Chris' Bucket photo thread - Bandwidth warning

[chrisc]

Oh man. So. Many. Laps. today on the 50 at the local! I'm wrecked. Easily over 100. We got one session with only a small handful of people out so I waited for Henk to get some clear air on his FXR150 before jumping out there in front of him for a bit of a tussle. He's RIGHT on me in this video. He showed me his front wheel a few times but I shut the door with the last little bit of late braking that I had. I picked the rear up a few times into turn one but the light little chassis had me filled with confidence it would still tip in. Great racing mate!

Proper racing tomorrow. I'm taking my FXR with me but my hearts no longer in it after riding this little smoker so it'll probably just stay in the van.

[Henk]

That was great fun, mad corner speed through turn one, I'd love to know what times we were running but I'm too lazy to break out the stopwatch.

[F5 Dave]

Well looks like you've got the hang of it completely. I enjoyed that thanks for posting.

Hardly looks like braking for turn one, I remember that corner waggling the rear, but I was always two year gaps between racing mt wgtn (different directions alternate years) so Iwas a bit ragged.

New ring and muffler repack will release a little more if you haven't done it yet.

[chrisc]

Well looks like you've got the hang of it completely. I enjoyed that thanks for posting.

Hardly looks like braking for turn one, I remember that corner waggling the rear, but I was always two year gaps between racing mt wgtn (different directions alternate years) so Iwas a bit ragged.

New ring and muffler repack will release a little more if you haven't done it yet.

Hardly braking!? I feels like I'm braking as late as possible whilst still being able to tip in. A bit of a roll of the dice a few times there. I have to run really wide out of it with the throttle open to keep it in the power so my line isn't really optimal but it doesn't seem like I'm losing any real time here because of it.

New ring and muffler repack coming this/next week.



A few lads from the UK were interested in hearing more about the bike so I shot this for them and gave them a brief run down on it and it's history.

Mixed bag of results over the weekend. Much like the first round. Sigh. Pole position under Nathanael followed by a great start an a win in the prelim race. What a feeling that is! Nathanael was right on me but couldn't make a pass.

First points race I kooked the start. I pushed as hard as I could and set the fastest lap at 30.208 but eventually crashed tucking the front trying a bold move around the outside of lap traffic. Ah well. Shit. Warm up in second race I mostly spent trying to get back in a rhythm and clear my muddy tyres. Nathanael had just finished an absolute blinder of a race in F4 so was FLYING. Out of the gate he put down the hammer and put enough of a gap between us that I couldn't make up. I learnt from my first race crash and mainly cruised to second place. Man. There is NO room for error. None. The bar is so damn high on this tiny track. I'm loving the challenge.

[chrisc]

You're right Dave, definitely looks like it was due for new muffler packing.



It's a pretty nicely made pipe. Where'd you get it? You make it?

[F5 Dave]

Haha, no my welding is like seagull poo at four paces. An old internet friend from soofaffrika. Header is hydraulically formed.

[husaberg]

Haha, no my welding is like seagull poo at four paces. An old internet friend from soofaffrika. Header is hydraulically formed.

Its a pretty cool way of mounting the stinger to the baffle cone.

[chrisc]

Cool. If he makes them to sell, there might be some of them floating around auckland. Can't remember their name.

Oh yeah, I crashed her on the weekend. https://www.facebook.com/GrandPrixMa...5765821241358/

Husa, the shift light was already set up by Dave run off the ignitech I believe. No idea what it's set to but my gearing isn't quite right for mt welly I don't think. Was abusing the over rev quite a bit hahaha

[chrisc]

Yesterday, Nathanael and I broke the lap record 5 times as we pushed each other harder and harder around the tricky Mt Wellington circuit on our 50s.
Although I set pole position and improved my starts hugely, it wasn't enough to get him over the line and I took two 2nd places in the races. That's fine though, I'll settle for the lap record - a 29.914 - which would have been good enough for 3rd place in the F4 class. Cheers Nathanael, incredible racing! It's so good for my training to race alongside someone with so much experience!

[mr bucketracer]

good racing chris !

[F5 Dave]

You look good on that bike. Makes me realise how I didn't fit it.

Your forks look pretty compressed in that picture considering hand not on brake. But so is Nat's bike. Might be interesting to see where your sag settings are and study other bikes on that corner from your pic archive for relative travel (RS has sod all to start with of course).

[chrisc]

You look good on that bike. Makes me realise how I didn't fit it.

Your forks look pretty compressed in that picture considering hand not on brake. But so is Nat's bike. Might be interesting to see where your sag settings are and study other bikes on that corner from your pic archive for relative travel (RS has sod all to start with of course).

Thanks Dave. We're definitely on the same page there. I was pushing the front end pretty heavily in a few corners and had a couple of comments on it from others saying it didn't look as stable as Nathanael's bike. Mind you, I think he's much smoother than I am at the moment. My body positioning was up to shit and I'm probably being a bit too aggressive with the little thing.

I'll post some video up in the next few days. You can see where I was sliding around the place I gotta say, I've never felt so confident in a bike whilst it's moving around under me. Definitely would have been on my ass if it was the FXR.

[chrisc]

Alright racers, who wants to get nerdy up in here?

One of my biggest weaknesses is consistency which isn't something you want as a 2 stroke racer. I've been working on it pretty heavily in the last few months and it also happens that I'm a business analyst by profession. So lets get nerdy and have a better look at how the racing went. I'm still fizzing over the weekends racing with Nathanael, damn it was fun, so here's where my head is at. Yeah I did some decent lap times, but have I improved my consistency at all?

Graph one: the gap progression between ND and myself as I chased him in both races. Race one was tight! Except for the last lap where I tried a hail mary on the last corner and blew out my lap time, we were separated by less than half a second! In lap 8, I ran down to under 0.1 seconds over the line but couldn't make a move. Race two was also bloody close being mostly under half a second but lap traffic in lap 8 put him too far away for me to make a move and I pulled the pin in lap 11 to take points instead of crashing (again).

Graph two of race 2: I'm quick and reasonably consistent but I have a way to go to get to Nathanael's level of consistency. 4 out of 12 laps I put in laps less than 0.1s difference from the lap before which I've gotta be happy with but there were a few moments in there that let me down.

Pretty hyped to be out there racing with so much talent in F4 and F5. It seems like the bar (speed and fun) gets pushed higher every meeting.

Chris

[F5 Dave]

I'd like to see your risk analysis strategies and mitigation of the Hail Mary move.

Could be a new paradigm in Bucket racing. We could pick the low hanging fruit , align synergies and create a win-win situation.

We'll touch base later.

[chrisc]

Your response had too many corporate buzz words and not enough graphs and calculations Dave.