VOLUME 57 ISSUE 16 APRIL 21, 2020 P103
It is not the letter of the law that matters,
but the gaps between the words.
cated aluminium beam became
the norm. KTM are the heretics,
with steel tubes, but the real
wacky racers emanating from
France under the name Elf—with
various wishbone or single-link
front ends—merely reinforced
conventional thinking by their
conspicuous failure to improve
upon it.
Most of these (tire develop-
ment apart) were plainly race-fo-
cused, with little relevance to the
road. Unlike Yamaha's "pioneer-
ing" monoshock rear suspension
(in fact, the Stevenage-made
Vincent had been the true
pioneers, making essentially the
same thing from the late 1920s).
Rising-rate rear linkages later
migrated over from motocross.
Modern-era electronic innova-
tions have been of the greatest
significance, only to be strictly
stamped down to one-size-fits-all
conformity by control hardware
and software. In consequence,
street bike electronics are in
many ways more advanced and
adventurous.
Tires, likewise, are standard-
ized, while brake materials are
as limited as are exotic metals
inside the engine. Along with
any development of automatic or
twin-shift transmissions.
With modern ring-fencing in
place, any genuine innovations
are to be seriously respected.
Honda came out of the blue
with Big Bang firing intervals in
1992 (please, not firing order—
that's something different), the
principle was twisted into a new
shape by Yamaha's cross-plane
crankshaft of 2004, and is now
universal in MotoGP.
Honda also pioneered a
truly original seamless-shift gear
system in 2011, while Honda's
990cc V5 was also fully original
(the same company's oval pis-
tons of the NR500 weren't such
a good idea).
Of the above innovations, a
large proportion have been ef-
fectively banned. Cylinder num-
bers are locked down at four,
electronics and tires all identical,
brake and engine synthetic ma-
terials also have specified limits.
All credit to Ducati, whose
engineering chief Gigi Dall'Igna's
game of hide-and-seek with the
rule makers continues to provide
both speed and amusement.
He got away with their under-
swingarm winglet by calling it
a tire cooler. Protests by rival
factories failed.
Now there's more lateral
thinking with their launch- and
now turning-control suspension
adjustment, lowering the rear
to adjust the overall geometry,
firstly to reduce wheelies and
secondly to improve mid-corner
responses. This neatly sidesteps
the ban on electronic suspen-
sion by being manually con-
trolled.
But in the end, the regulations
generally win. Two major ex-
amples prove the point. Perhaps
the greatest innovation of all time
was MZ's development of the
high-performance two-stroke.
The subsequent regulatory elimi-
nation of two-strokes stopped
development of the ideal mo-
torcycle engine. The other
victory over innovation, back in
the 1950s, was the banning of
all-enveloping dustbin fairing.
By specifying an exposed front
wheel, motorcycle aerodynamics
suffered a major setback from
which they have still not recov-
ered.
So, in a way, organization
actually inspires innovation. Just
within limits.
Perhaps another more clichéd
motto applies. "You Don't Have
To Be Crazy To Work Here, But
It Helps." CN
