Metrics Gone Wrong: Horsepower at 100% Throttle

In the April issue of Bike magazine, Simon Hargreaves examines the myth of the dyno. The rise of the the Dynojet Dynamometer provided a cheap, standard way to measure motorcycle horsepower, allowing a common manner to rate the impact of your performance tweak. Roll your bike up to the rollers, and wind it up to full throttle. Moments later, the dyno spits out a pretty graph with torque and horsepower. (I recall a sweaty, restless July night at Texas World Speedway, the motorsport jewel of the Bryan/College Station where my buddy and I parked the VW camper van next to the dyno. Yosh pipes howling through 100% throttle get old after about the 15th carb rejetting, but the dyno truck's jam box pumping out interstitial "Give It Away" got old after the 5th round. )

None the less, Hargreaves cites the problem with a standard measure:

First, higher horsepower figures than the manufacturer next door sells more bikes than him, though - second - higher horsepower figures bring anti-biking legislation closer and closer, despite the fact that - third - accident figures aren't related to increased power, even though - fourth - the performance of your three 160hp models comfortably exceeds the ability of your customer to get anywhere near using it all without crashing.

The answer is measuring 40% and 20% throttle as well. The nebulous corner exit power that was measured only in sphincter tension or nebulous terms like "grunt" and "oomphus" is now a value that can be colored red, blue or green and plotted on a pretty graph. And a telling graph it is, as the GSX-R1000 appears to have dropped power at 20% throttle (to reduce highsideability) while maintaining the pornographic 160hp at top.

So, the top number, the easy number, the number of honorable tradition, means less and less once it is maxed. The tweaks underneath where there, and important. But you are stuck with your gut feeling until you plot it with a pretty blue line.

Die Doing Something You Love

"To die doing something you love."
I encountered variations of this phrase three times Saturday.

1. In Chris Jonnum's biography of the Haydens, the on track death of flat-tracker Will Davis. Davis was a hero of Nick Hayden's. Mourning his death, Nick said that there is no tragedy if you die doing something you love. Nick did run his next road racing victory lap backwards in Davis' honor.

2. On the DVD of The Race to Dakar, Andy Caldicott died doing the thing he loved, as described by Charlie Boorman. No one will be permitted to die this way this year, since ASO has cancelled the Dakar race due to threats for terrorism. (You can die doing what you love, not what Al Qaeda loves.)

3. Andy Olmstead states in his posthumous blog post that he died doing the job he loved.

If you love your job, you can accept any level of risk.

Compliance for Road and Track

My Alfa, a 72 GTV coupe, like all GTVs of its approximate vintage, has a recessed panel in the headliner over the back seats. It has proven to be a mystery to passengers in the car, looking like the cruelest joke of a sun roof for the rear passengers who are otherwise treated poorly by the car's design. So cruel, in fact, that a sticker was placed on the rear windows by Alfa. When viewed from the outside, it read:

ALFA ROMEO "2000" GT VELOCE
GROUP 2 TOURING CHAMPION 1971
EUROPEAN MANUFACTURES SERIES

This side of the sticker explains in part the pseudo-sun roof. The GTV raced in the sedan class. To comply with sedan class regulation, there had to be a specific number of inches of headroom for the two passengers in the back seat. Hence the "cheat" of recessing a spot in the headliner, because the seats were as low as they could go. So you can race, and sometimes beat, Minis, BMW 2002s and Datsun 510s.

From the inside, the other story of compliance was visible. From a knees-to-chin head-ducked position, the contorted rear seat passenger could read the obverse:

REAR SEATS ARE NOT DESIGNATED
TO BE OCCUPIED BY PASSENGERS
WHILE VEHICLE IS IN MOTION

The other set of regulations the GTV had to comply with were written by the US Department of Transportation, that defined of sports cars and sedans. Being classified by the DOT as a two-seater would require less modification of Alfa's aging (yet still stylish) design - less in the way of bumper protection for the would be passengers. Actually taking the seats out and putting in a package shelf (a la 911) would make it race in an uncompetitive class. Hence the sticker forbidding rear seat passenger, which attempts to serve both masters. (I'm guessing the seat belts back there are for securing cases of Chianti and bundles of pastrami.)

