It started on Tuesday morning, all the preparations were completed and we were ready to go. The team managed to leave the Future Factory at 6:45.
Around 8:30 the team arrived at the pit-box at the TT Assen Circuit. The sun was shining and we had the entire track for ourselves. Ready for a great test day. The motorbike, the tools, the spares and everything we thought of to take to the test day was unloaded and organised into the pit-box.
Then, we met our Driver. Finn de Bruin has been racing on motorbikes since he was twelve years old and now he is looking towards the future. He wants to get used to an Electric Superbike as soon as possible such that he can be ahead of the game when the motorbike sport transfers from gasoline to electric motorbikes. Together with Finn and two of his engineers, we inspected the bikes to make sure everything was working optimal. This also gave the added benefit of us getting advice on certain improvements we could add to the DELTA-XE. One of these improvements was a method in which we could do a much faster tire change!
After all the checks were done, it was finally the time to start testing. To keep the first test day as safe as possible, we only tested on the straight start-finish lane. After Finn was fully briefed, he got onto the bike, ready for action. He took off from the pit-box and drove around to the start-finish lane and then, for the first time, Electric Superbike Twente witnessed the DELTA-XE in action. The power of the DELTA-XE was limited in order to allow for safe testing. We started with a power limit of 20%. After the tests were successful, power was gradually increased to 50%, which ended up being our maximum for the day. Hearing the DELTA-XE slice though the air sounded similar to the sound of a Jet Plane, only this time on two wheels.
Sadly, around the middle of the afternoon, the weather took a turn for the worse and rain started falling from the sky. This was a great opportunity for us to get some rest, have something to eat and start practicing a tire change. Since the race track was now wet, we decided to exchange the road tires for some rain tires. During this action, we noticed that we could still improve certain parts of the DELTA-XE in order to make our lives much easier during the racing season.
Once the rain cleared, we did one final test with the DELTA-XE to see how well Finn could handle the bike in straight, wet conditions with rain tires. He raced back and forth along the start finish straight and started being able to tame the DELTA. However, after an hour it started raining again and it would keep raining for the rest of the day. We ended our first test day by packing everything up again. The people at the TT circuit were even so kind as to give us a tour of all the facilities there. Once everything was back in the bus, we started our drive home. Everyone was ecstatic from the day we just had and we made sure to celebrate this during the evening hours.
