Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eROAD RACE ; FIM deems twins lor 500cc GP racing Yoichi Oguma, director of HRC. and Grand Prix team owner Kenny Roberts have lots to talk about this year. Twins vs. four-cylinders By Michael ScOIl Photos by Henny Ray Abrams y 32 o u ca n decide for yo urselves whether the V-4 500cc racers you will see at Laguna Seca are the a po theos is of the raci ng mot orcycle, o r red unda nt dinosaurs too powerfu l fo r th eir ow n good. The q ua li ty of the race will no doubt infl ue nce your decision . If i t is a close four-way battle, lik e the j a panese G P, then you will find it hard not to take the former view. If, like too many races last seaso n, it is yet a no ther tedi ou s processio n wi th a ru na way winner, you will probably plump for the latter. Bu t if yo u are wi th the FIM , Switzerla nd- based go vern ing bod y of the sport , yo u will already have ma de u p your min d. T he curren t 500cc V4 race rs have o utlived their tim e, ru ns the accord in Geneva. T hey are too expe nsive, too rare, too powerful and too dangero us. On ly a handfu l of teams can raise the budget to lease them, on ly a handful of riders have the abi li ty to get -the best out of them ; a lot of the others cras h and ge t hurt. And as a result, the so-ca lled top class of racing has becom e too excl us ive to the po int of bor in g thespectatorsand enda ngering the development of TV co ntracts. T he class is in need of a drastic cha nge. In fact, you will find nobody in side raci ng who does not agree tha t someth in g needs to be don e. The facts speak for th em sel ves - entry lists of 20 or less bikes, wi th th e top works rid ers streets a hea d of the rest; and a situatio n wh ere riders of the caliber of Randy Mamola a nd Niall Mackenzi e are curre n tly o ut of work. Where op in ions di verge, very sharply, is on wh ere the ' solutio n lies. T he ' FIM has already spoken , with a radi cal plan to phase ou t th e exis ti ng four-cylinder machines a nd br in g in twin-cylinder bikes, on a program tha t sees the V-4s gradua lly penalized by weigh t a nd ot her restrictio ns un til they are fin all y pensioned off a t the end of - 1994. T his proposal came from the techni ca l co m missio n du rin g the winter, and was adop ted at the FIM's sp ri ng co ngress, a nd will no w go befor e th e manageme nt com mi ttee in june fo r ra tifica tio n. Un less th e powerful forces ra nged agai nst it can stop - and FIM vice-preside nt Francesco Zerbi said in Australia; " We are await in g the opi n io ns of the manufact urers - but if they don 't veto the idea, it will go a hea d." One effect of the proposal has been to close ra n ks a mo ng the o ther racing bodi es . . . IRTA, the teams' associatio n; ROPA, the circ u it ow ners' a nd race promot ers group; a nd even the manufacturers. For in stan ce, Honda a nd Yamaha have had mee ti ngs for the firs t time ever to discuss wha t should be done. T he curre nt 500cc racing esta blishment, not sur pris ing ly, is la rgely agai ns t the proposal s. After all, they represent the win ners in the ga me th e peo p le who did ma nage to fin d the bu dge t and the riders. The factories are also generally hostile, with the exceptio n of H onda. However, Ho nda 's posi tio n is shifti ng, and (as ever) their mot ives in giving a t least some support to th e twins are considered suspect by the o ther participants. The hostility to the idea of twins is largely based o n a desire (a need ) to pro tect a substantial investme nt not o nly in exis ting mach in es a nd technol ogy, but in Yamaha's case in a commitment to mak e V-4 YZR engines a vaila ble to o ther chassis man ufac turers a nd pri va te teams in the futu re. T h is pl an owes m uch to Ken ny Rob ert s, wh o ' has put mor e th an two years into findin g a way to pu t more bikes onto th e g rid, a nd a t o ne stage even pl anned to manufacture YZRco py engines o n his own account. T ypi cally , he was o u tspo ken a bo u t the FIM 's proposal. "T here's not much I can say. Ma ybe the FIM has bett er engi neers than the factories do. I'd on 't understand where this plan is comi ng from , an d where it's gon na help. "T ha t's not the probl em , and tha t's no t the so lutio n . T ell i ng a ll the factori es to sto p wh at they 're doing a nd make new eq uip me nt seems the worst th ing. Yamaha shows no interest in design ing a new product, Suzuki has Team owner Erv Kanemoto sees the problem as a monetary one. said no, a nd Cagiva doesn 't want it. Wh o does? " We already hav e the eq ui p ment, a nd we have the best show. Yam aha is ready to sell engines - th ey'll cost mu ch less th an'SIOO,OOO (the rumored figure). " It 