Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

n - -- - w hee l, not 40 percent - or 90 perce nt. I'm glad to report the w ho le system wasn't near ly as daunti ng as I'd expected. It works - I'm a believer! I'm also a superbeliever in the best piece of on-board electronics I've yet encountered on a modern GP motorcycle, and t hat's the Aprilia's backshifter manageme nt syste m, incorporating fully automa ted clutch operation offer ed in co njunction w ith the slippe r clutc h. This is brilliantly executed as well as feeling mechanica lly kind, unlike the similar but much less so phisticate d and more brutal system employed on the G5V-R Suzuki I rode at the start of the year. But the biggest com pariso n was with the M I Yamaha's electronically co ntrolled deceleration program, wh ich left me feeling the co mputer was in charge , not me , by the way I freewheeled into turn s on the brakes, as if on a twostroke with zero engine braking. What's more, on the Yamaha you still have to use the clutch to downshift, but you can't to uch the throttle while you're do ing so. That means that anyone used to racing four-strokes, and follow ing the habit of a lif etime by blipping the engine for downshifts, is a big ask. O n the Aprilia, it's eas ier not to do this, because unlike on the Yamaha you neve r touch the clutch lever, making the need for a carbon clutch somewhat moot, since you never use it at all either changing up or down thro ugh the gear box. Just back right off the throt tle, squeeze hard on the very e ffective Bre mb o carbon brake s (t he Aprilia's see med to work bett er and give mo re bite than the o nes on t he other Moto GP bikes I'd bee n testing earlier in the month; surely it can't be because of the R53's 10 pound lesser weight - can it?), and just lift your toe against the gear lever to hit a lowe r gear on the race-pattern gearchange. And again, at t he end of the long back str aight, and again, and again - all the 'Ap-:-;-'-:~~3 C:-'e -------------------'""A":'riJia RS ;::;--::: ub - while just squeezing on the brake lever and planning your corner en try speed , and line, as t he Aprilia brakes effortlessly and easily fro m 168 mph speeds w ithout any jerks or wheel chatter, while the engine note rises and falls all on its own as you work down thro ugh t he gears. It's w onderful. Eve ry bike should have o ne, and Valentino might want to make friends again with his mates in Aprilia Racing and be asking where t hey got this program from so he can tell Yamaha to stick it on the M I he'll be racing next seaso n. It's much better than the Ml's flawed equivalent , On e works, and the other doesn't. The Aprilia feels well balanced and is qu ite stable under heavy braking fro m high speed, and it doesn't chatter the back wheel at all under reverse torque . But if you get too excite d with the black brakes, it is possible to ge t the back wheel waving in the air even w ith the longer wheelbase the bike now has (to cut down on wheeli es). I pro bably could have countered this by using the thumb-operated back brake first, to counter we ight transfer, but I'll admit to being too busy focusing on where this mor e-or -less guided missile was taking me to wo rry abou t working out how to use the thumb lever. The only hiccup I encounte red was hitting a false neutral on four different laps, all in the same turn , Tio Pepe , where I'd go all t he way down to first gear for a hard dr ive out. That 's when I realized there was quite a lot of engine braking still left in the deceleration program - and w hen I didn't have the benefit of it, I was in trou ble heading for the grass when I hit a neutral instea d of one gear lower. The autocl utch program makes it really easy just to hook back a gear for a faste r turn and drive through effortlessly hard on the gas, holding a tighter line, thanks to the Apri lia's eagerness to do that unde r power. This is very far fro m be ing the unruly and remote -feeling rolling-Iaboratory-c um- two -wheeled-Formula I car I was expecting to have to cope w ith. Instead it has t he feeling of being a "rea l" moto rcycle , but with ge nuine adde d value o btained from re al-world app lied electronics-wi th-apurpose. However, backing off the throttle at any speed in a