2015 TT ZERO off to a bang, McGuinness hits 162 miles/hr, 116 miles/hr lap time

Over the next few days, the TT ZERO race will have several activities leading up to the TT ZERO race on Wednesday morning (Isle of Man time).  Today they have a practice round, and a couple qualifying rounds are scheduled over the weekend.  There’s also been some social media chatter the last few days that are clarifying the status of teams which are or could have been in the TT ZERO.  This report includes not only practice round results, but the status of electric motorcycle teams which aren’t at TT ZERO but had participated in previous years.

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From today’s results it’s a safe bet the 120 miles/hr lap speed barrier will be broken.  John McGuinness had a 116+ miles/hr lap time and hit a speed over 160 miles/hr at the Sulby speed trap.  More details below.

2015 TT ZERO Participants List

 

This is the the participants list in this year’s TT ZERO.

Only six machines went out for practice today – Mugen, Victory, and Sarolea.

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John McGuinness went for a very fast lap.  According to the TT LIVE results monitor he was clocked at 162.50 miles/hr at the Sulby speed trap.  Note that in the Superbike event he’d been in earlier in the day, speeds were between 170-195 miles/hr.  At the Ramsey timing point his lap speed showed 125 miles/hr, at the Bungalow it had dropped to 120 miles/hr and at Cronk-ny-Mona it had dropped to 116 miles/hr.

By comparison the two Victory Motorcycles riders, Lee Johnston and William Dunlop, were taking it easy.  with 100+ miles/hr lap speeds.

Scroll down to the bottom for a collection of results screen captures.  This is just a practice round, so the people who went out may have been taking it easy.  Except, that is, John McGuinness who clearly went for it to see what this years bike is capable of.

The 162 miles/hr speed through Sulby is almost surely a record for electric bikes on the TT Course.

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The fastest electric motorcycle speed I’ve heard of in race conditions (not land speed racing) was 170 miles/hr by Brammo at the 2012 TTXGP World Championship at Daytona International Raceway.  Conditions at Daytona are night and day different from the Isle of Man road system.  Daytona is built for speed, with a steeply banked track, while the Snaefell Mountain Course is just the Isle of Man road system.  See the John McGuinness’ record breaking TT ZERO 2014 lap video to get a sense of this.

In other words, hitting 162 miles/hr at Sulby is astonishing, and is a harbinger of an exciting week to come.

Team Mugen

2015 mugen-shinden-yon

These are the latest iteration of the Mugen Shinden bikes.  As last year, they have John McGuinness and Bruce Anstey riding, both are at the pinnacle of TT Racing.

https://twitter.com/iom_tt/status/606910756458795008

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Saietta/Splitlath

Saietta is apparently not going to participate this year.   Last week they announced a merger with Agni Motors to form the Saietta Group.  See Saietta+Agni merger yields Saietta Group, leading transition to new transportation system

While it will be interesting to see what they come up with, they’re probably busy with merger stuff and can’t go racing.

Victory Racing

In my previous post I’d put together several bits of data to prove the Victory Racing team is really the Brammo team, but with new livery.  Since then I’ve seen Facebook postings to confirm this.  Brian Wisman, Brammo’s product design lead, is there and billed as the Victory Racing Team Manager, the same title he had with Brammo.

victory-motorcycles-jurbey

Several of the teams had done testing at the Jurby track, which is where I snagged this picture.

Team Sarolea Racing

These guys got interviewed by local media

Kingston Univ e-Racing

https://twitter.com/drrobertrayner/status/605057809030500353

 

Brunel Univ Racing TT ZERO

No postings could be found from which to make a report.

Univ of Nottingham

The team arrived on the Isle of Man with an incomplete bike.  Going by their Facebook postings they’re in crunch time to finish assembling and testing.  They’ve built a completely custom motorcycle frame, including a massive looking motor from Parker (the company which supplies motors to Brammo/Victory).

In the meantime they posted this video of the conditions:

 

 

Results

Screenshot 2015-06-05 at 13.16.41 Screenshot 2015-06-05 at 13.16.26Screenshot 2015-06-05 at 13.16.52Screenshot 2015-06-05 at 13.17.05Screenshot 2015-06-05 at 13.17.19

 

 

 

About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.

About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.

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