Designed to Race - Peter Williams |
 |
| Thursday, 12 August 2010 09:07 | |||
 Few Motorcycle Racers were ever so intimately associated with the design and technology of their bikes as Peter Williams. Born into a bike competition family, Peter has launched a wonderful autobiography ‘designed to race’ charting his rise to racing stardom and the intimate part he played and continues to play in Motorcycle Design. Packed with superb photography with many never before published images, "Designed to Race" has been eagerly awaited by Peter's many loyal fans and the wide readership of his regular magazine columns. The book is available to pre-order on www.peterwilliamsracing.com During his racing career, Peter Williams was the best motorcycle road racer in the world and is one of that small band of sportsmen, “the best never to win a World Championship”. Peter’s unique career in the 1960s and 1970s as racer, designer and development engineer culminated in many great victories on bikes from 125cc to 750cc. For two months in 1967 he lead the 500cc class of the World Championship on his single cylinder 500cc MkI Arter Matchless Special against the much more powerful Honda and MV Augusta multis of Mike Hailwood and Giacomo Agostini. Just when he was, perhaps, due for a ‘works’ ride, the Japanese withdrew from Grand Prix road racing and Peter joined the re-emergent manufacturers of Norton. Peter had two consuming passions; riding his motorcycles at 10/10ths of the limit, and for Britain to regain motorcycle supremacy. Indeed, the latter was his mission, his crusade, and so he rode almost exclusively British motorcycles but, interestingly, won his only Grand Prix on a foreign one. Peter’s engineering designs gave him advantage on the race track and set the trends for what motorcycles are today. He was one of the first to design and race with disc brakes, the first in the world to design and use cast magnesium wheels and tubeless tyres. Peter won the 1970 500cc class British Championship and was the first in motorcycle racing to benefit from tobacco sponsorship. The 1973 John Player Norton 'Monocoque' incorporated all his previous experiments and the first twin spar frame. The pinnacle of his career came on this machine when he won the Formula 750 TT in the Isle of Man with record race and lap speeds. Peter’s racing career came to an end in 1974 with a terrible crash at Oulton Park but his engineering continued with work at Cosworth Engineering and Lotus Engineering. In November 2008 a group of friends, including top engineers and managers at Lotus, Cosworth, Ricardo and EMAP, gathered together with Peter for the first of several meetings to find a way forward within the electric motorcycle (EV) arena An alliance with Kingston University took the opportunity for engineering research and advancement around both the Shell Chassis concept and Electric motor advancements to create the prototype EV-0 RR. The EV-0 RR racer uses a true monocoque Shell Chassis system because it affords the space it needs for batteries and because of the materials it is made from the bike is “green” as well as “Zero Emission.  Its very first outing was in the 2010 TT Zero, “Straight out of the box”, it completed two laps of the toughest road race circuit in the world finishing fifth. Calculations were proved and parallel claims of the advantages of the design continue to be tested with positive evidence displayed on the track.The potential of the new motorcycle Shell Chassis is huge and is already promising success in racing and will certainly provide a competitive advantage commercially. Its advantages compared with other electric solutions include : • Lighter weight • More space available for various services (e.g. batteries, controller, motor, luggage and ergonomics). • Fewer parts • Simpler manufacture and assembly • Increased styling opportunities for product differentiation (no frame). • Easy service and accident repair with benefits for accident damage insurance claims. • Embedded security devices. • For racing, the frontal area can be less thus reducing wind resistance and the structure will enable reduced internal drag and better engine cooling for IC versions  Peter is currently sourcing funding to take the prototype to market and aims to secure a strong British brand in this growing industry, bringing motorcycle innovation back to Britain.A new study entitled “Electric Two-Wheel Vehicles” by market intelligence company Pike Research forecasts that more than 466 million electric bicycles and motorcycles will be sold worldwide during the period from 2010 to 2016. Given that the annual global motorcycle market is currently around 80 million units a year, almost all of them based on the internal combustion engine, this anticipated explosion in electric bike demand could double the size of the two wheeled market. There is one "boy problem". There is no noise! So we are fitting an on-board sound amp. Now we have to decide whether to play the Moto Guzzi V8, the Honda 500-4, or the sound of Peters G50?! For more information on Peter Williams, his autobiography and the EV-0 RR visit www.peterwilliamsracing.com Article source: Peter Willaims
|
