Mat is a TT winner, endurance racer, author and MotoGP paddock insider
In physics, all things are connected, which is why technology pioneered in skyscrapers found its way into Formula 1 cars and MotoGP bikes, thanks to a petrol-head astrophysicist. In the 1970s, as skyscrapers grew ever taller, architects ran into a problem: the tallest towers swayed in the wind, giving people motion sickness, at best, and scaring the living daylights out of them, at worst. Engineers from American testing and simulations company MTS Systems solved the problem by inventing the tuned mass damper. Their first, atop Boston's 60-story Hancock Tower, featured two 300-ton lead weights that moved this way and that to stabilise the building.
Some years later an astrophysicist and motorcycle nut who had worked at MTS became…