Darren Jones has been working with Peter Hickman for over 10 years and has been his Crew Chief across multiple teams and with various bikes. We caught up with Darren to find out how our chassis software has been helping them and also to see how the transition to the new BMW S1000RR has been for them.
Zero One Racing: “After a full season racing the new S1000RR, what improvements, and maybe challenges, have you found over the previous model?”
Darren Jones: “The biggest thing for us initially was finding a balance from the chassis that suits the new BMW, it works in a completely different window to the old older model. Our biggest problems with the new bike have been the stopping power, but we have now cured this after testing and the chassis program enabled us to speed this up.”
Zero One Racing: “How has ZeroChassis helped you with the new bike?”
Darren Jones: “ZeroChassis has helped us massively. Aaron measured the bike and CofG, inputting it into the program which gave us a good starting point. We can log where the riders are happiest and can always refer back to where the chassis worked better. The software is also really useful for seeing what else is affected on the chassis when you make certain changes.”
Zero One Racing: “Where did you have your biggest success using ZeroChassis?”
Darren Jones: “The most success came on the roads last year. We went completely blind with the stock bike, actually finishing it whilst at the northwest. We overlaid the Superbike data and put the stock bike in a similar position. We won 1st time out on it as all the guess work was taken out of it.”
Zero One Racing: “Which BSB track is the most challenging for bike setup with Hicky?”
Darren Jones: “For some reason he always seems to struggle at brands Indy, The shortest track! We’ve changed so much over the years but he just never seems to gel with it.”