Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

··:IN·T E A D C ' H ·P D O K BYMicba81 Scott '.>:' ~< , .: > ' aybeit's just the time of year - the fallow period when the days are short, the nights cold and the thrills of last season recede be fore those of the next come into view. Yet a feeling of gloo m about th e premier class of Grand Prix racing is very hard to shake off, in spite of outward evid ence of its much-improved general health since the IRTA/Ecclestone/Doma takeover. The summit of two-wheel sport begins 1994 exposed and precarious on a lonely pinnacle, from w hich time and circ umstances ha ve strip ped a n umber of su pporting buttresses. This is the result of a series o f blows during 1993, ranging from th e wi thdrawal of ma jor sponsor Rothmans to superst ar Wayn e Rainey' s crippling crash. Rainey of course is irreplaceable; meanwhile we still awai t news that Honda has found a wo rthwhil e replacement. Ther e were many other things besides, including the worrying arms- length withdrawal by Fl mogul Bernie Ecclestone, who sold his interest to his partner Doma (the Spanish TV concern) after only one season with the spo rt. Then came a fresh shock - the unexpected cancellation of the domesti c, bu t high-level, All-Japan 500cc class, to be replaced at once by the now ubiquito us stre et-bike -based su p erbike class. The kill in g off of Grand Prix 500s at home in Ja pa n cou ld 'prove a crippling blow to the very existence of the top class of motorcycle. It was not only un expected, but also curiously timed. (To fu rthe r the inscrutability of the decision, the Japanese federation has suggested they ma y bring back the SODs in 1996). And though it came after a year with as few as nin e ride rs in some races (the entire championship hanging completely on the support of the factories), the All-Japan class was already close to grasping the same li feline that had res tored numbers to the GP grid s, with Yamaha sub-contractor Roc all geared up to provide privateer bi kes to swell the midfield ranks. Instead, the feisty V-four 500s- mastery of which is racing's ultimate challenge now exist for GPs only, while the top national Japanese riders fall in line with the rest of the world on superbikes. There is no longer any training ground where . would-be masters can learn the art. Given all that has gone before, this appears to be like another nail in the coffin of the 500 class. Even looking on the bright side, it puts World Championship racing firmly at the crossroads. And it yet again poses the recurring question: Do the purebred 500cc GP machines - the apotheosis of high-performance motorcycle engineering - belong in a real world where fourstrokes are entirely dominant? M 25 YEARS AGO March 4,1969... W 48 ill iam M. Bagnall was re-elected as pres id en t o f the A m eri ca n Mo torcyclist ~1 Association, which boast- ,.J ed 105,000 members...Bill ~..::.:: Onga scored the overall win in the Elsin o re Grand Prix, h eld th ro u gh and around the city of Elsinore in so u th ern California. Larry Roese ler finished second in th e 100cc Novice clas s on his Sachs ... Th e 1968 Southwest Motorcycle Racing Association's point standin gs for the 1968 season saw Bennie Campbell scoring the most points over Mike Kidd . Jim Schwantz finished in a tie for sixth, with Daryl Hurst end ing the season seventh...The Cow Palace Ind oor Short . The question has many answers. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes and No again and again. It all depends on wh o is asking, and why. Political m ach inatio ns aside, th e only replies that matter are those of the three Japanese and one European manufactu rer who currently sup port the 500cc class. The Japanese gro u p - Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki - formerly had the well-publicized All-Japan series, but now hand -build their sta te-of-the-art masterpieces only for GPs. Even within a factory, the answers are varied. From the point of view of pure engine research, the ans we r is a qualified yes. But this would only be really true if there were no restri ctive techn ical rules at all. Instead, a very rigid framework has dic tated the engine design of the moment. Limits on cubic capacity and number of cyli nders and gears, and a ban on any form of forced induction, have put the ball firmly in the court of the V-four two-stroke, as clearly shown back in the 70s by Honda's brave bu t badly beaten four -stroke oval -piston NSR. This has given the participating facto ries a stran gleho ld on a very narrow aspect of engine technology: the high-perform ance two-stroke, an engine type that has