The different approaches in compliance reflect the different levels of enforcement. Perhaps Alfa felt it could convince the DOT that, really, who would ever be so silly as to sit back there? This is a sporting coupe, not a sedan. However, Alfa knew that the sanctioning bodies for the racing series they participated in would be out there with tape measures and calipers before every single race for tech inspection. Alfa's compliance would be challenged by every other team on the track.

I don't believe it would be too far off the mark to say that an implementation of a control, especially a compliance control that may not have a palpable financial return, will be as effective as the perceived enforcement.

(Read the story of the 2.5 liter Trans-Am at 1971 Laguna Seca for more sad stories of compliance. The Datsun version, the Alfa version. "Oversize fuel lines" vs "expanding gas tanks." )

(sticker image courtesy Papajam at the AlfaBB)

The Italian Job

Odd ball kidnapping heist documented at MCN and Roadracing World illustrates the danger of the insider beyond the pilfered laptop or unexpired system credentials.

Apparently the Alto Evolution World Superbike team "reduced the responsibilities" of Sergio Bertocchi, their erstwhile manager, after the race at Monza a while back.

On the way back to Italy from the most recent race at Silverstone, UK, the Alto truck gets hijacked at a border crossing. According to the Alto Evolution press release:

The driver was kidnapped for more than six hours and the truck diverted. The driver was able to escape in Bruxelles - Belgium, where he alerted the police and confirmed the names of the people of the gang which had kidnapped him and stolen the truck. Amongst the members of the gang have been recognised four people: one of them was Mr. Sergio Bertocchi.

Policemen from Belgium have immediately started investigations and, at the same time, Carabinieri in Italy have been alerted. Investigations have gone on strenuously and with outmost secrecy. On the 6th a van of ours was sent to Trieste to recover other spare parts and accessories still in Trieste's warehouse. On the way back, in the first rest/service area out of Trieste, the same criminals have stolen the van and its content. Unluckily for them, following a great effort of electronic interception and lots of their's tailing, law-enforcement personnel has had the opportunity to see the criminals in action in first person. Carabinieri have been on the van's tail for a couple of hours and at last they have recovered the vehicle and its content and put them under sequestration.

Meanwhile the subject liable for theft have been blocked. On Friday the 8th Carabinieri have given us communication that the truck has been found and is now in a safe place in Trieste, again judges have disposed sequestration of the goods.

Although it reads as if they got Alto's rider Muggas to do the translating directly from Italian to Tweed Headsian blindfolded, at first blush appears to be a story of justice served. The former manager plays the archetypical role of the disgruntled employee who turns against his employer by hacking, vandalizing, stealing office supplies, truck hijacking and/or kidnapping. His fiendish plot is foiled due to surveillance and electronic tracking. Chalk one up to the gallant carabinieri and their high tech tracking equipment!

And interesting question regarding identity, though. Did former manager Sergio use his identity to gain confidence and access to the truck? Seems that would be an enormously boneheaded maneuver for a hijacker. I've got issues trying to correlate the motivation of the attacker with his techniques.

Maybe it was just a denial of service attack. Check that word "sequestration" in the above quote, on which the Alto Evolution team elaborates:

This, and only this, is the reason for which we will not be able to partecipate to the race in Misano on the 17th of June.

Not too difficult to imagine Sergio in his Italian jail cell rubbing his hands together, mumbling about how they'll never race in Misano...never in Misano..

The Red Duck

Yesterday was a tough one at work, made especially tougher by the fact that the House of Tooth is flying out on vacation tomorrow, earlier than I feel comfortable contemplating.
But if Mr. Howell is going to write about motor vehicular risk, so will I.

When I got home last night, I watched Race 1 of the WSBK at Silverstone. Nasty conditions: standing water on the track, filthy visor-coating mist flung up from rear tires, cold rain, poor visibility, and very heavy very aggressive traffic. So nasty that the second race was red flagged. Sounds like Chandler's Chicago commute, with the following exceptions:

• Everyone is on two wheels (except for the Alfa 159, which follows only on the warm up lap, and at a discrete distance).
• The cycles have been freshly massaged by well paid mechanics, sparing no expense in picking the fly poop from the pepper in handling, power delivery and suspension according to the desires of the rider. When the track is hot, statuesque women in high heels hold umbrellas over the motorcycles to keep them cool.
  
