”In the end we turned to each other and said: What the heck, this is great, let’s sell it!”
Introducing Ola Sunding, self-employed system developer and FLC partner in crime
How did you get involved in the FLC project?
Henrik and I are old friends, and this happened at a party some time ago. We were talking, and Henrik told me he was thinking about whether it would be possible to calculate the maximum speed for a particular motorcycle track. And if so, whether I would be able to design the actual computer program for it. Could I transform his mathematical formulas into a user-friendly program? I said yes, I figured I could do that.
Cross your heart: how interested are you really in motorcycles and road racing?
Not at all actually. I’ve never even watched a whole race.
What are you like as a person?
I’m totally different to Henrik. He is outgoing, an extrovert who likes to get noticed and be seen. I’m not like that at all. It’s not that I’m an introvert, I love socializing, but I’m more of the listening type. Sometimes he jokingly calls med a fuddy-duddy, and we have this standing joke that if I were to get a tattoo, it would say exactly that: fuddy-duddy. So we’re totally different from one another, but we really make a great team.
What were the main difficulties with your part of the job?
I usually concentrate on the possibilities, not on the obstacles. I had this feeling that it was going to work, but of course I knew it wasn’t certain. But it was just a matter of getting started and keeping testing until I had it figured out. In the end we turned to each other and said: What the heck, this is great, let’s sell it!
Was there a specific break through moment in the programming process?
No, a project like this is studded with little breakthroughs all along the way.
Have you enjoyed the ride (if you excuse the pun) ?
It’s been a fun process for me, because although I’m not a marketing person – I’m a technician – I had the opportunity to put our web site together and make sure it had all the necessary functions, so you can download files and buy the program from there etc. I love developing things and in my business I mostly do it at the request of clients, but with FLC I got the chance to develop something where I had a personal stake in the project.
How do you view the future of FLC?
Since I’m not in the motorcycle business it’s hard for me to assess what the interest is like for a program like this, but if I were into road racing I’m pretty sure I’d want to be able to analyse my track. I do think it’s amazing how much the program has to offer with relatively simple means though.
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Henrik Wiese
“I’m actually a very careful driver on the streets”
So finally we are getting an interview with Henrik, the 53 year old engineer, dad of 2 sons and road racing fanatic based in Hong Kong.
So tell us, how did all of this begin?
The year was 1979 when I decided that instead of being dangerous on public roads I was going to aim for a racing license. So in Karlskoga (Sweden) is where it all began. A side effect of having fun at the track is that it calmed my riding on public roads, so I’m actually a very careful driver on the streets!
You are the brain behind “Fastest Lap Calculator”, a tool used to calculate the perfect lap. How does one come up with ideas like this?
Well, for quite some time I’d been curious about whether it was possible to actually figure out how fast a lap can be driven on a race track. I love to dig in to the mathematics, numbers and formulas. I started with relatively simple calculations and eventually I reached a point where I was convinced that I could actually calculate the optimal raceline.
What’s so good about it then?
According to my opinion a lot of focus in racing is on the bike and the equipment, while at least at levels where most people are riding it’s more important what the rider does.Therefore when I was designing the program I had to calculate a lot of other stuff to get the best line. Some setup data for the bike is also possible to get out of the program.With all these parameters in the its actually possible to see the maximum speed at any point around the track.
The coefficient of friction can also be entered – and is reduced if it rains or increased if you are running with sticky slicks. Motorcycle data must of course also be used for the calculation. If you’re running a typical sports motorcycle such as a Yamaha R6 or a Honda Fireblade, the data on it already exists in the program, if you’re running on something else you just “build” the bike in the program.
Ola Sunding was involved in designing and programming this software. What was your main obstacles?
Definitely to describe the line mathematically. The race line has to be extremely smooth, just as in real life. If the radius is a bit too small in just one point of the line this is enough to ruin the result. The bike would have to slow down to be able to pass this point.
When we started we used a spline function commonly used in film animations to describe the line mathematically. When you are in a cinema this function is good enough for the movements to look smooth on the screen, but this is not good enough to take a motorcycle around a racetrack as fast as possible. With the update we made in version 1.02 we introduced a much better algorithm to describe the line and since then the program works really well.
So far so good. But how do I try it out?
The estimated lap time is based on a course outline, which can be downloaded from Google Earth for example. It is important that the sketch shows the path in an overhead viewpoint (Google Earth has a button that ensures this).
The program even allows you to embed sections where the asphalt is raised in a steep curve or leaning outwards or is banked inwards – they are marked with a thin black frame.
One of the most important questions –
have you seen any results on your racing results?
Absolutely. Knowing where you should go really helps. It’s not so easy to do in real life but it’s still very helpful to at least know what you are aiming for.
And finally, with a little sneak peak into the future, where do you hope FLC will take you?
It has already given me a lot! Both the fun of solving the problems when constructing it and then getting the opportunity to meet the teams at the highest level of racing who are using it.
It would be nice if it could give something back economically as well. I would be pleased if the revenues could pay for my race tires and I would like Ola (the programmer) to get decent pay for all the hours he has spent on it. After all he’s not into racing so he does not get very much out of it at present.
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