Random ramblings

Friday April 24, 2009

RS250 no more

Sniff.. my beautiful Aprilia RS250 disappears tomorrow, sold to a collector.

The money's going on maintenance on my other collectable, my '00 Mini (the real mini in that picture, not that other shameless BMW rip-off of the name) which my parents are using at the moment.

Tuesday April 24, 2007

Aprilia RSXV550 project bike

There's been speculation here before on the possibility of an Aprilia RSV450, seems someone has gone and put together a project bike RSXV550 - Aprilia's 550cc v-twin SXV engine in the still awesome RS250 frame, wheels and suspension.

Come on Aprilia... Build the RSV450...

Thursday March 09, 2006

MotoGP 2006 coming up...

Just over two weeks to go till the 2006 season opens at Jerez on March 26th (motorcycle racing coverage calendar from the Beeb). Should be good, though unlikely to beat last years amazing opening race - if you missed it, here's the TV footage of just the last lap of Jerez 2005, breathtaking stuff. Sete has switched to the Ducati Corsa team, and been posting good times in pre-season testing, hopefully he'll be out of the rut he was in last season (Jerez apparently psyched him out for the remainder of the year).

Also, I'm going to try cut back on motorbike related posts on this blog. The ratio of bike to technical stuff is terrible (writing entries on trivial bike racing stuff is easy). I keep a page with mildly interesting bike related stuff elsewhere though, which might be worth looking at - have to see about some kind of RSS format for updates to it.

Thursday February 02, 2006

Rossi beats a few F1 regulars at Valencia

After spinning out on his first lap yesterday, today Rossi set 9th fastest time at Valencia. He posted a fastest lap just 1.6s behind the fastest time of Alonso, and just over a second behind Schumacher's fastest time, who was testing in the new Ferrari. Rossi beat several F1 regulars, including Webber (Williams), Coulthard (Red Bull) and Trulli (Toyota).

Mark Webber of course is one the drivers who commented recently on Rossi's prospects at Valencia. This is only Rossi's fourth outing in an F1 car.

Now if only I could find a bookmaker willing to take on my "Rossi F1 Champ by 2008" bet.

Sunday January 29, 2006

Rossi to join F1 Valencia test

Rossi apparently will be joining a joint F1 team test at Valencia next week. He'll be driving the older F2004 car, but will (it seems) be mixing it up on track with established F1 drivers from McLaren-Mercedes, Toyota, Williams-Cosworth, BMW Sauber, Honda and of course Michael Schumacher and Massa from Ferrari. Wow

Rossi at Sepang test

Rossi does some showboating at Sepang - spinning it up out of a corner while giving a thumbs-up to the photographer.

Thursday January 12, 2006

rally and rs250 track day videos

"Climb Dance" is an excellent little film of world champion Ari Vatanen sliding his Peugeot 405 up a switchback gravel mountain road. There's a great helicopter shot of one spot with the car backing into a corner, and the rear wheel literally less than a foot from a steep drop.

Also, google video is a great source of track day videos. E.g this one of an RS250 at Zandvoort (the Netherlands). Lovely two stroke wail. You can see the strengths of the RS250, particularly on his later laps as he gets into it: much later on the brakes compared to the bigger bikes, much greater flexibility in choosing a line, or even changing a line mid-corner. You can also see the downsides though, the 4 strokes just drive out of corners so much better, particularly if you let the revs drop too much on the two-stroke. The rider really should fit some rear-set foot pegs to his bike - you can hear them scraping a few times . The pegs digging in and picking the bike up throws him offline at least twice; once early on and once later where he ends up running off track.

Zandvoort seems to have an absolutely awesome last corner, running onto the main straight. Long double apex corner, slowish in and then accelerating seemingly forever, from 3rd or 4th into 6th at the exit. He takes it pretty much flat out on his very last lap, revs in the powerband nearly all the way and at peak power (10k to 11k rpm) near the end of it and it looks stunning.

I have to go on a track day there some day.

Thursday December 01, 2005

Aprilia RSV450, will they or won't they..

