Perhaps many people don't know exactly what Alstare does and that's not entirely surprising as the truth is that Alstare's profile on the racetrack is only part of a bigger picture. Without a doubt, Alstare's workshops are amongst the best in the business and in addition to being the home of our race team, they are also fitted out with the kind of equipment and machinery an engineer would drool over.

Consider the new triple clamps of the bikes Max Neukirchner will use in the 2008 Superbike World Championship. Alstare are renowned for their innovation and always strive to provide the best materials for the job, so they decided that they would make these triple clamps themselves. And who better for this difficult task then Vincent Bailly - engineer extraordinaire! Making such high-tech and top-quality items is not easy and the whole process started with Vincent producing the designs. It took two days to finalise the right design, tune and prepare the part and then over ten hours to cut just one triple clamp from a billet of raw material, 300mm x120mm x 70mm.

Before he started the project, Vincent had to make a crucial decision as to which material to use - aluminium or magnesium. "Aluminium is more sturdy, less expensive (than magnesium) and easier to work with, but is more heavy, " he said. "but the biggest problem with magnesium is its tendency to burn and explode while you are working with it! So we decided to go with aluminium!"

Whilst a triple clamp may not be the most glamourous item on a racebike, it’s there to do a job and do it well. When Max throws his leg over his bike with its new triple clamp he will immediately see the fruits of many hours labour and innovation - proof of Alstare's unflinching desire to be the best.