Just add Heat & Pressure

As a club racing team, we’re a group of passionate volunteers with demanding day jobs, family commitments, and ambitions that extend beyond racing.  This was never more apparent than leading into our second race of 2024, which was AFM Racing’s Round 4 at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, California. 

We had already missed round 3 &4, which were conducted over a single weekend, with conflicts that made both our racers unavailable.  In the case of Round 4, it would be myself that would have the conflict with a previous commitment to travel with my family to Europe (the Netherlands, to be exact) for 3 weeks.  Luckily, Nick was getting this parenting thing well enough under control to offer to sneak away for a couple of days and take my spot as Team Manager and general organizer of stuff and things.  And so, I would be watching my phone for updates while walking around the streets of Amsterdam trying to avoid being run over by bicycles traveling at 50 km/h. 

 We’ve never made it to a Thunderhill race round with the factory bike, although Nick Lambert took his Lightfighter there a couple of seasons ago and I tested v1 there at a trackday back in 2019. 

Proof that I do occasionally ride the Lightfighter when a good shakedown is all that's necessary. Note the lack of elbow dragging... I swear it felt like I was right there though... ;)

I’m familiar with the track though, having used it as our “home track” during the development of the Brammo Empulse RR and Victory racing prototypes circa 2010-2016.  The track is both technical and FAST with both a long front straight and back straight, but has great infrastructure for charging.  In the summer, this area can also be even hotter than Buttonwillow, and temps for this particular event were expected to crest 105F / 40C. For these reasons, Thunderhill is a tough track for electric motorcycles.  The gearing must be set shorter (more top speed) for those longer straights, which means the motor’s working harder to produce torque and sustain higher rpm than most other tracks we race at.  It’s a 3.0 mile loop as well, so the lap count is usually around 6 laps, but with the high speed, it stresses the battery capacity as well requiring higher average power for a competitive lap time where the average speed is around 100mph!

So, what better way to test my battery rebuild following our opening round than to throw the bike onto a track we’ve never raced, much less tested at, in 100 degree heat, while taking a member of the technical team off the field?  Luckily, Ely decided to join the team and lend a hand based on the proximity of Thunderhill to his shop in Ashland, Oregon.

Our Flex Racing canopy provided relief from the blazing California sun. Temperatures were over 100F / 40C all weekend. Photo: Nick Lambert

How do he do that? Troy wasted no time breaking in the elbow sliders on his brand new set of Alpinestars leathers which features some beautiful artwork courtesy of his two daughters.

With a one-day practice and one day race schedule, time was limited to try to get the Lightfighter dialed in for the new track. The team set to work and verified gearing, inverter power mapping, and suspension set-up in the blazing heat. While Jayson and Tucker focused on adding additional support through pre-load and damping settings at the front of his Lightfighter, Troy and Nick were busy fine tuning "Map 2" on the Motec M130 ECU.

New calipers and pads needed bedding in. Jayson gladly obliged.

Things were looking good until Saturday morning when Jayson's bike failed to fire up to charge in the morning. After some trouble-shooting with a multimeter and several failed attempts to swap out the fuse on the 12V DC-DC converter, it was determined that the converter chip itself had failed in the heat of the previous day's practice. While Ely and Nick led the trouble-shooting on Jayson's bike, Troy gridded up for Lightweight Superbike where he faced some strong competition from Jose Flores, who was riding his race-prepped Aprilia RS660 very well.

Jose got off to a great start and led for 4 laps with Troy closing the gap and planning his move. Jose would shoulder check Troy's progress as they came out of the final Turn 15 onto the front straight. On the fourth lap, he checked back and didn't see the orange and green machine as it was busy passing him on the outside! Troy held on to take the win and set the fastest lap of the race on lap 4. He'd face Jose one more time in the Formula IV race later in the day... or so he thought.

Once Nick and Ely had determined that the core of the DC-DC converter was toast and with no spares of this usually robust component, it seemed as though packing it in and disappointing our newest team member might be the only option. But as the team got ready to declare defeat, a crazy idea emerged... "Why don't we swap the DC-DC converter from Troy's bike?" It would mean each rider would only manage to get a single race in, but with the heat, there wasn't much protest from Troy if it meant helping the team. There was just enough time to do the swap prior to the Formula 1 race in the afternoon. Jayson would be racing with no practice time and was asked to even skip the warm-up lap to preserve the battery(!)...

The transplant was a success and the 36X machine fired up, battery fans whirring on first attempt. Now it was down to Jayson. Like Troy, Jayson took the start easy and found himself in an unfamiliar position of following the lead rider in the class vs. rocketing off and leading from the opening lap. And this is why the guy is a Pro... he managed the race to perfection, and we went from being ready to call it quits to taking our first ever WIN in Formula 1! Jayson also set the fastest lap of the race with a 1'52.809.

Full tuck, full torque. The Lightfighter would hit 149 mph / 240 km/h on the front straight.

The T-Hill dream team of (L to R) Nick Lambert, Troy Siahaan, Joe Wismann, Jayson Uribe, Tucker Swanson, and Ely Schless (not pictured) pulled a rabbit out of the hat in our first races at Thunderhill and came home with 2 wins from 2 races.

I should add that all of this transpired while I was sleeping in our AirBNB in the Netherlands. I went to bed thinking we had an unsolvable technical issue and woke up to find that the team had rallied to produce the maximum result possible. I am, of course, disappointed that I wasn't there to celebrate these victories, but I am also so proud of what the team achieved without me as it speaks to their strength of the group we've assembled.

High fives at the end of a challenging race day made it all worth it! The AFM racing family is awesome.

Next stop... Laguna Seca with AHRMA to chase podiums against gas bikes and try to set that electric motorcycle lap record we've been chasing since the start of the program...

Thanks to all our sponsors and supporters! Especially Farasis Energy, who allow us to punish these amazing lithium-ion cells in the literal heat of competition. Even a lump of carbon can become something special... just add heat and pressure. ;)