Team "Bike2c24"

Das Team besteht aus Lehtonen und Kivistö, welche sich den Teamnamen

Bike2c24

 

Lehtonen/ Kivistö starten beim DEKRA Event 2012

We are currently the only and the fastest speedbike team in Finland. We have a team with more old and new faces.
 

• name: Oliver Lehtonen
• year of birth: 1988
• occupation: designer
• contact: oliver.lehtonen(at)ventive.fi

 
Cycling is more than a sport for Oliver – it is a lifestyle. His passion lies however in the field of creative design. He is currently studying industrial design to complement his professional skills as an art director.

 
As a cyclist Oliver has recently focused in streamlined sprint performance. He has an advantage due to his proper size and reasonably high power output. The variety of disciplines is also a strenght for Oliver who started riding recumbents when he was 14. In short, Oliver is a sprinter doing everything he undertakes at 110% intensity.

 

• name: Jukka Kivistö
• year of birth: 1958
• occupation: director of development
• contact: jukka.kivisto(at)metallisetgroup.fi

 
Jukka is the backbone of the team. He has being involved in wide variety of projects from different fields of designing and engineering. At the moment he travels a lot in his job and makes sure factories run smooth where ever he goes.

 

• name: Teppo Mäkelä
• occupation: product development engineer
• teppo.makela(at)koti.soon.fi

 
Teppo is an cycling enthusiast and has very analytic attitude towards the sport. True engineer, Teppo has an idea for almost every problem team may face and cad-plans are often ready the next night. Teppo usually takes care that things run smooth in the workshop and the job is done with high standards and on schedule.

 

• name: Francesco Russo
• occupation: architect, designer, cyclist
• cycling world record holder for one hour time trial (91.556 km/h)
• www.russo-speedbike.com
• russo.speedbike(at)gmail.com

 
Francesco is the strongest character in streamlined cycling. He trains like a professional athlete but finds also time to design and push technology further. Co-operation started in 2010 with Damjan Zabovnik has led to one of the strongest union in the history of the sport. Francesco is the mentor of Bike2c24. as the team is largely based on his work done with speedbike “Ristretto”.

 

• name: Damjan Zabovnik
• occupation: designer, scientist, cyclists
• Born in 1975
• www.eivie4.com
• damjuan(at)gmail.com

 
Damjan is a world known designer of streamlined bicycles. During his long career he has redefined the concept of speedbike and what is possible to achieve with human power. Damjan started to study physics in University of Ljubljana but graduated from faculty of sport in 2002. From since he´s been working with streamlined bikes travelling cross the world. In 2005 – 2007 Damjan stayed a lot in California working with experimental aircrafts and Human Powered Vehicles.

 

Short introduction for the year 2012:

 
Our bike is the Ristretto. We spend the whole year of 2011 learning from Francesco. I think we exchanged  close to 200 emails and in november we spent time in Switzerland to adapt and test the bike. It was amazing that both of us, Jukka and me, fit inside the bike. So now we have a superbike with two riders capable of using the bike for different kind of records. With Francesco´s knowledge from the Eiviestretto project and our own studies, we believe we can make the Ristretto even faster than it was.
 
We started dreaming of our own speedbike in the summer of 2010. At the time Bram Moems of M5 was selling his old fairings and we aquired a copy of the fairing nro.8. We found out pretty quickly that the summer was too short and we didn´t have the time to finish the bike properly. Our best results were Jukka riding 520 km/h in 16 hours on a velodrome. The bike had no canopy or disc wheels and it broke a couple of times so it was a big MESS! Nevertheless we got good experience and set national records for almost every distance. I also visited Bram in Netherlands and he helped us a lot along the way. We eventually worked the bike in pretty good condition in 2011 but didn´t get to ride it as it was sold to a new rider. It is now ridden by our national ironman champion of the M30 category so in the future there could be more record teams from here.
 
For 12/24 h records it will be interesting to see how Jukka performs with such a fast bike as the Ristretto is. The power output is not a problem, as it is always low on these distances, but can Jukka adapt the position for this long? There really is not extra space at all! Nevertheless I´m very confident about good results in long distances also.
 
This is our first year with competive bike and we have also trained professionally for some time. Time is the biggest problem, as I believe is with every record team. It is difficult to train, build and organize the project as you also have to work and study at the same time. We hope to learn a lot in this year and meet everybody from the community. And if everything goes as planned we get some good results. One thing is certain –  we have fallen in love with the sport! We plan to also make our own bike in future. With Jukka´s life long experience with technology and my passion for design our bike is going to be nice  
 
Sorry for not being able to give you more numbers or statistics at this point of the year. We have a one good test track of a tyre manufacturer here in Finland which we can use after the snow melts (the track should be legitimate within the rules), so we should have more information in the coming months. I´ve also organized our national recumbent events during the years and maybe in the future we have an international event in here. In the midsummer we have daylight all night long so distance records like 24h would be easier to make in here as the sun does not set.