Mark's posted a couple of updates to FB this week. He had an engine seize in practice on Thursday (?), nearly causing him to crash. He saved it, but was stuck half-way around the course for several hours before he could catch a ride (on a motorcycle!) back to the pits.
They swapped the engine and the new engine promptly seized during practice on Friday! He was pretty bewildered because he and Brandon Cretu ran all practice sessions AND races last year with one engine each without a single problem. The last thing he posted was they were going to take one of the other bikes (maybe the one Cory raced in China?) and put the IOM suspension and wheels on it and run that.
I haven't seen any posts about the other rider. Hopefully their issues are behind them and both riders can get out there and put on a good showing.
Here's Mark's Facebook update from yesterday with more details than my summary above. I LOL'ed at the Michael Dunlop comment.
quote:
Isle of Man TT 2015 update 07 -- Friday qualifying:
Clutch fixed, the second new engine went 1 and 3/4'ders of a lap before seizing in the same manner as two days before.
We seemed on a decent pace on our second lap tonight 132mph average at Ramsey Hairpin, someone said, this after touring around the first lap under 9000 RPMs to get the motor properly bedded in. Also the new engine saw 30 minutes on the Dyno before practice to be certain of a proper break-in.
There's some anomaly going on here that is out of our team's control. Enough on that.
Faller last night Roy Richardson was helicoptered out from his incident with but a broken leg. Hope he heals up well and quick.
Darn it, we want to do well here. Only option is to swap out suspension and bodywork to our Macau racebike from last November, which we have hear as a rolling chassis spare. It will work fine for tomorrow's 10:40am practice. Our first six (6) lap Superbike race has been moved from tomorrow Saturday to Sunday due to expected high winds. TRANSLATION: Michael Dunlop could use a couple extra laps of practice after jumping from his Yamaha team back to his last year's BMW team. Heh heh.
So up bright and early to swap some bits from one bike the other. The swap to Pirelli from Dunlop has required that we find new suspension settings as suspected. All in all, the bike will work awesome once we get the consistent laps needed.
Got a ride back to the pits with a couple cool pro photographers from Belgium. Good times, but these mechanical failures are getting old... for all of us.
Onward.
Oh, did I mention on my second flying lap a red BMW exploded with huge sparks right in from of me and threw back at me what resembled a starter motor straight though my windscreen? I rode the next half of lap peering through shattered plastic.
The team anticipated Saturday practice but alas two things happened instead.
One, the wind kicked up as expected but gusts up to 60mph brought with it a suspension of all on-track activities.
Two, a private helicopter owner flying only himself found himself touring the racetrack only to kill himself in a solo crash on the side of the mountain in said wind. Real shame.
The boys (men, as they're all old as f**k) eventually haha worked hard and well on obtaining much needed fuel economy numbers regarding our two fuel tanks, information very helpful in devising a scheme for tomorrow's two Superbike pitstops.
As it turned out, our awesome powerful American Made Rotax engines in our EBR race bike consumed more race fuel per minute than the second petrol tank under the subframe could feed our fuel injectors on track. In other words, we found out today with meticulous scientific testing (true story) that our gas-guzzling P-51 Mustang motors were actually producing more power and torque through fossil fuels than our fuel tanks could feed her.
The good news is we found, Tony our lead man, discovered we could double our flow of fuel to the injectors by a fairly simple but substantial tweak. Okay, we didn't get out on track today, which sucks ass, but we're optimistic that when we next do, our fuel starvation issues of the past are behind us. During our two pit stops we'll also be now filling both tanks separately each with it's own "gas cap". Should be fun. So, I'll jump off the bike initially to allow the rear tank to be filled followed by the front fuel tank as normal. If all goes to plan we shouldn't lose but a few precious seconds during each pit stop. A massively positive thing as I'll be riding me arse off for every tenth of a second risking my life out on the circuit. Would hate to lose any time in the pits.
The six (6) lap race has effectively become our first serious practice as I've only completed something like five laps to date this year. So be it.
Going to fit a soft Metzler tyre for the first run, then a hard, then a soft again to see how everything compares. Going back to the second soft affords us the opportunity to try some suspension tweaks in the second pit stop.
Mark had more bad luck today; 5 minutes into the Superbike race his gas cap came off and he had to quit. Fortunately he got stopped safely. That could have been a lot worse.
