward to getting out for a few practice laps to blow off the
cobwebs and re-acquaint myself with the bike (I hadn't ridden a bike
of any description since last October). We signed on, naughtily moved
ourselves into a pit garage without paying for it. Set the bike up and
prepared to get out there. Champ set off first and duly put in a sound
twenty minute session. The bike returned and the pit crew set about
prepping the bike for the next session. It was then that Pip discovered
a petrol leak from back of the tank, a leaking front fork seal and a
small weep from a poorly fitting, shagged out water hose. The riding
was abandoned for the day. People were phoned, spares ordered in
from all four corners of the country (Well, Flitwick and Cheltenham,
but it was still bloody impressive) and we set about the business of
repairing the faults. Pip stopped up the tank with some 'spooge'
so we could use it as a spare, in case of emergency. Sweller fixed
the leaking water pipe, while the rest of us dropped out the right fork
leg on the bike, pulled it apart and awaiting the arrival of the amazing
flying spares man Lozzo, who appeared, took the piss chatted for a
while and then pissed off again saying something about a prior
engagement with a member of the opposite sex. Amazing. The
replacement petrol tank arrived real early the next morning with Gyp,
another truly staggering piece of co-ordination which seemed to involve
phoning and co-coordinating the actions of just about everyone and their
dog in Cheltenham in order for Gyp to access Champ's garage.We stuck
the bike back together with the originalk tank, then got the rider's kit and
the bike scrutineered and relaxed.

From my point of view, OK I didn't get to ride the bike, but I was
still very satisfied with the day. Thanks to everyone's efforts some
potential show stoppers for the next day had been avoided. We left
for beer and food. I don't think I've ever seen one man put so much
food on one plate as Pip did, that evening, Quite remarkable for a
stumpy little bloke, he finished it all, too. A big thanks to Hog for
picking up the tab whilst muttering something along the lines of 'call it
sponsorship'. We are truly indebted.

Race day dawned and we swung into our usual routine... crawling
from our tents muttering darkly about no sleep, aching backs, that
git snoring next door and the insanity of putting ourselves through
all this, and for what? Whilst the rest of us were still stumbling
about in a stupor, Gyp had arrived and along with Sweller was
swapping the petrol tanks over.

Practice came and went. We were our usual underwhelming selves,
none of us rider monkeys can see the point in busting a gut qualifying.
What's the point? Unless you are one of the teams at the sharp end,
hoping to win the race there really isn't any. So what if you start a
fifty meters behind the first bike? You've got six hours to go yet and
*anything* could happen in that time.

During the lull between the practice and the start of the race, the pit
crew put the new slicks on the bike, ready for the race, it was then
that 'strong arm' Eaton discovered a small problemette which he's
already described. So I won't. Suffice it to say that the axle mount
was replaced by the team and we were good to go.

Champ was up first and started in his usual efficient manner. Then
suddenly his times started getting better, dunno what happened
but he suddenly dropped from 1:18s and 1:19s to 1:17s and then
1:16s, afterwards he said that he just tagged onto a few of the faster
guys and managed to hang on a bit longer than usual. We were all
well impressed. It also meant the team were running well up the field.

Daz went out second and put in a good clean consistent hour session
leaving me to fill the third slot. I hoped on the bike, ignoring the
spraying
fuel from the filler which hadn't sealed properly when it was pulled off the
bike's tank. and headed down the pit lane, feeling well rusty and a bit
trepidatious. After 5 minutes or so I started to feel a little more
comfortable
and got down to dropping my times. Unfortunately I found that every time
I exited a slow corner and really wound it on, the bike would make loud
clattering noises and judder quite badly. After a lap or two of this I
diagnosed
the problem as being the chain being so loose that it was jumping the rear
sprocket. I figure if I kept it in a higher gear and drove out of corners a
little
more smoothly I could nurse the bike round for the rest of the hour and get
the problem fixed at the next rider change, avoiding having to pit and
potentially
waste time. The problem however got steadily worse, eventually forcing me to
pit at about the 50 minute mark, which was close enough to the hour.
I'd estimate that the problem cost us 5- 6 minutes, total. 4 minutes over
and
above what our usual tyre change pit stop costs us and 1 -1:30 in lap times
whilst I was out on the track. (Increased lap times for the 40 minutes or so
I
endured the problem I'd estimate say 2 - 3 seconds a lap for about 30 laps)
Anyway the pit crew sorted the problem and sent Champ out again.

Champ's session and then Daz's both passed smoothly and I headed out for the
last hour with a more focused attitude, I knew that there were teams close
behind
and I knew I needed to make a real effort to stop myself getting reeled in.
Bloody hell
it was hard work, as a consequence I out braked myself, a few times in that
last hour.
Once having to go straight on at Russell in full view of the pits, I bet
that got rest of the
team's blood pumping ;-)

Finally The chequered flag was waved. Passing the pits on that last lap is
always
a bit special. It doesn't matter where you've finished, the point is, you've
finished.
Everyone there knows just how much work and effort has gone into that.
The whole pit lane is jumping up and down, waving, shouting and clapping.
The then you ride round the track one last time and the marshals are all out
at the edge of the track and you wave at point at all of them to say thanks
whilst they
applaud back. How cool is that? )

Finally back to parc ferme, pull your lid off, glug a load of water and
start grinning
like a loon. The rest of the team appeared and informed me We'd managed to
hang
onto the third in class slot and came 16th overall. Much handshaking, back
clapping
and smiling. What a start to the season. Fantastic.

