Page 63 - Australian Motorcycle News (January 2020)

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THE NITTY GRITTY

Electronic-control systems are a mystery to
most motorcyclists, so what does Anderson
actually do?
“DURING SESSIONS I’M in the garage with Pol, his crew
chief and his data engineer. The data guy is responsible
for running the bike, the crew chief does everything on
the chassis and anything electronics-wise Pol shouts at
me! If I’m watching Pol on the TV and I see a movement
on the bike I note it down and ask him when he comes
in – you had a moment at Turn Three, is this something
that’s bothering you?
“After each session we have a debrief, when Pol picks

out the key points he wants fixing for the next session.
“I make all the software maps and tune the maps
during the sessions – the torque map, the traction-
control map, the engine-braking-control map, the
anti-wheelie map, the launch-control map and the
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shifting map.
“The biggest things are the torque and traction-
5 control maps, getting the right balance between
the two. During race weekends you’ve got different

scenarios to consider. In qualifying you don’t care about
tyre wear, so I just want to make sure I don’t restrict Pol
in any way, but if something happens there’s enough TC
to catch him. Then you think about the race – how can
we get the best performance without burning the tyre?
“Between races I spend a couple of days analysing
what we’ve done, what we’ve learned and what we
could’ve done better. Then I spend a couple of days
starting to think about the next race – what happened
last year and what happened the year before.”

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The KTM gig started in 2015 with a job advert in
a magazine.
“KTM didn’t even have a MotoGP bike at the
time. When I applied for the job I presumed it
was with their Moto3 project. I sat down for a
Skype interview with their head of electronics
Dan Goodwin. He said: ‘Hi, I’m interviewing you
for a job with our new MotoGP project.’ I was like,
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‘Okay, cool!’
“Initially they were a bit hesitant to take people
from car racing because there’s a mentality that
they are two worlds apart. But one of the reasons
they took me was that I was working with GP2 and
GP3 cars, which use Magneti Marelli hardware
and software, which MotoGP used from 2016. So
Dan said, ‘here’s the ECU for the bike we are going
to build, get something ready so it can run’.”
Anderson was data engineer for KTM’s MotoGP

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