The nicest picture yet of the possible Aprilia RSV450. This one actually looks like it might be more than just a mockup using a RS250 with 450 decals and slight bodywork modifications (note that the exhausts look like RS250 two-stroke twin cans). The accompanying article, in german, speculates it will use the 450cc V-twin four-stroke engine which Aprilia have been developing, will likely be around 70PS (PS == BHP) and 120kg. Speculated cost of €6k to €7k (so about €10k to €12k in rip-off Ireland, no doubt).

That compares really well to the RS250, which is about 142kg dry (130 to 135kg if you replace the horrifically heavy Aprilia cast-iron pipes with some proper pipes) and around 55hp. The RS250 is great fun around a track, easily able to ride around big bikes, but really does suffer from the comparative power deficit. The RS chassis with another 15hp and 15kg less would be an amazing track bike.

My RS is approaching the mileage where a full bottom-end rebuild is due , at which point it might be better selling it to someone prepared to take that on and getting a newer bike. But what bike could ever do after an RS250? I'm not at all keen on the 170kg, 170hp 1L monsters. Awesome power, but anyone can twist a throttle and open up in a straight line. Astronomical insurance rates to go with it. Power you can't really use on the road either, the RS250 accelerates just as well, if not sometimes better given it has a much lower 1st gear, at least up to legal speeds (0-100km/h in just over 4s, 0-160km/h in about 10s). The 600cc bikes are just boring. They tend to be cut-down versions of the 1L models; cheaper/inferior components, particularly brakes and suspension, same weight as the 1L bikes but much less power, BHP/kg ratios which aren't really that much better than the RS250 to make up for the extra weight. The only reason to get a 600 is because of the more affordable insurance really. Light bikes and high corner speeds are just more challenging and fun, but the extinction of two-stroke sports-bikes has left the market bereft of such bikes.

So please Aprilia, build that 70hp/120kg RSV450!

Wednesday November 30, 2005

Rossi on four wheels

Rossi beats former WRC champion Colin McRae at a rallying show, beats former karting champion at another show (Rossi's first time out in a kart with a gearbox). Course, they're just former champions, anyone could beat them really.

He's also been testing with Ferrari again, 3 days at Mugello, a tougher circuit than Ferrari's test track at Fiorina. Rossi's fastest time at the latter apparently is 2s off Schumachers lap record there, so obviously Rossi is completely uncompetitive.

Be interesting to see what happens in 2007 or 2008, whether Rossi goes or not. If he does, don't bet against him becoming F1 champion (if only because he won't jump unless he's certain he'd be competitive).

Wednesday July 27, 2005

british motogp boat race

Some good pictures from last Sunday's British MotoGP, including Rossi's "air violin" finish line celebrations (original gizmag article). Excellent racing, despite the conditions, which had Rossi (who for some reason didn't wear any over-leather wet gear - nor did Kenny Roberts Jr) shivering away in the paddock when he was being interviewed after the race for the BBC, and which were too much for the Cambridge and Oxford teams, who both withdrew their entries from the 0-man, 250 horsepower, coxed class...

Wednesday July 13, 2005

miscellaneous motorbike geek stuff

Bookmarks are so passe, and don't automatically turn into google fodder. So here are a few links which ten years ago I might have bookmarked.

Overview of MotoGP engines (drool. Shame FIM are are going to strangle MotoGP).

Some papers on the physics behind some of the typical loss-of-control scenarios faced by motorbikes: thrust induced highsides (the common reason for "high side" crashes - the most painful way to crash a bike without hitting anything but the ground, see this animated gif for example.), brake induced highside (as can happen when racers "back it in" to a corner, rare type of crash but happens, eg Haga a few seasons ago at Welkom), and another similar paper which also covers "low-side" brake-induced crashes.

( Jul 13 2005, 09:47:11 PM IST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Sunday July 10, 2005

Rossi at Laguna Seca

Rather excellent picture of Rossi at Laguna Seca coming down the infamous "corkscrew", courtesy of rideontwo.com. The bike is in "retro" Yamaha livery, harking back to the Kenny Roberts livery from the 1970s to celebrate Yamaha's 50th anniversary. Looks really nice and Yamaha will surely bring out versions of their road-going R6 and R1 sports bikes in same livery.

In other news, I have a lead on buying GP-class 250cc race bikes. So I'm going to start saving and hopefully get my hands on a late 90s, maybe even early 2000's, Yamaha TZ250 or Honda HRC RS250. Both these pure-bred 250cc racers have over twice the power/weight ratio of my current road-going Aprilia RS250, and hence should be a lot of fun on the track . Should at least solve my litre-bike problems, where I get overtaken on the straights by big 1L bikes who I then have to fight my way past on the corners again, lap after lap. A month or four of saving, a bit of luck and fingers crossed.

The Laguna Seca MotoGP coverage is on BBC2 at 2230.

[update: the original site resized the Rossi picture and removed the original big version, updated the link to match.]

Wednesday June 01, 2005

Dear Santa

I want one of these (Rossi's old factory Aprilia RSV250):

I've seen an 'over-the-counter' (ie the one Aprilia will actually sell you, without the super-trick bits) RSV250 at the track, eating most other bikes (including big road-going litre superbikes) down the straight, so I'd settle for that less fancy version:

Not actually that far fetched a dream, given that old Euro and GP class machines do come up for sale every now and then, just have to try find one :). I check ebay and the Buy and Sell every now and then, but nothing much comes up, except the odd dated machinery, fit only for racing in historical classes. I suspect the nice bikes are sold quite quickly in the paddock...

If anyone knows of an RSV250 for sale, do please let me know. :) Or alternatively, where is the rest of the bike to go with these YZR 500 crankshafts. (You can buy YZR 500s? Where??!!)

Saturday May 14, 2005

One year to learn, one year to win; Rossi going to F1?

Rossi's contract with Yamaha finishes in 2006, and he's contemplating switchin to WRC or F1 for 2007. He raced karts as a kid, has already tested with Ferrari once and has beaten professional car racers at that annual winter charity multi-discipline rally-cross event held in Lanzarote. Presuming he switches and continues his amazing record of taking one season to learn a new class and then winning it as of his second season, his record could look like:

• 1990: Starts his bike racing career in the Italian minimoto series at age 11
• 1991: Italian minimoto Champion
• 1993: Italian production 125cc champion (Cagiva)
• 1995: European 125cc champion (Aprilia)
• 1997: Grand Prix 125cc World champion (Aprilia)
• 1999: Grand Prix 250cc World champion (Aprilia)
• 2001: Grand Prix 500cc World champion (Honda) - the last 500cc champion ever

(500cc class is renamed to MotoGP, and four-strokes are gifted an engine size increase, up to 990cc, as of season 2002)

• 2002: MotoGP World champion (Honda)
• 2003: MotoGP World champion (Honda)
• 2004: MotoGP World champion (Yamaha)
• 2005: ??? MotoGP World champion (Yamaha) ???
• 2006: ??? MotoGP World champion (Yamaha) ???
• 2008: ??? Formula 1 World champion (Ferrari) ???

If he follows the timeline above, he'll be F1 champion at age 29.

He's already in the record books as the only man who has ever (indeed, will /ever/ be, given that 500cc has been banned) been champion of all 3 of the two-stroke GP classes. Only man ever to hold all 3 classes (be it two stroke or whichever class replaces them - eg there is talk that 250cc will be replaced by a 600cc four-stroke prototype class). Can he become the second man ever to hold both the premier motorcycle and car circuit racing titles after Surtees?

Is Rossi a "mere" motorcycle racing god, or will he become the indisputable god of automotive racing full-stop? :). It will be interesting to find out!

Saturday May 07, 2005

empathy

Referrer log trawling can be interesting sometimes, I found this animated GIF via a thread on sportbikers.net showing Sete walking up the stairs to the podium after the infamous Jerez GP, with Rossi behind him barely able to contain himself it seems. :)