Chris Gordon is a serious student of the internal combustion engine. He has used his expertise with two-stroke engines to gain several New Zealand championships. The first was with the 125cc MotoGP bike, which was ridden to the 1998 championship by Dennis Charlett. The second was with Nigel Sheppard’s superkart, powered by a highly modified 250cc Yamaha TZ250A engine, which Nigel drove to New Zealand championships in 2002, 2003, and 2004. In 2002, he set a lap time for the old Taupō track that was never beaten.
The advantage that Chris had over the competing teams was that he had written a computer program that allowed him to take account of atmospheric conditions to optimise an engine’s performance, giving it a winning edge.
Chris had been sent on a residential computer-programming course by his employer at the time, the now defunct New Zealand Electricity Department, when he expressed interest in computers. This, of course, was at a time when education was routinely paid for by the employer, rather than by the employee.
Settings on the day
The other
