On Saturday we started out with a setup very similar to that of Infineon as there is a lot of very hard breaking at Fontana (see fig. 1).
Figure 1: Turns 3, 5, and 12 are some of the hardest breaking zones you'll find!
At this point breaking has always been an issue for us. From as far back as Buttonwillow and Miller we’ve been dealing with the S1000RRs unruly characteristics on the binders. Toye couldn’t feel exactly where the rear tire was and if it did step out it was a slap in the face when it came back in line for corner entry. That is exactly what we were trying to address this weekend with the new linkage.
In the first session we were on too stiff of a shock spring as evidenced by the notorious headshake that Jeremy was getting on the back straight between turns 9 and 12. So after a quick spring change Jeremy had a safe motorcycle again and we could get to work. The next session out we were able to dial in gearing and focus on the areas that really make a good bike at Fontana. Here, not only does a bike have to be ubber stable on the breaks, but it also has to be up for ultra quick direction changes and pulling the trigger as hard and fast as possible. After a few sessions in the morning we had a good overall setting on the stock equipment and it was time to start testing the new parts after lunch.
The picture you’re looking at is a 3D model of the modified linkage assembly that our team engineer has developed. Although they perform the same function as the stock components the dimensions and angles of the new parts SHOULD make the S1000RR even better! The keyword here is, should. If there is one thing that we know it’s that something may look great on paper, but until you put it in a real world application (in our case that’s on track) it’s just a crap shoot. Lucky for us it worked just as well on the bike as it looked on paper!
It did take us the rest of the afternoon to get the dampers and the geometry to work with the new ratios in the linkage, but the bottom line is the results. Sunday morning when we put Jeremy out on new tires he flew! Now with the power of the BWM S1000RR rocketing him off of the corners he also had the feel and confidence to bring it down on the binders like he’d never had before. The bike was fun for him to ride again, and it showed.
When it was time to race Jeremy took the holeshot in both of his races and never looked back. By the end of the first race he had a 19 second gap back to second, and that’s in just six laps! The S1000RR owned everybody on the banking and now that Toye had a bike underneath him that is, “by far the best it’s ever been” he owned everybody in the turns too. A lot of the fans stopped by the pits to talk to Jeremy and the team after such a dominating performance. We had a lot of fun, and are looking forward to the final round of the CA State Championship in two weeks at Willow Springs. Did somebody say lap record…
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