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/1207377
VOLUME 57 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 4, 2020 P115 can ride a sport bike, you could ride a MotoGP bike—although, of course, getting the most out of it requires very special talent and courage. But the machines are kissing cousins. In the same way, MotoGP is intrinsically intertwined with the industry, with the manufactur- ers' association even writing the technical regs. When Honda, Yamaha and company go racing, they make their own engines and chassis. And there is a clear cross-over between production and racing R&D. This is just one of the rea- sons why, at least to this writer and I suspect to all readers, motorcycle racing is so much more interesting, enjoyable and valuable than the up-its-own-arse world of F1. So, back to the two-stroke question. The F1 chat, prob- ably as much publicity stunt as sincere proposal, suggested supercharged two-stroke en- gines burning hydrogen. Forced induction bypasses the need to lubricate the crankshaft bearings along with the incoming combus- tion charge, and the consequent oil burn in the exhaust. Instead, they would emit water. And in sharp contrast to the challeng- ingly eco-friendly but rather deadly Formula E series, they would give fans a pleasingly traditional internal-combustion exhaust noise. But the relevance to motorcy- cling? Hmmm. Much as old-timers like me, along with a comprehensive cross-section of current MotoGP riders, hanker after the purity of the two-stroke racing of the past. The industry that supports motorcycle racing is not cov- ered with glory, for it was the big players—notably Honda and Yamaha—that conspired to drop 500cc two-strokes in favor of big four-strokes. This was entirely for marketing reasons. Street two-strokes—light, agile and exciting in the same way as their racing counterparts—had fallen out of favor with misguided green campaigners (the forerun- ners of those Australians who stopped traditional bush clear- ance and fire-breaks, and thus provided fuel for runaway bush fires). It was that visible exhaust smoke that killed them. Obliged to sell big four- strokes, the industry decided they ought to race them as well. A tragedy, really. Two-stroke engines are at least 100 times better suited to motorcycles, for all sorts of reasons. They are lighter, more compact, much simpler to manufacture and maintain, and their throttle response is like a light switch. Their valveless operation works acoustically, like a musical instrument, and as a result they respond to personal engineer- ing genius rather than roomful of computer boffins. Hence a lost generation of one-man race-team tuning geniuses, the Stradivariuses of their time. Most importantly, making a two-stroke requires much fewer components and hardly any of the polluting special metals and intensive hardening processes essential to a top-heavy twin-cam multi-valve four-stroke. A signifi- cant proportion of any vehicle's overall pollution comes during manufacture, and the more com- plex the engine the more that is true. At the time of the switch to MotoGP four-strokes in 2002, im- proved metallurgy, lubrication and electronics including fuel injection were already well advanced in ad- dressing the two-stroke exhaust- smoke problem. Supercharging was also on the menu, which entirely eliminates it. Continuing to race two-strokes would have accelerated develop- ment; modern sport bikes would have been lighter, more respon- sive and faster than the overly complex current offerings. And cheaper into the bargain. The problem with two-strokes, as Harald Bartol, one of those famous two-stroke tuners, ex- plained to me, is that "they smell of poor people." Headlines that suggest an imminent return to two-strokes for MotoGP, meanwhile, smell of fish. CN