If he hasn't got that confidence in you then you are not going to progress very far as a mechanic, you have to get your riders confidence. A great deal of that is down to routine, building the bike up in a certain way and maintaining it impeccably. Some people may ask 'well doesn't that get boring?' and the answer is 'no' as you enjoy it and want to do the job to the best or your ability.
In terms of safety systems on the bike there aren't really any, it is not like a modern car where you have airbags, ABS and reversing sensors. The only safety system a rider has is themselves, they have to know when it is safe and when it is not safe to do something.
In the event of the inevitable crash the safety system for the rider is for them to get as far away from the bike as possible. Most motorcycle racing injuries occur when the rider falls and are either hit by their own bike or by another rider. It is not a safe sport and it would be very difficult to build in any active or passive safety systems into the bike. Most of the technology is there to make the thing go fast.
Ease of work is another very important thing a race bike has to be capable of. It has to be easy to work on because you are generally doing things in a hurry.
In the middle of a session if you want to change wheels, or brake pads or even an engine, if you have an engine problem, you have to be able to take parts of the bike off and refit them easily.
It can take hours to take an engine out of a bike with all the nuts, bolts, wires, cables, electrics, hoses, oil and coolant. We can take an engine out of the race bike, from it being running - or not running if the case may be - put a new one in and have it running within 55 minutes. The most difficult part of it is holding on to the engine as it comes out, as it is always red hot!
Some Endurance racing teams can take an engine out, change a complete cylinder head, put it all back together and put it back in the bike in under an hour. So they are even faster than us.
