Michael Scott | November 20, 2024
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Racing Restrains the Breed
With the dust still settling, it is time to celebrate the end of an epic season of racing, and congratulate the champion of motorcycle grand prix’ 76th year. (And the 23rd year, by the way, since it was re-named MotoGP, when 500cc screamers were supplanted by big four-strokes.)
And time maybe to wonder, just what has it all been for? What has grand prix racing done for motorcycles and for motorcyclists?
To ask the same question differently: have you installed ground-effect fairing or swingarm add-ons to your commuter scoot yet? And has this improved your motorcycling experience?
First, let’s acknowledge the human side. Top-level bike racing, like any high-end sporting endeavor, whether on wheels or not, has an important role. It gives inspiration and creates heroes. People need heroes, and need things we can aspire to. We need paragons of skill. In this way, MotoGP can lift the spirit, and the importance should not be underestimated.
Some ask: Does MotoGP technology trickle down to the production motorcycle anymore?
But technically? Looking at the bikes on the track compared with those serving customers in the real world, the gap is huge. Maybe MotoGP has lost its way in the past five or 10 years. As Fabio Quartararo commented recently: “They don’t even look like motorbikes anymore.”
The close relationship between grand prix bikes and top-level sports bikes has (with a few exceptions, like Moto Guzzi’s fanciful V8) always been one of the pleasures. This is why bike racing has a more realistic appeal than Formula One. Unlike F1 cars, GP bikes are essentially just stripped-down and pumped-up versions of street bikes. Or used to be.
And there was plenty of cross-pollination. As engine, chassis, suspension and tire technologies were driven forward by racing, so they were passed to the production department. Racing, so it seemed, improved the breed.
But if this was true in motorcycling’s early days, is it still true now?
In fact, technical development in racing has always been hemmed in by technical regulations. Ducati’s signal success has been fueled by finding clever ways around the rules, rather than pure science. Like the now-universal “spoon” scoop under the swingarm ahead of the rear wheel, which circumvented aerodynamic rules by being dubbed a tire-cooling device, which just happened to add downforce as a happy adjunct.
Looking back, there are cases where the rules have actively hindered potential improvements.
For example, full-enclosure “dustbin” fairings were banned in the 1950s because of safety fears concerning too-flimsy construction and dangerous behavior in crosswinds. They became the dustbins of history.
In fact, full fairings properly constructed and designed in wind tunnels offered significant performance benefits, not to mention weather protection, of significant value on the road as well as track.
In their place, so-called dolphin fairings, exposing the front wheel, took over in racing. And on the road. For reasons of fashion, not efficiency.
Regulations also restricted experiments. A few years ago, the late Steve Harris—chassis designer and constructor of Harris-Yamahas, under license to the factory—spoke passionately to me about the potential of a feet-forward semi-reclining design for a racing bike. He might not have been correct, but racing rules prevent any chance of trying to find out.
Arguably, instead of driving street-bike design forward, racing has actually held it back.
So, we come to the current generation of GP bikes: bulging be-winged monsters, with drooping mustaches, serried ranks of tail fins and carbon-fiber appendages on front forks, mudguards and even swingarms.
Which, obviously, have been imitated in the styling departments from Bologna to Berlin, via Hamamatsu and Tokyo. And Beijing.
Aerodynamics do make a difference. Even at everyday speeds, low drag helps fuel consumption. But when you are looking at downforce, you have to go fast for it to be very significant, drag increasing, as we all know, with the square of the speed.
So, we come to the current generation of GP bikes: bulging be-winged monsters, with drooping mustaches, serried ranks of tail fins and carbon-fiber appendages on front forks, mudguards and even swingarms.
As for the various ground-effect modules—bulges and downwash ducts. They obviously work on track. But only when you are at 60 degrees of lean angle. Of which, it shouldn’t be necessary to say: Don’t try this at home. Or the main ground effect you’ll experience will be abrasions and road rash after falling off.
Okay, there may be some application for these racing-speed add-ons on a track-day bike, where the speeds and lean angles make it relevant. And maybe in the fashion-parlor bike park, as a one-up gesture to a customized bobber or overdressed cruiser. Not so much out on the road, where speed guns are meant not to celebrate impressive top speeds but to slow you down.
Ah well, racing was never meant to be exactly sane, was it. Nor was motorcycling, come to that. So perhaps we should celebrate the madness, enjoy the Wacky Racers wings and look forward to more of it next season. CN
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