Victory to race an RR at Pikes Peak

[Richard230]

So it looks like Victory is still on the EV bandwagon with a prototype Empulse RR:

https://rideapart.com/articles/victory-confirms-return-pikes-peak-race

[Chocula]

Glad to see them racing the bike I had hoped they were going to race last year.  I hope to see a strong performance from the Empulse RR this year.

[Richard230]

Here is the story of Zero's two entries at the Pike Peak race. Two Zeros against one Victory RR.  It should be a fun race and an interesting one, too:

http://blog.motorcycle.com/2016/04/13/motorcycle-category/electric-motorcycle-category/pikes-peak-2/

[ttxgpfan]

Interesting, Ride Apart reported back then, with what appears to be a bit of a scoop based on rumors, that Victory is bringing one of the bikes from the TT. Recent pr's have it as a Victory Empulse TT race tuned and modded (heavily?). But with Don Canet, who is not a Mark Miller, Jake Holden, or Jeremy Toye. But he ran the Project 156 last year, so I guess I'll cut him some slack. The confusion seems to come from that they decided to call the modded TT an "RR" which is what the prototype bikes used to be called. Where the prototypes are now called "Victory RR"s as I found out via Victory's PR twitter account.

Then there is this multi faceted Zero team made up of a few of the previous race teams. And the Hollywood Electric's team with Mark Miller, and I guess someone else as Jake Holden is not on the entry list. I haven't dug that deep to read of a rider change.

Nice to see nothing changes when I stop paying attention. Atleast we'll get a legit Zero V Brammo . . . bah Victory, battle for a change.

[kingcharles]

I understood that it is a 2015 TT bike that's used for pikes peak.
The modifications are swapping the clip-ons for a bar.

[Shinysideup]

MCN certainly calls it an Empulse RR and quotes rider Canet using the RR term. But the photo shows a bike marked "Empulse TT" with a much larger motor than my Empulse and a much larger swing arm.

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/may/victory-reveals-twin-pikes-peak-bikes-for-2016/

[kingcharles]

MCN certainly calls it an Empulse RR and quotes rider Canet using the RR term. But the photo shows a bike marked "Empulse TT" with a much larger motor than my Empulse and a much larger swing arm.

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/may/victory-reveals-twin-pikes-peak-bikes-for-2016/

With TT I meant IOM TT.
I have read it in some article and from the picture in your article it looks a lot like the 2015 IOM TT bike with less fairing and a bar.

[Richard230]

Cycle World magazine reports, in their July issue, on page 8, that the 2015 Victory TT racer, which they plan to ride during the Pikes Peak race with no fairing and tubular bars, was run at a drag strip and covered the quarter mile in 10 seconds at 140 mph-plus.  And that was using the IOM TT gearing.  So it should work pretty well at Pikes Peak as long as everything holds together and there are no mistakes made.    

If EVs start beating IC motorcycles regularly I wonder what the response of the mainstream manufacturers of gas-powered motorcycles will be? Will they get on the bandwagon or try to ban the technology?

[kingcharles]

Not a motorcycle but these guys will bring their car to pikes peak and have a pretty quick dragracer too.

https://facebook.com/electricfoxdragster/

[kingcharles]

If I understand the live timing app correctly the Victory Empulse RR lost the overall bike win in the last sector.
Does anybody know the reason for the "slow" last sector? I doubt it could be battery capacity because Isle of Man is a lot longer distance.

[Shinysideup]

If I understand the live timing app correctly the Victory Empulse RR lost the overall bike win in the last sector.
Does anybody know the reason for the "slow" last sector? I doubt it could be battery capacity because Isle of Man is a lot longer distance.

I don't have the app, but, if I'm reading this page correctly, the Empulse TT took the electric bike first place, beat Victory's ICE bike by a a couple of seconds, and did indeed post a time only in the last sector that was short of the Kawasaki. So, at 10:17.813, he was 4.7 seconds behind the Kawasaki.  And 15th place overall. I agree, SOMETHING must have happened at the end of the race. Bike or rider?

http://ppihc.livetiming.net/ppihc/

Mark Miller on the Zero came in at 11:20.448, for a 44th overall placing.

Also interesting to me: EV's took 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place.

First place was by a Norma full-on LeMans type race car which also won in 2014 and was built especially for this event by a company that was started to build cards specifically for the French hill climbing championship. The driver, Romain Dumas, bested his 2014 time by almost 14 seconds: 8:51.445 vs. 9:05.801.

[Brammofan]

Earlier today, Brian Wismann tweeted: brammodesigner: For those at home, Don has had transponder issues, so don't panic if his sector time doesn't come up. @CycleWorldMag @CW1Canet @PPIHC

[Shinysideup]

So does that mean that the Section 4 time of 3:06.790 posted on the above link is in error??

[willss01]

I had a repeat of an earlier post

[frodus]

Holy shit!!! Almost parity with Gas motorcycles. History being made.

Electric motorcycles went from 29th overall last year and 17th place in motorcycle class, to 15th overall this year, and 2nd place in motorcycle class. Victory was only ~+4.7s off 1st place.

Last year Electric cars were the top 2 finishers overall, and for the first time, they beat Gas vehicles.
http://www.ppihc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015-Overall-Results.pdf

This year, those same 2 cars placed 2nd and 3rd overall, but right on 1st place's ass! 2nd place was less than +6s 3rd was less than +15.