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Welcome
Welcome to the BlueShift Pedal Prix racing team website. BlueShift has competed in the Australian International Pedal Prix since 2002. BlueShift aims to be a successful team that supports clean racing and team spirit. Feel free to browse our website!
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Celebrating 10 years 2002 - 2011
BlueShift News
27.09.11 ANALYSIS OF THE CRASH DAMAGE
We would like to thank those who have forwarded the many comments, messages and emails we have recieved since our early exit from the 2011 AIPP. Many of you also asked after the well-being of the riders involved in the incidents (they're fine by the way, no permanent injuries) and we just wanted to write the following report to give some perspective to the crashes and the extensive damage our team suffered at Murray Bridge. This article is also to help assure parents and others who are concerned about danger for their children.
We had two major crashes, both of which had independent witnesses who told us that our riders were caught in rapidly developing situations beyond their control, and not the riders overzealous riding. This was very helpful and cleared the air for good clean analysis and continued trust in them as riders.
The point we want to make here to those concerned is that this type of crash is confined to the faster cars who are approaching slower cars from behind at substantial speed and have to guess how the ever changing gaps will go and sometimes they get caught when one closes up. Younger children in the slower cars can get caught up in one of these crashes but because their speed is slower, they are neither fast with respect to static objects if they hit them, nor too slow with respect to the faster cars, and therefore not subject to such severe impacts. There was a weakpoint for their safety previously, but that was closed in 2010 when overhead protection was introduced and this has been very successful.
In the first crash our rider was at high speed when faced with a gaggle of cars in the centre of the track and a gap to the left and one to the right. In the dark with only a moment to choose, he chose the normally safer one to the right, only to find a crashed car on its side in the way. Without even a chance to react, he hit it at full speed on its bottom, badly smashing the front of our car, breaking his ankle and doing substantial damage to the other car. The other rider was not hurt badly. Our rider Wade, is now recovering satisfactorily at home in Victoria. The second crash started in a similar way with a group of cars in the centre of the track, but Phantom was a little in front of our car and chose the left hand side gap, startling a young rider who swerved away from him to the right. This forced our car into the kerb, launching our car at high speed into the fence, striking it nose first at about six feet above the ground. Inspection of the wreck of the car reveals that it hit a fence pole on the roof of the vehicle in just such a way to get caught in a corner, smashing the roof in on to the rider and fracturing his kneecap. This also spun the car around in the air, crashing the tail against the fence, and doing a great deal of damage there, before the car then crashed to the ground, probably making it worse again. Rhys, the rider, cannot remember the crash itself. The roof of the car was crushed in as is visible in the photographs but with so many impacts and fractures the remainder of the shell had little strength left.
So, the conclusion here is that the first crash was not that unusual, just severe because of the high speed and not being able to see the crashed car until it was too late. The other was a freak crash involving a launch from a kerb, and the pole getting caught in the roll structure, which broke it, rather than the car just deflecting off it. Theres nothing that could be done about the angle of hitting the pole, that was just freakish bad luck, but the launching effect of the kerb is another matter. These kerbs, although they seem nice and smooth and progressive, have caused some concern to other teams who also have been launched, and so we will discuss the issue with race management to see if there is anything that can be done. It may be possible to place haybales in some critical areas of convergence, or move the fence back just there, or some other arrangement.
It is worth mentioning here the construction of the car as a matter of technical interest and perhaps as a help to others who are building vehicles. Our shell is made of a single outer layer of carbon and reinforced with Kevlar. BYR have also successfully used this type of strategy, but they used better construction methods. The material of choice for outer shells is probably Kevlar, or some kind of Carbon/Kevlar mix. Our construction is reinforced in most places inside with a layer or two of Kevlar, finer weave for most of it but heavy cloth for areas such as the roll structures, and moulded into shape for strength by foam inserts. The front roll structure had easily survived numerous rollovers including one in round 2 where it hit a kerb while upside down, taking the impact at top right like in this crash. There was a bit of skin damage from that one but it didnt appear to contribute to the failure in this race.
All in all it seems that our construction was OK for all but freak crashes like this one, however if we do composite again, we will add a few more layers (most likely a mix of carbon weave and uni-directional carbon) in critical areas because it wont add much weight and the safety gains would be significant. In addition, we had left some areas of the carbon shell unreinforced (such as the rear end) because they seemed out of the way and it would save weight. However, once the big shocks came to the shell, they delaminated or shattered in some way so in hindsight it wasn't worth it. We were hampered during construction by lack of time and no vacuum bagging, so we tended to minimum reinforcing so as not to be heavy with excess resin.
We hope that this has explained the situation for everyone and answered many of the questions we have received.
Happy racing and see you in 2012!
Note the substantial damage near the rollbar. The rear of the car has much damage on the other side.
The corner where it appears the pole got caught
20.09.11 TEAM PHANTOM TAKE OUT ROUND 3
Firstly we would like to extend our congratulations to Tim Corbett and the crew at Phantom, great to see them take out the 24 hour after many years of competitve racing. Well done. Good results too for Trisled and Ballistic who work hard for our sport and Aurora, Platt Racing and Concordia for strong showings.
Our preparations for this year's event had gone very well, not too hectic for a change, the car the best ever, some technical hurdles overcome, a keen and coherent team, perhaps the best ever. Our 2011 AIPP team was David Parsons, Ashley Wass, Paul Weymouth, Dean Gibson, Rhys Bartlett, James Glasspool, Wade Edwards and Kel Chaffey-Jones. Early signs of pace were good as Rhys managed to set the fastest time in qualifying and Paul the fastest time in the shootout, leaving us on pole for the start of the race.
However, our dramas started early once the race started. Despite our best efforts our riders had some trouble in the very hot conditions, one even having a major asthma attack in the vehicle and giving us all a big scare when he managed to collapse out of the vehicle. Another was overcome by the heat and blacked-out momentarily and tipped the vehicle on its side. There were punctures, a rollover, and breakages from that, but all spaced out meaning stops each time. We had never had such a drama-filled start to a race!
Things calmed down once the temperature cooled and our riders started to settle in. Six laps down became five, then four, and then three. This period saw some amazingly fast stints from our riders, especially from Kel who was extremely fast and amazing to watch through the corners. The solid pace continued until around 10pm when our rider suffered a head-on crash at turn one. It broke our rider's ankle and he was out and in significant pain. The car was fixed relatively quickly and sent out again, now 9 laps down, with a badly smashed right front end, but at least no broken body mounts this time! The vehicle still had excellent pace with our riders strong and pegging back the laps lost once more.
At around 12pm the vehicle did not come around and we waited nervously for a call from the rider. The phone rang and the news was broken that it looked like we were out of the race. We had been squeezed against a kerb at high speed, launching the vehicle into the air. It hit the fence nearly 2 metres up, smashing the roof in on the rider, then flipping around to smash the tail against the next pole, then crashing to the ground. Witnesses said they had never before seen such a violent crash in a Pedal Prix race. The vehicle was heavily damaged and our rider suffered a broken kneecap and a sharp bump to the head.
Unfortunately it was going to be DNF two years in a row for us. But that's just racing, as we've been very lucky in the past with some unusually clean races so we have to take the good races with the bad.
We will have more of a race report to come in the following days.
We also managed to capture some fantastic on-board footage of qualifying and the shootout! (see right and also the video posted to the Australia International Pedal Prix facebook page).
Thanks must go to the AIPP for putting on another great event. Thanks also to John and Brenton Pearman for their assistance over the weekend and congratulations again to Phantom on their distance record and maiden AIPP win!
Thanks to Dirty Mongrel Racing for the great video!
02.08.11 BLUESHIFT TAKE FIRST WIN OF 2011
BlueShift endured several punctures, incidents and other drama to cross the line first at Round Two of the 2011 Australian HPV Super Series. The win sees the team celebrate our first win since Round Two 2008. We've come close a couple times since 2008 but very strong competition and a technically developmental phase for us has seen us finish second at best, so we are very happy to return to the top after a tough couple years.
The race began amongst perfect sunny conditions with David Parsons leading from the start and completing a 1hr 20min stint. Wade Edwards was in next and suffered a rear puncture shortly into his stint. We fixed the puncture but it was shortlived as he was back in with another rear puncture. We found the cause of both punctures was a protruding spoke. Once fixed, we were down in fifth place but Wade completed a great stint and handed over to Dean and then Rhys Bartlett. At the end of Rhys' stint he suffered a left hand puncture as the tyre had completely worn through. The wheel was replaced and James Glasspool jumped aboard for his hour stint.
Paul Weymouth was our last rider and was unlucky to be hit from behind by another team trying to slipstream him. He was rolled and the accident broke a body mount. The mount was fixed and Paul took us to a closely fought victory with TriSled who finished only 45 seconds behind. We are very happy to have won as we spent a total of 13:30 minutes off-track with issues. Our lap times were again very consistent, well done to all the riders.
Des also ran into trouble during his marshalling stint when trying to slow a vehicle moving too qucikly in the pit lane. His wedding band caught the vehicle and he was dragged off behind it! Quick thinking saw him cut the ring off before the swelling engulfed it and a trip to the hospital followed. Amazingly no broken bones!
Thanks must go to our sponsors - tafeSA, Glenelg Cycles, The Watermark Glenelg, BESTEC and Champion System for their on-going support.
Thanks to the AIPP board and all those who competed, see you at the 24 hour in September!