faster turn did give an impressio n of the front wheel wanting to tuck in - maybe a factor of we ight transfer, but still it felt rea dy to do so - so maybe I have an inkli ng of w hat Edwards and Haga were co mplaining of last seaso n. I guess this may be one of those motorcycles where it's only when you come to extract the last nths of performance that its downside beco mes apparent tho ugh talking to Byrn e after he'd lapped at just two-tenths of a seco nd slower than Edwards' best t ime in the Spanish GP back in May, he didn't have any major criticisms of the Cube . Well, apart from the chatter tha t he thought he could try to dial out on the suspens ion settings . For exiting the second-gear right sw eeper onto the Jerez back straight, where I crested the small rise cranked hard over and eager to get back on the throttle, the front w hee l wo uld lighten every lap as I piled on the revs. But it did feel co ntrollable, same as winding it up out of the last turn before the pits produced good drive and those controllable wheelies - not too excessive, just feeling the front wheel lighte n and the handle bars shake lazily w hile I stayed on the gas. At least I didn't have to back off to let the bike recove r, as I'd had to do with the Kawasaki. That's more than what happened after that, when I revved it right out every lap, once straightened up , and had to cope w ith fourth -gea r mega-wheel ies while rocketing down the straight to the sound of that gruff but incredibly muscularsounding mo to r. Magic. O kay, the Aprilia isn't as refined in feel as the Honda RC21 IV that sets the standard for the categ ory - but sure lyit's e ither eq ual to or better tha n all the rest , even including the Ducati? Th is was an unexpectedly impressive and enjoyable bike to ride. THE CONTENTS OF CUBE Unve iled at the Bologna Moto r Show in Dece mber, 200 I, by Aprilia owner lvano Beggio and the Italian firm's race boss Jan Witteveen , t he R53's (a.k.a. Cub e) DOHC t hree -cylinde r in-line 990cc engine was developed in conjuncti on with Cosworth in Britain, from the very beginning of the Aprilia MotoGP project in September, 2000 . The performance engine spec ialist had previously also assisted the Italians with R& D of t heir RSV I OOOSP V-twi n Superb ike - but it was Cosworth's experienc e in deve loping a series of Fo rmula I 40th Anniv"r....rll racing car e ngines down the years, culminating in t he curre nt pneu matic-valved Jaguar V-I 0 race motor, that led Witteveen to work w ith them again in producing the firm' s first four-stroke GP contender. "We chose a three-cylinder engine for several reasons," says 56-year-old Dutc hman Witteveen, Aprilia's race boss since 1989 and the architect of the com pany 's I3 world titles in the past de cade in the 125 and 250cc GP classes . "The first was that I was sure the Japanese wo uldn't make a triple, and it was impo rtan t for Aprilia to have something different from the others. I t hought most teams would make fo urcylinder bikes - the five-cylinder, I'll adm it I didn't expect! - so we wanted to stand out with our own distinctive engine format - and in o ur view, and apparently that of Honda , too , the MotoGP rules favor threeand five-cylinde r machines. Histo rically, the tri ple is more a European co ncep t - Triumph, MY, Laverda , etc. - and our motorcycle blen ds all the establi shed knowledge we've acqu ired in bo th Superbike and Grand Prix racing in recent years, em ploying typical Euro pean engine te chnology." Italian bike , Dutch engineer, British engine, Slovenian exhaust , Swedish suspension, Fre nch t ire s - where's the Euroland flag o n the fairing? "The second reason for choos ing the three is that we wanted to use the benefits of Formu la I tec hnology in deve loping an anyt hing-goes hi-tech power unit," contin ues Witteveen, "and a 990cc triple has a 330cc cylinde r capacity, w hich is very close to t he dimensions of a 3.5-liter V- I0 F I car. This way, I could use a lot of techn ology and parts fro m Formula I , which would save time in developing t he Apriliaengine things like piston s, con rods, bearings and of course - pneumatic valve o peratio n. This proved to be a correct decision, because the engine has been very re liable in spite of

• Cover