long sin ce fallen from favor in any othe r au to motive area. On the road, in every class of vehicle th is side of roadtrains, the upperm ost performance levels are the exclusive p~rve of four-strokes. Ho we ver , something important happened in 1993. Honda added to the package the firs t worthwhile electronic fu el injection sys tem . The other factories will surely follow suit, particularly in a bid to resto re power lost in complying wit h the new 1994 low-lead fuel regulations. Thus Honda, in particular, and motorcycle firms in general, will become the repository of all knowledge in an area that has suddenly become rele vant again. The re are stro ng signs tha t the two-stroke engine is about to make a major comeback on four wheels, in a relatively low-performance, fuel-injected form . If the bike industry already knows the way to unlock higher p erf ormance, then it will be in a position to score a major engineering coup. This may be the saving grace of the current generation of sup erfast two-str okers. But it ma y have come too late to secure their racing future. Consider the position of the factories. Whil e a big chief with a bent for racing as a prom otional and inspirational tool (Soichiro Honda, found er of an empire, was one) might su pp ort th e continued existence of th ese o ther wise totally irrelevant vehicles, the company accountant ma y come to a different conclusion. He has to balance the books, and to offset assets and liabilities: to measure the sheer cost of the racing effort against what might be achieved by funding more free-form research; to weigh up the risks of publicity on race results against advertis- ing and other more predictable wa ys of spending promotional budgets; to gauge the value of uncertain TV air time and the p re stige of a p ossib le Wo rl d Champ ionship win against the h uge expense of mounting the attack. These are elements of a complex equation tha t must always be finel y ba lanced, and thus can, by definition, slip one way or the other with only a small amo un t of outside interference. So far, the facto ries have fo und the equation tipping towards the affirmative side, with one notable exception. Kawasaki has long held that a GP 500 is too differen t fro m their road bikes to be of any value (this decision came in the 1970s after a failed attempt at competing head-on ). The others have all felt it wort hw hile to contin ue, bu t the decision has been margina l in the case of Yamaha, and even more so for Cagiva. The ot her aspect is entirely po litical, wh ere the 500 class has for sev eral years been a point of conflict, a prime target, and a pawn in the game. Indeed, the attempt by FIM's road-race commission boss Jo Zegwaard to finish off the two-strokes (to be replaced by 600cc four-stro kes) in 1989 was a sig nificant trigger to the IRTA / Ecclestone/Dom a takeover of racing from the FIM at the end of 1991. Zegwaard has since been dis cre dited and d ism issed (over a financial scandal concerning World Superbikes), but the hi-jack faction's enmity with the FIM has hard ly abated, and the World Championship fo u nders h av e been reduced to little more tha n a figurehead role within the new series. It is hard ly surp rising that the FIM, through its na tiona l federati ons , has proceeded to drop the 500 class from National Championships her e, th er e and everywhere, wi th the All-Jap an series merely . the las t remai ning victim; also from the European cham pionship s, hithe rto a proving gro und for would-be GP riders. In this, the FIM bosses can innocentl y declare that they are merely followin g the lead set by the AMA, and making racing cheape r and more accessible. But who can say for sure that there is not a desire for rev enge as well. The result is now the complete isolation of the 500 GP bikes, and the present worries about their future. In the short term , the immediate state of the 500cc grid , even with the hole left by the loss of Rainey, is very healthy. Userfriendly big-bang engine power combined with imp roving tire technolo g y has opened the doo r to a new gen erat ion of riders who have graduated to 500s via the 250 class - not a good rou te in recent years, when a dirt-track style was better suited to wheelspinning beast-bikes with narrow power bands and tires that wouldn't last the rac e. Meanwhile, Cagiva has finall y pulled off its first d ry weather race win in more than a decade of try ing to beat the Japanese at their own gam e. Track in San Franci sco, California, was won by Mark Brelsford over Dick Mann and Ralph Waldeman... Race Series in Venezuela ...Dirt tracker Tommy Rockwood d ied of a