Brammo Tests Freshly Tuned Empulse RRs at Thunderhill
Thought Brammo was done tweaking the Empulse RRs this racing season? Hell No! Apparently 2nd and 3rd place podium finishes at Laguna Seca weren’t good enough, as a matter of fact, history shows us that 1st place isn’t good enough for the illustrious Team Brammo (What a fanboy thing to say 
).
Steve-O
Anyway, this last weekend Brammo was busy testing an updated pair of whips piloted by E-Boz (Eric Bostrom) and Steve-O (Steve Atlas). Upgrades to software are now in place that remedy some of the issues encountered at Laguna Seca along with new and improved motor controller code, and the bikes are also sporting new bodywork with improved aerodynamics. One white (E-Boz), one black (Steve-O), both would look absolutely bad ass in any color IMO. (Yes, again with fanboy speak.)
E-Boz
So what are improvements without results? Yeah, Steve-O shaved off an impressive 4 seconds from his previous best at Thunderhill, you dont have to be a fanboy to be impressed by those results. The Empulse RR race-bikes are already lapping circuits in 600cc territory, at the pace these machines are being improved, we may see liter-bike times in a matter of a couple years, or less! Keep it up Brammo!
ATTENTION: I will be at Miller Motorsports park next weekend… if there is anything you guys would like me to ask Team Brammo or or any of the other teams at the event, please let me know. Any pictures you would like me to take, let me know! Leave a comment or email me and I will try my best to make it happen.
Yes – please take a picture of the entire Brammo contingent in a human pyramid.
Ummm, OK BrammoFan, Sure thing…
One thing to keep in mind is that Miller is at about 4400 feet of elevation.
That means the gasser bikes will lose about 13% of their horsepower to elevation. That won’t translate to 13% slower lap times, but it will slow them down a bit. Meanwhile the electric bikes will actually run slightly faster at high altitude due to less drag resistance due to the thinner air.
Do you know if there will be any practice laps where the Empulse RR will be running with the gassers? If so, there could be some very interesting results. Even just comparing lap times will be very interesting.
Not sure why wordpress didnt “approve” these few comments from you and freepz but I had to “approve” them manually for some reason… sorry. Anyway, for what its worth at this point, I can answer this question now. I received this bit of information from Brian Wismann:
“Eric Bostrom qualified in pole position with a 1:40.5 and Steve Atlas is sitting in second with a 1:40.7. To put this in perspective, EBoz’s lap time is faster than any superbike tested at this track in the 2012 Cycle World Superbike Shootout a couple of months ago. This includes a BMW S1000RR, Honda CBR1000, Kawasaki ZX-10R, Yamaha YZF-R1, and Suzuki GSX-R1000! Steve’s best lap matches that of the Honda, the fastest of the group.”
Please ask them why kinds of fairings they have planned for the Empulse. I know that Brammo is going for the cafe racer look with the Empulse, but since they are going to be racing that bike in the eSuperstock class, some kind of fairing would be a big advantage when going fast.
Sorry Freepz, yours and Nixon’s comments somehow had to be manually “approve” so I was not aware of them until now. Good question though, I will try and contact someone at Brammo about what they plan to do with fairings and a future Empulse model. If they are willing to tell me anything I will post any new information over at the Brammo owners forum.
Just got an answer back. The answer is: “We will probably offer a fairing once it becomes economical – volume/price – and those two variables are of course inter related.” there was even a mention of offering an RR replica sometime in the future!
I can tell you that seeing an RR in person is much different than seeing one in pictures, those are works of art IMO. Very refined looking for one off (x 2) race bikes.