Last night I went up to San Francisco for a special event at Mission Motors' headquarters. The TTXGP team is producing a DVD of footage from the Isle of Man, and the event was a world premier for that DVD. The part shown was minute-by-minute coverage of the race shot at many locations along the island, and for the mountain bits they used a helicopter mounted camera for some stunning video. There's supposed to be a lot more on the DVD than this.
Being in Mission Motors' headquarters .. well .. they of course cheered every time their bike was on the screen.
There was also a chance to look closely at their bike, and hear them say a few things about it. I'll be making another posting about their bike along with some pictures.
Wanted to give a little more info...
The race is a 37.5 mile lap around the island. In the middle there is a mountain, and the bikes have to climb up to 1400 foot altitude. The mountain I think is towards the end of the lap rather than the exact middle. This means the battery pack might be tired when it comes time to climb the mountain, on the other hand there's an opportunity on the downslope of the mountain for either regenerative braking or coasting. A few miles of regen should capture a fair bit of electricity, eh?
The setting is gorgeous .. and made me long for another trip to the scottish isles as I'd done 3 yrs ago. (I went to Mull and Iona in July 2006)
The race is on regular streets around the island and the roads aren't exactly, uh, smooth riding. I'd asked Sadie if the roads are like the ones I saw in the scottish isles, and she said yes. Basically I believe that means the road surface has lots of little bumps and jiggles which you might not notice in a four-wheeler car but make motorcycle riding, uh, interesting.
The video they showed would be kinda like watching the race on TV (not that I own a TV or are very familiar with the way TV works nowadays .. I'm saying it's like TV from memory of, oh, 15-20+ years ago when I last owned a TV). Supposedly the DVD will have lots of other content. Azhar said they had collected a ton of video and might as well show it all.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki