Eight hours, three teams, one (eventual) winner. This year’s Suzuka 8-Hours had it all, but it also showed again that the differences between Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Honda are such that each has to approach the race in different ways.
Yamaha opted for balance, Honda for an advantage in the pits, and Kawasaki on the pace of Jonathan Rea and consistency of Leon Haslam.
Amongst the top riders at the Isle of Man TT, victory or defeat can come in pit lane, as crucial time is either won or lost in front of the TT Grandstand on Glencrutchery Road.
But, a pit stop at the Isle of Man TT is not a straight-forward affair, and as such the top teams have choreographed a precise dance in order to extract the maximum performance under tight circumstances.
For TT riders, the biggest rate-limiter during a pit stop is fuel, and a good pit stop will see teams waiting for their fuel tanks to fill, rather than losing time on changing a rear tire, attending to the rider, or some other mechanical issue.
In the video attached to this post, we see Peter Hickman come into the pits, on his way to winning this year’s Senior TT – setting a course record of 135.452 mph along the way as well. It is an interesting insight into this often over-looked aspect of TT road racing.
With the win at Assen, Marc Marquez brought his tally for the season up to eight, and a clean sweep of the races so far. After the race, many fans remarked on Marquez’s remarkable pit swap strategy, jumping straight from one bike to the other without touching the ground, rather than hopping off one and onto the second bike, as the other riders on the grid do.
It looks spectacular in photos, such as this one tweeted by Marquez himself, though if you watch the video from MotoGP’s Youtube channel, it’s clearly more of a hop than a leap.
Did Marquez get any benefit from it? The best way to answer that is to measure it, and fortunately, the MotoGP.com website offers us two ways to do that. The results section of the website holds a PDF with an analysis of every lap done by each rider, broken down into sector times.
By taking the times posted by each rider for the last sector of the lap on which they entered the pits, and the first sector of the lap on which they exited the pits, we get a clear idea of how much time riders lost in swapping bikes.
In addition, the video of the race on the MotoGP.com website (MotoGP.com subscription required) shows on-screen the times riders actually spent in the pits, from crossing the pit lane entrance line to the pit lane exit line. Using these two numbers, we can get a fair idea of who comes out best after making their pit stops.
We have a strange love affair with motorcycle pit stops here at Asphalt & Rubber. Maybe it’s the added spectacle that comes with rider and crew racing to change tires and fuel the machine.
Maybe it’s the carefully planned and choreographed dance that ensues, with an ever mindful eye on the stopwatch. Maybe it’s because any number of things can go wrong in those few precious seconds, which could alter the result of a race.
Whatever the case may be, we are enthralled, and at 120 frames per second, what takes only a handful of seconds to achieve, is drawn out into nearly a minute of precise motions. So without further ado, watch the RoadRace Factory Red Bull team pit their rider Jake Gagne, and help solidify his second place finish in this year’s Daytona 200.
You don’t need a good excuse to watch a motorcycle pit crew practice their pit stop maneuvers, but the upcoming Daytona 200 certainly helps.
Common place in the four-wheeled realm, the pit stop is still a bit of a novelty in two-wheeled racing. Outside of the Endurance World Championship and Isle of Man TT, you would be hard pressed to see a team refuel and change tires on a bike mid-race.
Of course at Phillip Island last year, MotoGP riders had to try their hand at a pit stop. Though the GP riders had a simpler go of things than most, only having to switch bikes instead of servicing one.
Even with that relatively easy task, that Australian pit lane was like armageddon for the MotoGP paddock — so much so, photographers were banned from entering pit lane for that race, and we’ll say nothing about Marc Marquez’s snafu.
So with that all said, enjoy our yearly “pit stop practice video” for the Daytona 200. This year, Benny Solis and his crew show us how it’s done. Looking good boys.
Both the premiere and premier event of the AMA Pro Road Racing season, the Daytona 200 is a unique beginning to the American road racing season as it coincides with the Daytona Bike Week, and features the 32° banked turns on the NASCAR oval course.
Morphing in recent years from Superbikes, to Formula Xtreme, and now to Daytona SportBikes, the machinery may have changed for the race teams, but the endurance-factor of the race remains the same for the riders.
A crucial component to winning a race like the Daytona 200 are the pit stops. The only race of the year that sees AMA riders enter pit lane for fresh tires and fuel, valuable seconds and place-positions can be won or lost here, and racing truly takes on a team aspect.
After the jump we see the RoadRace Factory team help rider Jake Gagné take a fourth place finish at the Daytona 200 with a very quick pit time. Looking tidy boys, looking tidy. Thanks for the tip Rory!