's incredib le th at people say we wa nt mo re bikes, but nobody is putting a ny mo ney u p. Wh at we need is a leaseline motor for every team , a nd the FIM , IR T A and ROPA shou ld crea te a fund to help poorer teams," Rob erts sa id. Most people agree th at it would be not o nly feasib le but also technically in teresting to build a V-twin 500. The use of bigger cylinders ma y als o hav e some relevance to production en gineerin g, with two-stroke engines now a ttrac ting more interest for cars as well as mot orcycles. Nobod y believes it would be a great dea l cheaper to bu ild a V-tw in thana V-4, especially co nsi dering th e fresh costs of development that would be req uired. But th ey co uld noneth eless be chea per, through sim p le eco no m ies of scale, for the bikes cou ld be built in lar ger numbers, for sale to privateers, much more easily than cou ld a cu rre nt com p lex V-4. T his is especially th e case for H onda, wh ose V-4 is th e on ly o ne to use a si ngle cra n ksha ft. Corporate prid e prevents th em fro m switching to a twin-crank design as used by Yamaha, Suzu ki a nd Cagiva; but the problems of contai n ing more than 170 bhp in o ne lon g cra nkshaft are co nsidera ble - pa rt icula rly giv en Honda's consta nt aim of red uci ng fricti on by fitting the smallest possible bearings. Insider gossip is that th ere is as much as a 20-percent reject ra te a t the manufactu ring stage, and the sin gle crank means not on ly a fair few failures in act ion, but also that the engines need to go back to japan to be rebuilt, while the others can be done trackside, This is taken as one reason wh y Honda favors the twi ns, among other ideas; and a proposal from HRC last year to cu t the ca paci ty to 375cc and th e n umber of cyli nders to three was gr eeted wi th derision by their rivals, as a wa y for H onda to exploit their ex isting three-cy linder technology lead , acquired during the time of the V -3 N8. In an y case, Honda has softened their line since then, pos sibl y as a result of th eir ro und-table talks with Yamaha, and are now much more flex ibl e in pressing ' for a formula 'wh ich would find a way of making tw in s, tripl es a n d four -cylinder machin es co mpe ti ti ve with one . a nother. Mr. Yoichi O guma , . director o f HRC, said a t Suzuka: " We ar e not sticki ng to the idea of twins, but if we keep goi ng with fou r-cylinder engines , the power will sim ple carry on in creasin g , making th e bikes always harder to ride. We wo uld like to see fourcylinder machines restricted to a llo w three-cylinder or two-cylinder bikes to be co m peti tive. "We have to th ink ab out the cost of the machines and the ability to produce them . We ca n no t make production versi ons of our V-4 machine - but we kn ow from experience that we can do it with three cylinders, and we ar e inten sely interested in two cylinders from the technical point of view. " Bu t even if we put all Honda's resources and effort into a twin, we know it would not have equal potential to a four, and nobody would buy a triple or a twin if it cou ld not be co mpe titive. So if there is no restriction to the fours, we will not produce other designs. " We ha ve already had frank talks with Yamaha - although not with Suzuki. We favor a restriction on fuel ca paci ty; Yama ha a rev limiter. The is th e" first tim e we have had such talks, but from now on we will be in good con tact with Yamaha. "The FIM is al ways askin g us to make more bikes, and to make th em chea per. Now we would like th e FIM to co ns ider ou r problem s - that all the manufacturers are not in a good budget pos itio n. If Honda or Yamaha withdrew from racing for budget reasons, none of the others cou ld laugh, because th ey are in th e same position. "But the factories have a responsiblity to racing, and we cannot quit. " Maybe a twin-cylinder would cost more to develop, but if we cou ld make a production run, we would be able to recover the costs and sell or lease th e bik es mor e cheaply," Oguma said. Oguma bel ieves that a Honda twin would run the full 500cc ca paci ty allowed - but their longtime technical guru, th e now freelance Erv Kanemoto, is interested in finding a co m p ro m ise between power and weight, a nd favors a ca pacity of around 400cc. " Bigger th an that yo u'd be running into bad vibration problems, and you'd need to add weight and complexit y to the engi ne with balance sha fts," Kanemoto said. Kan em ot o, wh o cut his direct ties with HRC to become a titl e-winning team owner with Eddie Lawson in 1989 and with Luca Cadalora in the 250cc class this year, sees the problems very much in terms of the budgets

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