So another edition of the World Human Powered Speed Challenge has come to an end. The number of participants was way down from previous years, but nevertheless there were two world records set, and one that was almost set as well. We had three university based teams, the Sprocket Rocket was back, and two velomobile entries, one of which having multiple riders. In all, eight distinct vehicles and 15 riders (counting all the Sprocket Rider riders as one).
Here are a few notes on each team, in the order presented in my WHPSC 2023 Preview.
Team Policumbent
Team Policumbent had their bike from last year Phoenix with two riders, and the arm powered trike Cerberus.
My understanding is that there were some delays in the team reacquiring both vehicles due to a long delay in shipping; they didn’t get to work on the bikes until January of this year. Visually, there didn’t seem to be much changes from last year. For example, this is the front end of Cerebus this year:
Here it is last year:
The other change was that Matilde Vitello was now riding Phoenix rather than Taurus X.
Diego seemed to be struggling with control early in the week, although he was doing much better than last year. Later in the week, the team limited the steering travel, and this seemed to work as his speed suddenly increased from low 40’s to around 48 mph. In the last two days, there was a further increase to around 51 mph, but just shy of the record. Given the number of runs that he did all week, people named him athlete of the week. He did three runs on Thursday morning, each time getting a little faster.
Matilde’s speeds steadily increased during the week. One got the sense that as she was getting the feel of the new bike, she was able to go faster, culminating in a 75.44 mph run during the last heat. She said that she would like to come back next year.
Enzo had very bad luck, initialling having trouble launching, but after the team was coached by Larry Lem, the launches were much cleaner, and he ended up going just under 70 mph. However, he had evil luck with wind so his only wind legal run was the one during qualifying (38.91 mph).
This has been a very well equipped team, and we hope to see them back at Battle Mountain.
Team 60@60
Peter Borenstadt had a new longer tail on his DF velomobile. He complained about being down on power all week, but in the end he logged a 56.91 mph run during the last heat to grab first place in the trike class.
Annecy University Institute of Technology
Annecy had a spectacular showing in 2019, capturing the second fastest men’s record with Fabien Canal at 84.99 mph, as well as the women’s record by his cousin Ilona Peltier at 78.613 mph, both records set with Altair 6.
Naturally, all eyes were on François Pervis who went almost 85 mph last year. The new bike was called Altair 7, with a shell pulled from the same mold as Altair 6, but with additional internal reinforcement and a stronger system to secure the hatch. HIs speeds gradually increased during the week, and he posted 86.92 mph on the last evening. This firmly establishes him as the world’s second fastest rider with some significant distance above the 85 mph mark.
Annecy will not be back next year. Guillaume announced that they are moving onto a new project: a human powered seaplane. It has been a pleasure to see the evolution of this team over the years, always presenting very creative solutions to the problem of making a bike go fast. Altair 6&7 differed from many of the other streamliners in that it had a monocoque construction with no internal frame. In the end, one gets the sense that the bike was brought to its fullest potential this year. They will be missed.
Team Wild Bill
Bill was back with a Milan RS owned by Niklas Bostelmann. The bike was supposed to be faster than last year’s SL. It proved not to be, although it was not clear that the issue was the bike as opposed to the rougher road surface on 305. This particular Milan RS was also somewhat beat up from being ridden across the country. It should also be mentioned that Bill was sick most of the week. Pilot Daniel was happy with his results; his goal was to exceed 90 kph. I hope that they will be back in some form.
Land Speed Record LLC
Team Sprocket Rocket put on quite the show all week. It was a given that they would set the womens’ multi rider multitrack record since there was no such record before this year. The only comparable record was the womens’ multi rider record, which was 45.79 mph. Their week started off with a bang, setting the record with a Monday morning run of 59.69 mph, and pushing it still further to 61.24 and then 61.94 mph on Tuesday morning. That turned out to be their fast time of the week, although they logged several other runs above 61 mph. They were also pleased to have beaten the mens’ mark set in 2019, although to be fair, there were improvements made since then, particularly with regards to the nose cone and wheel fairings. The fact that their average age was just under sixty, and that all five were grandmothers added more awesome to their achievements.
Word is that the builders are looking to donate the machine to a venue where it could be put on proper display.
Monash Human Power
This team was the story of the week. They brought a bike that they had been working on for several years. Several of us were of the opinion that it would go 70 mph at most, and the team proved naysayers wrong by having two riders go above 72 mph. The other two riders went just under 70 mph, but didn’t get a single wind legal run all week.
There was also an incident where Oscar went off the road, and under the team’s safety protocols, he was taken to a clinic for evaluation, and the team suspended all further racing until was clear that he would be OK.
Much respect to the team for their efforts and enthusiasm. They indicated that they plan to be back, perhaps in two years.
Team Teardrop
Alyssa aged into the 12-14 age group while still being able to barely fit into last year’s bike. She set the record for girls 12-14 multitrack on Monday at 22.72 mph, and reset it three more times, pushing the speed to 24.72 mph. Setting and then resetting a world record a total of four times in a week is probably also some sort of record. She hopes to be back, but she is going to need a bigger vehicle.
What’s Next?
The number of entrants this year was low, at a level where the event would lose money. This was compounded by the fact that support from several sources was also cut back. Additionally, the volunteers were run ragged. The usual number of heats were run, which was advantageous to the racers as they could sign put for multiple heats, and then scratch out of heats at the last minute. This resulted in a large number of heats with only a single vehicle, requiring the same set up and time spent as if the heat was full.
Clearly something has to change to increase participation. One piece of feedback was that the current ihpva.org website is really bad and has not been updated. This has been heard loud and clear, and the website will be completely rebuilt. Additionally there will be two working groups set up to make the event more attractive to university teams and to the velomobile community.
On a more personal note, it was great to be back with this community. In particular, I have enjoyed working with these special people: Marieke and Danny at timing, and Arnold at start.
Special thanks to Arnold who wrote a completely new javascript based routine for the timing table that simplified the task of keeping track of runs, figuring out seeding, and generating start lists for each session.
Signing off from Battle Mountain for another year. (although technically I am typing this while stranded at Las Vegas airport).
Here’s hoping that we will have more racers next year. See you next September.
Biking in a Big City 