FAGAN VS LAVERTY
Just for shits and giggles, and to show you how fast these boys are, we studied the data and compared my fastest lap (1.34.5) and Laverty’s fastest qualifying lap (1.27.2), and picked out a few juicy nuggets of information. Whereas Laverty can afford to bin it, dust himself off and return to the box to a pat on the back, I’d be heading for my van and driving down the A46 still wearing my leathers, scurrying to the nearest Maccas if I launched his cherished steed. Of course, there’s the small matter of Mlav’s talent advantage and the graphs show why he’s paid to race bikes, not some morbidly obese journo…
At Coppice, Laverty is 32kmh faster before braking and carries 10kmh more at the apex. Charlies is fairly close but braking into Park is where I was losing a lot of time. Laverty was pulling 12bar of brake pressure. I was pulling 6bar. You don’t need to be a master physician or tech guru to fathom that one. The apex speed is very similar but Mlav, unsurprisingly, takes chunks out of me on the brakes. Driving round Chris Curve, he’s is 25kmh faster and pulling the pin. At the direction change at the Gooseneck, he’s a massive 30kmh faster. We’re very similar speeds at Mansfield and onto the fiddly chicane, but Mlav finds an extra 25kmh before braking into the bottom of The Mountain. Again, we are very similar through the left and right before the jump itself, where Michael’s racing pedigree and bigger gonads grab him a 16kmh advantage before Hall Bends, and Mlav is a measly 6kmh faster. The hairpin is a very similar apex speed but he scrubs more from a faster entry – a massive 20km through Hall Bends. Driving out of Barn I’m, surprisingly, comparable: getting on the gas at exactly the same time. I’m happy with that.