#tt journaal 2023

[bobendsneyder64]

So I was watching back the episodes from the special TT news they make every year in the week before the TT and learned some amazing things I wanted to share with you

This post has some random things I thought would be interesting to share

- Collin Veijer doesn't actually know the circuit of Assen that well. He moved to Spain when he was 7 or 8 to have more chances in the motorsport and to train even more than what would have been possible here. He misses his hometown a lot but he knows he did it for a good reason. He does see Assen as his home gp

- after Bo Bendsneyder crashed in Germany, they carried him back to safety on a brancard. One of the marshals grabbed him by the shoulder (the one he broke) while he was on the brancard. Bo had to touch his hand to stop him from doing that, because of course it hurted him. He also said they almost fell while they carried him

- one of the mechanics from the Mooney VR46 racing team is Dutch. His name is Robin Spijkers. He used to work for Valentino Rossi and is now one of the mechanics for Marco Bezzecchi. He said when he worked on the Yamaha, they did the job with 3 mechanics. Now, with the Ducati, they work with 4 mechanics on one bike, but he said they still would be able to finish a Yamaha faster with 3 persons. He said a Ducati is very difficult to work on, but that it is also all worth it.

- they interviewed someone who works at Rev'it and he had a lot of interesting stories to tell. The company Rev'it is a Dutch company, that started in 1995. At this moment they make suits for 10 racers throughout different classes. Collin Veijer is one of those 10 who uses a Rev'it suit. They have special airbags that work twice, so if you crash once and are still able to continue, you can do so safely because their airbag can activate again. There are lights on the suit that show the racers if the airbag is working. They get suits back after every session to do a safety check and dry them in special drying cabins (because racers sweat a lot and sweaty leather is a lot heavier to wear). A suit is between €2.500 - €3.000,- and then the airbags are another €1.000. So a complete suit would be around €4.000.-

- in the 1970s racers would wear suits that had their blood type stitched on, so if they crashed medics would be immediately aware of that crucial part of information. So you would see racers walking around with suits with, for example, A+ stitched on.

- in the 1950s, '60s and '70s this sport was seen as extremely dangerous. In those years, somewhere around 80 racers died and from those 80, 5 were world champions. (Hence the reason they had their blood type stitched on their suits)

This is post 2 of 2. Find post 1 here

[bobendsneyder64]

So I was watching back the episodes from the special TT news they make every year in the week before the TT and learned some amazing things I wanted to share with you

This post will be about Assen

- the first ever TT was in 1925 and was 28 kilometers long. It was from Rolde via Borger and Schoonlo back to Rolde. It moved to Assen in 1926 because there was a part in the original circuit that was a sand road. This was only 800 metres long but the organisations and officials that organised it didn't wan't to put asphalt on this small part. Because it was a street circuit the whole circuit had to be asphalt. Assen immediately took their chance to host the TT from then on.

- while there have been a lot of changes to the circuit over the years, the place of the start/finish line never changed. Ever since 1926 it has been on the same place and never moved, not even an inch. The circuit has become shorter and wider, but the start/finish line never changed.

- in 2025 the TT exist a 100 years and it will be a special year. They want to do a lot of special stuff and release special material, like a book and a movie. This year, however, was only the 92nd edition of the TT but that is because in all these years, there were 6 years were they couldn't organise one. 5 years were missed because of WW2 and one year was missed because of covid. So the 100th TT will be in 2031.

- in the last 13 races in Assen there were also 13 different pole-sitters: Jorge Lorenzo (2010), Marco Simoncelli (2011), Casey Stoner (2012), Cal Crutchlow (2013), Aleix Espargaró (2014), Valentino Rossi (2015), Andrea Dovizioso (2016), Johann Zarco (2017), Marc Marquez (2018), Fabio Quartararo (2019), Maverick Viñales (2021), Pecco Bagnaia (2022) and Marco Bezzecchi (2023)

This is post 1 of 2. Find post 2 here