GPR Stabilizer

Over the weekend of the 15th-16th of May the RT Motorsports team were in Oschersleben to compete in the second round of the IDM superbike championship. Having tested there before the round, riders Gareth Jones and Jed Metcher both knew the track well and were hoping for top ten results.

The free practice sessions were held on Friday and the weather was dry if not quite as hot as expected for the time of year. The team had worked hard over the break between the first and second round to try to address the rear suspension problems encountered at the bumpy Lausitz Speedway. This involved testing various internal settings in the Ohlins TTX shock absorbers during a test at Oschersleben to find the best compromise. Then just to make sure, we also managed to procure a Showa rear shock from the fine people at K-Tech suspension in England. So Gareth’s bike was fitted with the Showa for free practice one and Jed’s with his preferred Ohlins setting. Straight away the Showa shock was found to be a definite improvement and through the weekend we managed to fine tune it to give even better results. Jed was still struggling with the Ohlins rear shock so we tried yet another step in the settings to try to bring it closer to the Showa. This helped a little and by the end of Friday both riders were able to lap at a pace that should have seen them qualifying around 10th to 15th.

Saturday morning greeted the IDM paddock with persistent rain and a cold wind, any chance of improving the dry settings was over. Qualifying 1 saw Gareth building speed by completing 17 laps and finally finishing 10th in the difficult conditions. Jed unfortunately was caught out by the conditions and crashed on his 2nd flying lap. Qualifying 2 was more of the same, Gareth had felt happy with the bike in Q1 so we didn’t change much. However many of the other riders went faster in Q2 dropping Gareth to 16th as he struggled to improve on his time from Q1. In hindsight we should have tried a more radical setup for Q2 having already secured a reasonable laptime in Q1. However the gap between Q1 and 2 had been spent repairing crash damage, so strategy unfortunately took a back seat.