• Everyone on the track is wearing leathers, gloves, boots, back protector and a full-face helmet.
  
• No one is chatting on a cell phone or drinking coffee whilst riding round the track. The only communication is through flags waved by officials and corner workers, and the pit board with a couple of numbers hung out for the rider to read as he speeds past. None of this NASCAR-style chit chat and sippy cups.

All the WSBK machines are produced to a regulation, a formula that is more rigorously enforced than PCI, Basel II or the FFIEC guidelines. Sunday's race at Silverstone revealed the difference of how a regulation is interpreted, viz., traction control. Despite the best efforts of a well funded Ten Kate team, with full support of the mammoth Honda Racing Corporation, and a skilled and extra-dreamy rider at a home course, Mr. Toseland's CBR1000RR ended up like this after only a few laps. Nonetheless, water spewing from his radiator, and mud in the engine, he picked it up and rode on, finishing 8th. He was lapped by the pack who had figured out traction control: Xerox Ducati and Yamaha. And the Ducati bike is a year old.

Are strictly enforced regulations and technical innovation what makes for great racing? Is it all physics, themodynamics, fluid mechanics, geometry and friction?

No. What makes for great racing is the fact that these machines are piloted by the world's finest chaos generating engines, i.e., motorcycle road racers. Otherwise, why does nutso "Nori" get wear a rainbow wig on the podium, while his stoic Wollongongian team mate does not? What is to prevent a twitchy Frenchman on an equally twitchy Kawasaki from having a fleeting existential moment, resulting in a high velocity green missile smashing into a focused Texan's perfect line round Ascari? Nothing. The black swan rides the track along with the red Ducks.

Like any enterprise, you can comply with the regulations. You can follow the rules. You can become technically innovative. But the enterprise is run by chaos driven humans. All you can do is strap them in leathers and hope they don't lose any more fingers than is absolutely necessary.

Motoprox

Yesterday I was barreling down the concrete slab choked with tractor-trailers and nitro-burnining funny trucks laden with oily 2x4s and spent joint compound jugs, I was engaging my left brain in random problem solving ("Resolved: The world is as random as it is not.") and engaging my right wrist in focussed throttle control on my Triumph Bonneville. I hate the road - a stretch of oversubscribed interstate that at an unfamiliar time (around 3:00 pm) and was unfamiliar with how the traffic would be flowing. The part of the brain that controls motorcycle function became increasingly engaged.

Fortunately, it didn't come out of nowhere: some set of clues were processed so I was pretty sure the black sedan was going to dart into the part of highway I was occupying. I braked as much as I could, as the pickup behind was riding my exhaust, and I moved as far to the left of the lane as I could. Just as his door was nearing my knee, the driver of the sedan spotted me, and made a panic swerve back to his lane. No harm, no foul, just a cortex soaked in adrenaline. People pay good money for that.

Which led me to my thought. Do near misses count?

UK Civilian Aviation Authority Airprox Board thinks so. They are dealing with potential accidents, however, with an not unreasonable assumption that neither party wishes a collision. There is no attacker, so it is easier to get both sides of the story, and a clearer, truer account of the incident, and quality information to improve the process. In a security incident, you will rarely get the other side of the story, so the account is skewed to what the defender has observed, and the attacker has failed to hide.

The Risk Management and Decision Process Center at the Wharton School has this brief description of its Near Miss Management study.

It may be nothing useful, but I'm wondering how "near miss" security incidents are handled. How are the elements of "luck" and "skill" (i.e, controls, response,etc.) allocated? Since the bullet was dodged, is there a increase in comfort in the level of security, even though it may have just been luck, or the actions of the attacker, that made it a "miss"?

I don't know, but I've been hyperaware of traffic lately, and my head is encased in Shoei and my body in Tourmaster. (And for more on motorisks, see Chandler's post from last September.)


Hot Honda on Duck action courtesy PhillC.