Das Rant
By C.G.

Making the Connection

Woohah.

In case this is your first visit to the column that has been affectionately titled “Das Rant” (due to my tendency to complain) let me begin with a little disclaimer: I’m not an engineer, never was one, don’t think I’ll ever be one. Math has never been my strong suit, I nearly failed Technical Drawing in 9th grade, and my working knowledge of physics is limited to the type of interaction witnessed by watching baseball on TV. That said have you ever stopped to wonder why mountain bike manufacturers so often choose racecar engineers for innovations? Bonus question- did you know that racecar is spelled the same forward as it is backward? Okay then, where was I? Oh yeah, the racecar guys.

Somewhere in the virtual bowels of this issue, you’ll find a review of the Marin Wolf Ridge, a bicycle featuring the intelligent axel path suspension design (called Quadlink) developed by none other than Formula 1 suspension guru Jon Whyte back in 2003. Then just yesterday I got a call from Editor Giacchino telling me to stop by to check out the new Kona Coilair Supreme which uses just about the oddest linkage design I’ve yet to encounter, designed by none other than Brian Berthold, another former racecar engineer and the brainchild behind Brake Therapy’s floating brake systems.

Now I don’t watch much car racing (hell, I barely have time to watch any mountain bike racing) but I do feel a little giddy that some of the greatest minds charged with creating technologies able to withstand the rigors of triple digit speeds and the light-weight attributes of passing rigorous stipulations now work in our industry. I mean really, I can be hard on my bikes (thanks in no small part to a diet that would make Andrew Zimmerman cringe) but even I in my worst pounding can pose little threat in comparison to the stress of a Formula 1 car zinging around the racetrack.

It never fails to amaze me when I think of the ingenuity and know-how that goes into building what outsiders must view as basic machines. A few of my buddies like to give me a hard time because of my love for all this wild tech but I don’t feel the need to apologize. After all, rigid frame fixed gear bikes still exist for those opposed to going with the flow. I, for one, am impressed with the efforts of some of auto racing’s greatest minds in effort to take our sport to the next level- which in case you didn’t already realize, is spelled the same backward as it is forward.

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