Folks, if you like roadracing and you aren’t watching this year’s World Superbike series, you’re seriously missing out. I made a point of watching both races from round 2 at Quatar and was rewarded with some extremely tight, nail-bitingly close racing between Noriyuki Haga and Max Biaggi. (If you’re following from two weeks ago, you may be interested to discover that Biaggi’s Aprilia RSV4 is also a new development, and that Troy Corser is doing a decidedly respectable job on the new Beemer.)
For a good chunk of each race, Ben Spies diced with Haga and Biaggi for the lead, then inevitably made a pass stick and took off into the distance. He won both races in convincing style, and has now won three in a row. Haga still has the rider’s championship lead, but I doubt that will last.
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The green flag at the 12 Hours of Sebring is less than five days away. I think we need some more LMP1 porn! Here’s the Acura ARX-02a:
(Image link goes to Mulsanne’s Corner ARX-02a tech page)
It’ll be interesting to see how well the Acura (and later the Lola-Aston Martin) LMP1s are able to compete against the diesel-powered Audis and Peugeots. My gut feeling is that they’ll be fast — faster than the usual Lola-AER “also-ran” LMP1s — but not on pace with the R15s and 908s.
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Speaking of Sebring: Planet LeMans has posted a preview article, which mainly runs down the field but also gives reasonable predictions of each team’s performance.
I miss Penske’s RS Spyders already.
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Finally, we find this piece of fantastically impractical design by way of Jalopnik:
Camber control: you’re doing it wrong. (Seriously: of all the active camber control ideas that involve adding to the car’s unsprung weight, how the fuck do you come up with a segmented wheel?)
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