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This is not a surprise , Moto3 teams have been pinged for overrevving, when it occurs on a downshift.
Its a pretty easy correlation between riders that land with the throttle pinned, all the way, every time, and riders that have endless gearbox issues.
It would be interesting to know what the margin of error is, and what the level of hysteresis is in the system, based on the level of the torque spike.
Thanks, I'm not shocked @JM485 was right.
I was wondering if spikes would happen more at take off or at landing, I guess landing it is.
It would be interesting to have more info about spike amplitude and duration. If I'm right, for example one 0.1 s spike of 1 hp every lap would be enough to go off limits.
In that case, the easy fix would be dropping max power by twice the maximum spike experienced (in the above example, that would be decreasing max power by 2 hp).
Now of course if the max spike was 10 hp that would be a different story but Hicks was only penalized 5 spots in one race (and 2 spots in Superpole)... I guess we'll see what happens in a couple of days in Vancouver.
I think the biggest takeaway here.. Stark and its team didn't make it through their DEBUT without cheating.
Might be meaningless transients, could have even been caused by a change in the DAQ settings such that the sampling was different.
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I know when we did a new crank, in WRC part of the validation was 100 full throttle landings, to see if we could break the crank with the spike loads, and to record what we saw to see if was what was expected.
With a bike that only has to be a certain cc none of that matters.
According to the statement Matthes read on Blair-Matthes, Stark recorded a spike of 102J when the tolerance was 100J, so they exceeded the energy limit by 2 Joules. For reference, 1 gallon of 87 octane unleaded has 120,000,000 Joules of energy.
How many milliseconds did the spike exceed the limit?
Just cause you have a 100 hp do you really think any one can just win off hp?
I'll take my victory lap thank you 🤣
For anyone who still considers this cheating, you need to understand what a current spike is and what it is caused by. Essentially any time the rear wheel changes rpm that requires current, whether that is accelerating or decelerating. Because there is no gear box on electric bikes we often see the rear wheel speeds in the air exceed those of a gas bike by a pretty considerable margin, which is part of why it's so easy to adjust pitch on an electric bike, so when landing from a jump all of that extra wheel speed needs to have some kind of force dissipating it. In this case, since an electric motor is essentially just a generator under braking, you will see a pretty massive current spike momentarily when the wheel contacts the ground. This isn't cheating by any stretch of the imagination and the sanctioning bodies should be at least smart enough to understand that if this is indeed what they were flagged for.
As a side note, the most common times controllers fault during testing is off of jump faces or on landings. This is because those are the two most likely times to have a current spike due to the extreme torque demands on the motor. This makes my job of testing controllers (not for Stark, I have no affiliation with them) interesting sometimes because with jumping comes obvious risk if the controller were to die or cut due to an overcurrent condition. Obviously you do all you can to minimize that risk by trying to load the controller before you go take it off of a high load jump, but eventually someone has to do it and that someone is generally me so this topic is near and dear to my heart haha..
Thanks.
That's 102 J per lap exceeding the tolerance of 100 J per lap.
Could be one significant spike or multiple smaller ones.
To put such blatant "cheating" into context, if that was due to a "massive" single spike of 0.1 s per lap, that would mean having one landing spike of 1.39 hp instead of 1.36 hp. A whooping 0.03 hp for 0.1 s.
Or that this hypothetical 1.36 hp spike lasted 0.102 s instead of 0.100 s.
Could be multiple smaller spikes, could be a single larger but shorter spike (2.8 hp for 0.05 s and so on), hopefully you get the point.
Edit:
Talk about this starts around 27 min
Stark statement about "a split second 0.102 kJ excess" points to a single event of unknown duration (1.39 hp for 0.1 s or 2.8 hp for 0.05 s... if we knew spike length we could calculate power excess).
How interesting.
How would you reduce this?
I guess reducing max rear wheel speed? But that would reduce the pitch adjustment characteristics that seem to benefit e bikes.
There's the fast way and there's the smart way.
For the fast way, if you have a spike of 1 hp, all things being equal (keep in mind this spike issue might vary depending on track, jumps), simply reduce max power by 1 or 2 hp, your spike will not go over the limit. Easy peasy. Should be enough to play it safe in Vancouver.
For the smart way I don't know, why do you ask? Maybe some algorithm tweaking to dampen the load for the first few hundredths or tenths when landing?
I good way to think of this, is to imagine what the tyre pressures are when that spike occurs... are they going to be the same as when the bike was in the air... no of course not, with the weight of the bike and rider, the compression of the tyre and tube has to increase the pressure , for as long as the tyre is compressed... clue is in the 'compressed'.
So even if it was a gazzillion HP , it occurs for such a short time for it to be even remotely usable.
Nothing burger.
The FIM needs to understand that, and rewrite the rule.
Gas and electric dirtbikes racing together is an absolute joke.
The day that Supercross and Pro Motocross becomes all electric, is the day Feld stops taking my money.
My main point: Electric has already brought drama. Something this sport doesn't need to retain viewers.
As far as my grasp on electricity and the laws of thermodynamics allow me to understand, I don't believe there's much if anything that can be done about it. Energy has to go somewhere, and in this case that energy is going back into the controller in the form of current.
The reality is these current spikes are so short in duration that they're imperceptible to the rider (unless the controller faults due to an overcurrent condition) so they should be ignored by any sanctioning body, a little bit of common sense and judgement needs to be exercised here. This is an unfortunate phenomenon that every single controller manufacturer would love to get rid of, not some elaborate scheme to get minute burst of power and cheat.
The Stark on Vital has followed the path I assumed it would years ago. People blasting it as it keeps getting more popular saying it’ll never compete with 450’s etc. to then Stark is cheating. lol so funny, anything to stop progress.
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No one knows the stark better than the stark people. The FIM is just reading data that is provided by stark software. There could be algorithms built in to exceed the limits but make it look like they’re not. Ie VW and Cummins with the emissions tuning. The only way to get a true number is to get a third party monitoring system on the bikes. Not saying they did in fact cheat but with electronics the possibility’s to cheat are almost limitless. Obviously they’re not gonna crank the thing to 80 hp but I’m sure they can tweak it a hp or two to push the limits. Either way not a good look to be docked in the very first race.
Yeah this is such a drama free sport.
This just reinforces the fact that trying to regulate electric bikes competing in the 450 class by power output is ridiculous.
"The FIM is just reading data that is provided by stark software."
No they are not.
"The only way to get a true number is to get a third party monitoring system on the bikes."
That is what the FIM are already doing...
There you go being all smart and stuff! 🤣
My friend JM is quite smart.
He is pretty damn sharp on just about anything he rides, electric, gas, pedal, you name it, the boy goes fast..
He has a few "Projects" going on, will be mint when he is done.!
Same thing with the double the displacement 4 strokes competing against half the displacement 2 strokes. Now it's the 4 strokes time to be at a disadvantage.
Your point, as usual, is a shit take
I have no thoughts on this drama but finally rode a stark today at our local track. It was the most fun I may have ever had on two wheels and will be my next bike purchase. I more than likely always have an ICE bike but will certainly have a stark or whatever future variations may be.
You're supposed to be progressing towards the future. Not regressing.
The future might not be what you think it's going to be.
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