self-inflicted gu n-shot wound in southern Califor nia ...Bengt Aberg, th e two-ti me 500cc MX World Champion, signed a contract with Maico.. . M ike Han non w on th e opening ro un d of the AMA Na tional Ch am p ionship Enduro Ser ies in Red Mo u n tain, California, topping Dic k Burleson. Dan ny Chandler, Brian Mye rscough and G oet Brek er w rapped u p the 250, 125 and 500cc Golden Sta te MX Championships, respectively in Huron, Califomia..."What I am doing is promoting th e image of the Army and mysel f. But at the same time, I believe I am also p romoting th e image of motorcycling," Mike Kidd said in an interview in Cycle News. Kidd had secu red the U.S. Army as a sp onsor for his dirt track racing program... • 15 YEARS AGO February 28, 1979... orld Champion Kenny Rob erts su ffere d a fra ctured 12th vertebrae, a co m p resse d 11 th vertebrae and a ru ptured sp le en a ft e r " crashing hi s n e w ... . Yamaha 500cc GP bike at the Yam aha test track in Iwata City, Japa n. Yamaha announced that Roberts w ould be replaced at Daytona by Skip Aksland and that he would also miss the opening round of the World Championship Road W The privateer level has seldom be en bett er, with a strong group of Roc and Harris-e quip p ed riders w h o ca n ea rn enoug h th rough th e new prize-money structure to make a season pay, given reasonable luck. Gr ids are full; the racing is excellent. But all this amo unts to nothing if the supply of bikes dries up. The 500 class h as never been so much alo ne, and wh ether it can remain so for much longer is the burning question of the hour. This leads to another question that may be even harder to answer: With what shall the 500 GP bikes be replaced? Superbikes is the obvious answer - bu t these fail on several coun ts. Firstly, on expense - a fourstroke engine is much more complex than a two-stroke, with many times more moving parts. Economies of scale can help in the construction of road bikes, and thence for racers based on them. But let the technology move only a little furth er from its road-bike origins, and closer to creating works specials and things rap idly become mu ch more expe nsive - likewise in terms of service life. Tuned to GP levels, as HRC bosses told me in d iscussions durin g 1993, they w oul d expect to run two or three eng ine replacements at each meeting. The rebuil ds in between would consume service parts and highly skilled manpower in a way qu ite unknown to operatives of two-strokes, demanding a greater, rath er than lesser, financial commitment from the factories, and re-ope ning the gap between privateers and works teams. A second problem is si mply performance. A scan of lap times at comparable tracks during 1993 shows that a superbike is closer to a 250 than a 500. At Misano, the superb ike lap record was fracti onally faster than tha t of the 250s - 95.027 mph against 94.820, with the 500s ru nn ing at 96.321. Sim ilar figures were ob tained at Assen (Supe rbike / 250/5OO: 107.604mph / 106.5B 6mph/ ll0.519), whil e at Brno and Donington Par k th e 250s were actuall y qu icker than th e 750cc four-strokes. It would clearly be ludicrous to have the socall ed top class of raci ng going sl ower than the 250 juni ors. Then again, the 250 were com ing ve ry clo se to th e 500 lap times at som e of '93's twistier tracks, like Jerez. At high-speed circuits like Hockenheirn and Salzburg, though, there's still nothing on two wheels that can tou ch a Vfour5OO. In 1994, the arrival of a direct challenge to the fou r-cylind er 500s comes from within racing, in the form of Loris Reggiani's V-twin 400cc Aprilia. Perhaps in this wa y evolution w ill su pp ly the final an swer, with a natural ta keover by th e "su pe r250s" that will, if nothin g else, rob the supposed top class of racing of a great deal of specta cle. Enjoy the mighty V-fours while you can - w e ma y soo n never see th eir like a again. 5YEARSAGO February 22, 1989... R ick Johnson w on his fou rth straight A MA /Camel Supercross Series event with a ru naway victory at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Dieg o, California. Johnson beat Jeff Sta nton an d Damon Bradshaw. The 125cc w in we nt to Jeff M a ti asevich ov er M ichael Cra ig and Mike LaRocc o. Larry Roe seler won the Ad elanto Gra n d Prix, b eattin g Scott Stearns and Kenji Gauthie r. Wayne Rainey was the qu ickest of the pre-season testers at the Phillip Island race track in Australia . Both Rainey a nd Kevin Schwantz clicked off laps in the mid 1:35s in preparation for the opening round of a the series in Suzuka City, Japan...

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