Thursday, August 6, 2009

Adhesion...



This has nothing to do with jogging. The picture above is from a MotoGP race at Laguna Seca and is from an ad for Bridgstone tires. I'm a huge NASCAR and superbike fan and when I was sponsored by LEW Composites (they make $5000 bicycle wheels) I had the opportunity to live in Las Vegas and work for them. They paid my rent and paid me well to work 2 days per week in their shop. The shop was located at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and I operated a robot that cut sheets of uni directional graphite. We would then lay the pieces in to molds and would make bicycle wheels, nose cones for formula race cars, NASCAR engine parts, and carbon parts for the motorcycles you see above. At one point, Jeff Gordon was using parts that I helped to make. One day I went over to the track to watch a test run by a superbike rider and got to talk to the mechanic. He said all the fast and light parts in the world don't mean a thing if you don't have good tires. Adhesion... a race comes down to how well your tires stick to the road, simple as that. Tires and cohones I think. Superbike riders hit speeds of 180+ MPH on some tracks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only jogging NASCAR fan. From your comments and times on your last set of 1000's, your form is coming together nicely. I'll be 40next year an am going to see how fast I can get in the mile on the track. Target race -> USAT&F Masters Outdoor T&F Championships. Any suggestion on how to get older legs running fast again? I ran 4:14 in HS, 4:05 in college & hope to run sub 4:20.

Craig

Lucho said...

Craig- e-mail me, jogdaddy at gmail dot com. I was more of a 400/ 800 guy in college. I would love to help, if I can, a Masters guy trying to run 4:20. I'll turn 40 in a couple of years myself.
T