The Jade Warrior was built by British motorcycle racer Angus MacPhail in his garage. It’s powered by a 4 cylinder Ford Cosworth engine that has a roots type supercharger that produced an estimated 400-500 horsepower. The center of the custom frame is riveted and bonded aluminum and the front end has specially designed ground effects to keep the bike stable at 200+ mph speeds.
Sources: Dragzine.com via Jalopnik
The Drive Channel released another video of what I call Motorsport Music. There’s no commentary, it’s just the natural sounds of racing. It starts in the morning with the teams and crews preparing for the start of the race and then goes to various parts along the track to watch the cars go by. There’s even a few shots of the famed Corkscrew. It makes for great background music while you work.
The American Le Mans Series released this video to promote the second round of the 2012 championship at Laguna Seca that took place this past weekend. They interview several of the drivers about Laguna Seca’s signature corner, the corkscrew. The left-right chicane drops 60 feet and is arguably the most difficult corner in all of road racing. It’s said to have been formed when the track was being built completely by accident. The story goes that the bulldozers were carving out the track when it came time for lunch. The bulldozer operator simply drove straight down the hill in the most direct path back to his lunch and the corkscrew was born.
Two-time MotoGP World Champion, Casey Stoner, has a unique riding style in that he is able to do full lean high speed slides. Let me start off by saying that there is a big difference between competition drifting and sliding a little bit to help get around a corner and go fast. Stoner is one of the few riders who still uses sliding as a technique to improve times in the age of electronic traction control and it probably comes from his days racing dirt track. He says it’s difficult to explain because each corner has a different way to initiate a slide. It’s a technique that has to be consciously initiated and holds a lot of risks. Head over to Asphalt and Rubber to read Stoner’s entire explanation of the technique and its benefits. Red Bull also posted this video of him talking about racing while you get to watch him slide his Moto GP bike at full lean at 1000 frames per second.