By Sarolea endured a disappointing 2016 TT Zero campaign, gaining no laps of the Mountain Course throughout practice week, and then been forced to pull both SP7 Sarolea’s to be piloted by Dean Harrison and Lee Johnston off the SES TT Zero start line, with last minute technical problems.
Confident of pushing for podium finishes and race victory, Sarolea where aiming to become the first team to secure a 120 mph lap on electric machinery around the Mountain Course.
Reflecting on the problems that afflicted their TT Zero challenge, Sarolea Co-Owner Bjorn Robbens said:
“The issue we encountered was the mapping of the power that uses data from the motor to guide the throttle response. The data got scrambled and so we could not be sure that the throttle would respond the way that we wanted it to.
After retracting from the grid, we went back to our paddock and got straight back to work to solve the issue and prove the bikes’ performance. We did that and then took them out on Thursday with our test rider who was hitting speeds over 160 mph around the short track at Jurby.
Dean and Lee are 100% on board and will continue to work with us on developments and testing and we are back in the workshop now preparing for testing at Francorchamps and Nürburgring. We also continue our plans to produce our road legal bike on the Isle of Man.
This is cutting edge technology and is not easy for any of the teams and it’s not just us, it looks like it wasn’t meant to be for anybody this year.
Seeing that the winning lap time did not get improved from last year, it just goes to prove that this is hard for everybody.
So next year all the teams will all start again with the same goal, but we want to be the team that gets 120 mph first. Make no mistake, we want that record.
Thank you for all your support and especially our partners DQ Advocates, Bridgestone and the IOM Government who are supporting our journey and we hope to see you again later this year.”
Words by Stevie Rial
