bottpower

Last weekend we had in Montmeló the 5th round of the CEV 2009. Once again it was a very good weekend for the Kawasaki Palmeto team because Kenny Noyes won the race in the Formula Extreme category, in a vibrant race, riding first and controlling his rivals through the pit-board.

Congratulations Kenny!   :)

Kenny Noyes celebrates his victory in Montmeló.

Regarding Moto2 bikes, in Barcelona we had some news, the most important was the presence of a new machine, the long-awaited FTR of Joey Darcey team. Friday afternoon, I went with Pablo de Chaves (he also came to Montmeló) to the Joey Darcey box to watch the bike. It has a high finish and design quality, with a lot of small clever details, like the conduit that goes from the bodywork nose to the airbox, made out of aluminium, or the air exits for the radiator, very small and designed to minimize aerodynamic drag. With the same idea we can see how the keel arrives very far to the rear, connecting with the swingarm surface.

The design has a great deal of care regarding aesthetics, for example take a look at the way the footrests are clamped to the chassis (you will see it better in the Flickr photos), ot the support points for the bike stand (in the inner face of the swingarm). By the moment the FTR is the only one Moto2 bike that has the exhaust exit in the left side of the bike. The bike components (rims, brakes and suspensions) are top level.
In resume, a really nice bike. The Joey Darcey team has a lot of experience with Honda engines, and in the next 2 CEV rounds (in Jerez and Valencia) Graeme Gowland will be the rider, he already won the 2007 SS championship with the Joey Darcey team.

In Montmeló we also saw a new Moto2 prototype, the SR7 presented by Santolaya Racing. The bike was showed in the paddock, in the hospitality of the TMR team. The bike has an aluminum twinspar, with the air intake going through the steering head. By the moment it has an R6 swingarm.

Saturday afternoon we had a photo session with all the Moto2 and we went there to take some pictures. Unfortunately the AJR prototype wasn’t there because it burned in a crash during Saturday Q2 training.

Regarding the BQR bikes, Aoyama’s Moto2 (number 64) already had the airbox conduit we already talked about a couple of weeks ago, while Dani Riva’s bike (number 7) didn’t use it.

Aoyama's bike had a new airbox conduit.

YM2 LaGlisse’s Moto2 raced in Montmeló with Xavi Forés as a rider. In his first race with this bike Xavi finished as first Moto2 (I remember you that by the moment Moto2 bikes race together with Formula Extreme bikes, Xavi was 10th in the race), ahead of Dani Rivas. Both were fighting all the race.

In the trainings, Supersport rider Jordi Torres was once again faster than the Moto2 bikes. His SS pole was 1:47,688, while Xavi Fores best lap was 1:48,111. However during the race Xavi improved his time, his best race lap was 1:47,743.
If we look at the total time of the race, Jordi Torres finished the race (16 laps) with one second less than Forés. From this data we can conclude that at this moment Moto2 bikes are at the same level of SS bikes.

Diego Lozano was the FTR rider, his best time in the trainings was 1:51,091, so almost 3 seconds slower than Forés, this has sense if we take into account that it was the first time that this bike rode on a track, and of course there is still a lot of setup work to do.

I am curious to see what happens in the 2 final rounds of the championship, in Jerez and Valencia, where maybe we will see more new Moto2 from the World Championship teams.

Action photos were made by Josep Pujol, and regarding the bike’s photos, I uploaded several ones to the Bottpower Flickr gallery.

Since the last change of the rules saying that all Moto2 bikes will use a Honda engine, I didn’t write about our project. We had some news, the most important is the incorporation of Pablo Gonzalez de Chaves to the Bottpower team.
Since August I work in Bottpower full-time and now Pablo is doing the same. For those of you which don’t know who is Pablo, he is one of the designers of the Demonstener D1200R that already appeared some time ago in this blog.

Pablo has an enviable CV, he worked as designer in Lamborghini, and last summer he finished his MSc in Motorsport Engineering, in Oxford Brookes, England. He went there to study because he achieved a Fernando Alonso scholarship.. I think he has been a great signing for Bottpower!  :-)

Pablo is engineer, but one of his strong points is industrial design. In Bottpower, till now this task was made by Hugo van Waaijen, but for this Moto2 project we need to work very fast and Hugo can not work full-time on it, so Pablo is the one who is working in the Moto2 bodywork design.

By the way, by the moment we call the bike BOTT M210 (M2 because it is a Moto2 bike, and 10 because it is our prototype for 2010 season).

Next image is a sketch made by Pablo which shows the way we are following regarding the bodywork design.

Pablo: “We are looking for a bodywork that covers the bike almost completely. A bodywork with classic and smooth shapes, far from current aesthetics of street superbikes. The size will be halfway through the compact bodyworks of current SuperSports and the more “enfolding” Aprilias 250 GGPP. We prefer no to do something too much enfolding to avoid problems with side wind.
On a race bike functionality and aerodynamics must be ahead of any trend so we also want to avoid ultra-short tails like the ones of the new Aprilias V4 and previous Honda MotoGP.
We still must add some air exhaust ducts at the sides of the bodywork, althoug the bike would be more aerodynamic if we could avoid it”.