As usual thank you to everyone involved, it's the team effort that really
does make
the endurance racing a bit special and without any one of you people the job
would
be a whole lot harder and a lot less fun. Suze, Hog, Gyp, Pip, Sweller,
Nigel, Tracey,
Lozzo, Adie, hell even Auvache! ;-)

Get your arses down to the next one people, Brands Hatch May 21st. I'd
spectate
myself, but I'm usually a bit busy/stressed/knackered ;-)

--
Alex
BMW R1150GS
DIAABTCOD#3 MSWF#4 UKRMFBC#6 Ibw#35 BOB#8
http://www.team-ukrm.co.uk
Windy's "little soldier"

 

Alex Ferrier wrote

and you got back on and rode it some more later!!

Respect.

 

A race on a Saturday?

Are they sure?

 

For those interested:

http://www.theresults.co.uk/KRC_Results_Round_1_Snetterton_3rd_April_05.pdf

The people who do the timing for KRC publish a set of results and times for
every lap covered by every team. Our teams results are quite easy to work
out, since
just look for the 2 minute (and one 9 minute) laps to find the rider
changes.

--
Alex
BMW R1150GS
DIAABTCOD#3 MSWF#4 UKRMFBC#6 Ibw#35 BOB#8
http://www.team-ukrm.co.uk
Windy's "little soldier"

 

Forget that, everyone knows that the one who has a shit just before the
race starts goes fastest.

 

Ginge says...

Wrong, it's the one busting for a shit just as he gets on the bike who
is fastest

 

Champ wrote

Presumably this means I can have an hour of my life back tommorrow?


Yippee!

 

http://www.designacuity.com/krc/results.php

(it's not much, but it's a start...) )

 

*waves*

just not tonight [1] and probably not tomorrow [2]

[1] *very stressed* tonight and got to be up early tomorrow
[2] on 7am flight to Basel, on 22.20 flight home.

--
Adie
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

UKRM FAQ: http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

Triumph 955iSS / GSF1200 bandit / CG125
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 ex-UKRMMA#22 BOMB#11

 

I can do this, just not by tomorrow.

--
Adie
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

UKRM FAQ: http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

Triumph 955iSS / GSF1200 bandit / CG125
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 ex-UKRMMA#22 BOMB#11

 

yep. piece of piss. graphs, overlays, analysis, just let me know what
you want and i'll sort it. i may have some time in Basel tomorrow.

IIRC you're away this weekend arent you and i'm off to Philly on
Sunday. have a think what you want and i'll have time to do it while
i'm out there.

--
Adie
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

UKRM FAQ: http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

Triumph 955iSS / GSF1200 bandit / CG125
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 ex-UKRMMA#22 BOMB#11

 

heh. aint done any coding for a while so it'll be fun.

ok will do. just answer what output format you want, rtf, pdf, xml or
html.

--
Adie
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

UKRM FAQ: http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

Triumph 955iSS / GSF1200 bandit / CG125
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 ex-UKRMMA#22 BOMB#11

 

Hmmm. Interesting. I guess you need access to a data manipulation
tool to produce the interesting views, and the output will essentiall
be the "reports". In which case HTML is prolly best. If I could load
into something where I could manipulate the data (Excel? [1]) then XML
might be useful.

[1] where's AndyR when you need him? Oh, yes, I remember.

 

Well, Adie's got more of a background of actually doing the analyses -
I'm more of a 'tell them how they should be doing it based on my years
of largely unrelated programming' type

I'm bored, so I'll give it a go. Just your laps times for now do you?

 

Sure, for now.

As I said to Adie, I'm not really sure what I want. I was imagining
overlaying other team's times with ours, so we could see where we lost
and gained, and doing "what if's" such as "if rider x had done
consistent 1:19s" or "if we saved 5 seconds in each stop", how would
that have affected the result.

 

Cheers - nice to have something *fun* to do with php for a change.

Latest effort allows you to compare two teams - but only Team UKRM and
Buckmaster Racing at the moment.
Now I've got thing working it's a trivial(ish) matter to load the other
teams' data - which I'll do today.

http://www.designacuity.com/krc/

Any suggestions for improvement? I'm going to make it auto-detect screen
size so the chart fits the page better.

 

That is bloody great! It really shows what was going on - that
Buckmaster were mostly faster on track (but not always), that they did
8 stops to our 5, that Alex lost a lot of time dealing with the
jumping chain, that Buckmaster did quite a slick wheel change stop
(4:04 mins) but which I think we ought to be able to beat.

Er, not for now!

 

That's really cool.

Any chance of making the x-axis time based somehow? So the different teams
laps are displayed relative to each other correctly?

--
Alex
BMW R1150GS
DIAABTCOD#3 MSWF#4 UKRMFBC#6 Ibw#35 BOB#8
http://www.team-ukrm.co.uk
Windy's "little soldier"

 

The last "set" of data in the original link you posted shows that.
It's a different problem, tho, I think.

 

Well I've got all teams' lap times for the race in a data table now
and have passed it over to Adie to do some analyses. All sorts of
cumulatove plots of team x vs. team y should be possible.

I really should go and do some real work now