Finally, video of FIM e-Power Laguna Seca

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e-power-laguna

With the FIM and Dorna selfishly hoarding video rights, it’s taken three months for video of the FIM e-Power race — which Mission Motors and Steve Rapp won by some margin — to reach the Internet. It’s not the full race, it’s not exciting, but it does give you some idea of what this latest generation of electric racing motorcycles is all about.

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  • Ben Rendel

    that was really.. bad.

  • jwinter

    Why show a woman putting a camera eyepiece up to her sunglasses? Nice editing.
    I was there and it’s great to see in person. Really surreal how quiet they are. If they keep this up, these bikes are going to be pretty serious in a few years.

  • Dani Peral

    Go 37!!!!

  • http://www.brammofan.com Brammofan

    Revisionist history at its finest. This is how Dorna and FIM work together to hide any reference to TTXGP and the efforts of Azhar Hussain and his organization in bringing electric motorcycle racing into public awareness.

    FIM forbade TTXGP from bringing its own cameras to chronicle this event. Forbade TTXGP and the teams from running onboard cameras, too. All with the promise that it would provide excellent video coverage.

    I am sick to my stomach watching this series of unprofessional video snapshots, thinking about what could have been, and what should have been — comprehensive and artistic footage of a historic race.

    Shame on you, FIM and Dorna.
    Vive la TTXGP.

    • http://plugbike.com/ skadamo

      Trying to break into the world of powersports sounds like a nightmare. Keep up the good fight TTXGP and the rest of the electric world!

  • motomoto

    That was the coolest boring video I’ve seen in a while. While I think we all want to hear the silence that is the technological two wheeled wonders in the video, you also need some music to set the pace and get you excited about it. The editing was not what I’d call top notch editing either. If your excuse is they couldn’t afford it, I can guarantee you there are plenty of talented kids who would have edited it for free. Hell, I would have edited for free!

    We’ve some great machines, riders and tech here, the video needs to represent that!

    • http://www.brammofan.com Brammofan

      The excuse wasn’t that they (FIM) couldn’t afford it. The fact of the matter was that you can’t make a silk purse out of a steaming pile of crap. The footage they had was poorly shot and sparse. Wonder why they were missing shots of the end of the race? It’s because the cretins turned the cameras off before the race was over. I’d say they were incompetent idiots, but that’s being charitable. No, there was a clear intent here: to ruin Azhar and TTXGP. And from what I hear about this week at LeMans, the intentional campaign continues.

      • motomoto

        My question now is why? Why do they want to ruin Azhar and TTXGP? You seem to much more in tune with politics going on here Brammofan. Inquiring minds like mine, want to know!

  • Anthony

    I am still wondering about the story behind the race. Obviously the mission motors guys whipped everyone’s ass, but I’d really like to know what the deal is with Czysz passing lightning in the final corner of the race. If I remember correctly, Michael Cyzsz was running just behind Lightning, then pulled up next to him, looked over, and then beat him in a drag race across the finish line.

    It makes me thing that Czysz was sandbagging and could have passed them at any moment prior. Was this a gouge of some kind or an inside joke to them. Anyone have more info here?

    • http://www.brammofan.com Brammofan

      From what I understand, Czysz passed Lightning because Lightning ran out of juice. When everyone did their victory/cooldown lap and returned for the festivities at Parc Ferme, there was no Lightning bike. It showed up five minutes later on the back of truck because its batteries were dead. I don’t think Czysz was sandbagging. He might have spooked by a glitch with his brakes which caused him to go off track in the first lap (although this may have happened during qualifying… it’s a little fuzzy). Wouldn’t it have been nice to have some onboard footage of that? Thank FIM for forbidding onboard cameras.

      • Anthony

        So… At both Laguna Seca TTXGPs Czysz passed Lightning in the last few moments after they ran out of juice?

        • protomech

          The Lightning bike did 1:37-1:38 for the first four flying laps, then did 1:42.6, 1:40.2, 1:41.2.

          The MotoCzysz bike did 1:40 on the first flying lap, then 1:38-1:39 for the last five flying laps. He actually got slightly better as the race went on, his fastest lap was the next-to-last lap.

          The Lightning bike is hugely powerful, the 217 mph salt flats run shows that. The problem is basically limited development and testing time, the Lightning guys are burning so much power on the straight for a small-ish gain that the battery sags and their power output drops sharply on the last lap.

          The top 3 bikes are much more powerful (160-200hp+) than the next tier of teams (80-100 hp). That’s fantastic for qualifying or for a very short race. But where the less powerful teams can race nearly flat-out, the more powerful bikes have to carefully monitor their power consumption and avoid pulling enough energy out of the batteries that they start to sag.

          With more development time, I suspect the Lightning bike could have limited their top speed, lost a bit of laptime early in exchange for consistent laptimes throughout the race.

          But then, I would have said the same thing last year, same team, same failure mode but a different bike :) Maybe next year..

          • http://www.brammofan.com Brammofan

            Excellent summary, protomech!

        • http://www.brammofan.com Brammofan

          “At both Laguna Seca TTXGPs Czysz passed Lightning in the last few moments after they ran out of juice?” Yep. Deja Vu all over again.

  • zipp4

    Coldplay? Really?