Using Pablo’s sketch, Ernesto Arnaez from Husmee Studio Graphique! is studing graphic possibilities about which could be the “corporative” image of the bike. He has made a lot of sketches, and by the moment this is our favourite one.

Both sketches are not definitive designs, they are just concept sketches that show the way we are following by the moment.

Right now Pablo is already working in the bodywork design in 3D and I am focused on the chassis design. Our objective is to weld the chassis before the end of the year, and to have a  bike ready to ride in February.

As always you will find bigger size images in our Flickr gallery.

Last Sunday we participated in the 4th round of the CEV (Spanish Championship) in Albacete. It was a good weekend for the Kawasaki Palmeto team in which I work, because Kenny Noyes was second in Formula Extreme. He also was the fastest in the Q2 and had the quickest laptime during the race riding in 1:30.305.

In Albacete the moto2 bikes raced again together with the Extreme bikes. After the trainings the most generalized comment in the paddock was that the Moto2 weren’t able to lap faster than the SuperSport bikes.
Jordi Torres got the SuperSport pole with a super fast time of 1:30.772, whereas the the first Moto2, the BQR of Dani Rivas was 2 tenths slower (1:30.982) and behind him Espargaró made 1:31.251. The AJR ridden by Dani Arcas made 1:33.6, although during the race improved his laptime by 0.5 seconds.

Jordi Torres, SuperSport poleman in Albacete.

Moto2 bikes are 25 kilos lighter than the SuperSport bikes and they use first level components, it is clear that there is still a lot of work to do. To lap faster than the SuperSport bikes won’t be easy because the SS bikes have a lot of years of evolution. Moto2 bikes still must find their own way regarding weight balance, geometries, etc. I am very curious about what is going to happen when companies with a lot of racing experience (like Aprilia, for example) put their bikes on the track.

Spectacular wheelie of Aleix Espargaró.

In Albacete we saw the Promoracing bike ridden by Aleix Espargaró (now confirmed Ducati Pramac MotoGP rider for 2010), already with a Honda CBR 600 engine (previous bike had a R6 engine). The new bike is very similar to the previous one, although Harris people had to build a completely new chassis to accomodate the Honda engine. The new bike also had a new fueltank and it uses presurized top notch Öhlins suspensions.

Just a note, you know that during last years the trend is to work with “tuned flex” chassis to allow them to absorb part of the energy that suspensions can not absorb when the bikes are fully leaned. Take a look at the Espargaró Moto2, and the extremely thin section of the swingarm..

A swingarm designed to flex.

Regarding the BQR bikes, we saw 2 units riding in Albacete, one ridden by Dani Rivas (it’s regular rider) and the other one ridden by Shuhei Aoyama. In some details it was possible to see that Dani’s bike was a little bit more evolutionated than Aoyama’s. They used a new bodywork, if you look at the nose (just under the GALFER text), you can see a cutout that was not in the previous bodywork. They probably made it to improve the air flow going to the airbox, or maybe to add in that cut an intake conduit that is not ready yet. Originally the bikes were designed with the intake conduits going laterally into the airbox, through the chassis (similarly to the MotoGP Hondas), but a change in Moto2 technical rules saying that it is necessary to keep the original CBR airbox has forced BQR people to find a new way to introduce the air in the airbox. Right now it seems that they are doing it under the triple clamp. In Aoyama’s chassis you still can see the chassis cutouts for the air intakes, whereas Dani’s chassis doesn’t have those cutouts anymore.

Notice the airbox conduit chassis cutout under the throttle.

Riva's bike doesn't have those cutouts anymore.

Chain tensioners and fueltank were also different in both bikes.

Josep Pujol provided me all action photos, you can see much more photos of that weekend in his Flickr page. I didn’t have time to take photos, but I gave my camera to a friend who took some photos in the BQR and Promoracing boxes. I uploaded those photos to the Bottpower Flickr page.

I just made one photo during the weekend, it was Sunday afternoon and we were packing when I saw several members of the BQR team looking at the LaGlisse Moto2 bike (still with Yamaha engine, it was on the box but it didn’t ride), I found it funny, in the races everybody tries to be on the ball of what the rest is doing..  :)

BQR team members looking at the LaGlisse Moto2 bike.

Ah! I also had opportunity to watch another Moto2 prototype, from the Hune-TMM team of Carlos Maestro, this prototype has been made in collaboration with the Carlos III University in Madrid. The bike has been made using a Yamaha engine, the chassis is a steel trellis bolted to 2 CNC machined aluminum plates in the swingarm pivot area. By the moment I don’t have photos of this bike.