Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1119655
VOL. 56 ISSUE 20 MAY 21, 2019 P135 is that some tracks are inade- quately engineered and drained; another that climate change has become so severe that not even the best civil engineers could predict the consequences. The truth probably lies—not exactly halfway between the two but at a time when Extinction Rebellion protests are garnering headlines and massive support worldwide, more biased towards the latter. This is an unavoidably un- comfortable topic for fans of the internal combustion engine. When I say fans, I mean fanatics. Us. People so crazy about the sights and sounds that we don't just go racing or follow racing as a passing interest, we actually take it seriously. As if racing was important. It's not. It's just hedonism, hooliganism and howling hyste- ria. And none the worse for that, you might think. I've tried for years to convince myself that it had some more significant importance. The most compelling argument is that racing improves the breed, that stretching engineering by com- petitive endeavor will unearth valuable improvements in ef- ficiency in converting fossil fuels into speed and distance. That kind of used to be true, but it was a long time ago. Prob- ably most recently back at the start of the 1960s, when Pops Honda used competition to develop his engines and train his engineers, while the likes of Ya- maha and Suzuki did the same thing with two-strokes. Now the smoky old-strokers are dead, or at best dormant (more's the pity), while rev-hun- gry multi-valve engines and twin overhead camshafts have been everyday fare for years now. Ask any factory racing engineer what sort of benefit can be transferred from today's MotoGP bikes (which are at least conceptually similar to sports bikes), and he will smile wistfully. In design, metallurgy, lubrication and longevity, in spite of rules limiting quantities of fuel and numbers of engines over the year, there's really no crossover whatsoever. Racing, for the factories, is a combination of publicity exer- cise and the streak of hedonism ineradicable from their DNA. It's not racing that continues to refine modern automotive engi- neering, but electronics—wheth- er at design stage or in engine management programs. And, of course, in MotoGP, the electron- ics are hamstrung by regula- tions. Even when they weren't, they lagged behind production vehicles in all aspects with any relevance to real life. There are a few different ways to respond to these uncomfort- able facts. Climate-change denial is at the one extreme. It instead flies in the face of the evidence, but at the same time, scientifically speaking, we have a rather small sample from which to draw firm conclusions so you could convince yourself if you really wanted to. Self-flagellation is at the other, but that's not going to help any- one either. Somewhere in between lies a better course of action, but I have to say it's not immediately apparent. Only by stopping racing altogether could we make a real difference, or by running it in televised privacy because, in reality, it's the crowds and their transport arrangements along with the shipping and freight that make a more significant overall impact than the actually whizzing round and round. Right now, however, stopping is clearly not on. All that is left is to embrace MotoE, which got off to such a rocky start when all the bikes and equipment were razed to the ground by fire at their Jerez test in mid-March. It's hard to be enthusiastic, but they get going again in Germany, and we need to try to enjoy the silent spectacle. Because if nothing else, given the current relatively primitive stage of development of electric vehicles, it's just possible that racing them might make a real contribution. CN