Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

swingarm, which featured a revised Upper Pro-Link rear suspension layout aimed at improving traction, with an inverted link for the Showa shock mounted above the swingarm. This was shod with Michelin's ultra-grippy new-generation tires, including a new 16.S-inch front instead of the 17incher from before. Unlike Ducati, whose riders suffered in adjusting to the deepersection front rubber, Honda already had some practice in dialing in the chassis to do so, via the Singleton Bridgestone-equipped RC211Vof Makoto Tamada, which had run a 16.S-inch front from the start. Instead, it was the new, wider, much stickier rear Michelin that gave Honda such problems last season, promoting front end chatter for some riders, as its substantial extra side grip pushed the front tire on a bike setup for the smaller rear used in 2003. The extra grip delivered such increased traction that it pushed the front of the bike across the track in what amounted to incipient understeer, which the fatter contact patch of the new 16.Sinch front tried in vain to resist. A succession of three different chassis were develto try to counter this, each with difgeometry in an effort to try to make turn on the same radius - an which the now Yamaha-mounted had apparently speedily resolved his sweet-steering new bike's handialed in early on with the new rubber. This underlined the extent of arguably ~'s greatest disadvantage in losing RossI's services, namely his supreme develapment talents that had previously meant ...tItllt the RC211V was tailored to his ulrements, which in turn: a) allowed RC engineers to concentrate their R&D 111 a single direction, and b) resulted in a -pretty damn fine bike for the company's tve riders to race with. ~lICllll!ly HRC management's lack of the creative importance of ~butIon to the development "log in tum to the RC21 I V's shattering supremacy, which drove "II Italian to leave. And after the lIIld lack of focus in machine elllDl11l811,t that he appears to have left in e -judging by the handling problems that the six Honda riders all had to grapple with last year - you'd have to say he had a point. And, to make matters worse, Rossi thumbed his nose at them in the most effective way: by overturning Honda's MotoGP supremacy in a single year - well, arguably, in a Single race, given his Welkom win on his debut ride for Yamaha. Honda has often suffered with confused, misdirected chassis development in the past, when it didn't have a strong central figure - such as Freddie Spencer, Mick Doohan and Rossi - on the riding strength who knew exactly what he wanted and wasn't afraid to say when and why something didn't work. With a complex, hierarchical team structure that sees the works Repsol Honda squad supposedly at the leading edge in terms of receiving the fruits of HRC's R&D first, before the satellite Gresini and Pons teams' riders, it was left to the relatively inexperienced Nicky Hayden and the veteran Barros, a man who rides with his heart rather than his head, to head up development of the new V-five in the post-ROSSi era. Once he emerged as the man most likely to beat Rossi, these two were subsequently helped by Sete Gibernau - or not, if he decided he didn't want to depart from what he was used to, however flawed. And so Gibernau declined the availability of engine or chassis updates, as he did more than once last season. The difficulties this collective faced in countering the new RC21lV/Michelin package's handling problems were exacerbated by the bike's traditional lack of adjustment. Just as in the two-stroke era, with the NSRSOO, Honda's policy is to establish what it considers to be the "right" chassis geometry (partly using Japanese testers unable to match the cornering speed of the GP stars if they could, they'd be racing there themselves), then construct the race bikes according to these precepts, without leaVing any means of subsequent adjustment for such critical elements as the head angle or swingarm pivot height. Riders are just supposed to set up the suspension at each track, then go racing with what HRC gave them - which made the fact that the solution to the handling problem apparently consisted primarily of a new chassis with the swingarm pivot lifted Smm from Sachsenring onward, to enhance the effect of the chain pull, all the more frustrating. It would have been a 30-minute job to do this on the fully adjustable M I Yamaha, but a completely new chassis had to be constructed to even test the same settings on the Honda. QED. Honda mostly got away with this poliCY in the two-stroke era because of the joint excellence of its engine package and the development talents of its star rider, but in 2004, the chickens came home to roost, with the simultaneous loss of Rossi and Michelin's introduction of the troublesome new rubber. History will record that Gibernau gave his all but that Honda ended up second best, and the fact that in the final points table two riders from HRC's satellite teams (Gibernau and Max Biaggi) finished in front of Barros on the first of the full-factory Repsol team bikes, with Hayden on the second one down in eighth place, last of the six Hondas, underlines how topsy-turvy the whole Honda race structure has become. The Repsol bikes were the ones at our disposal for the test, though the bike that everyone wanted to sample was Gibernau's championship runner-up from Team Gresini's satellite operation, paint- ed in the colors of another Spanish sponsor, Telefanica. Politics? No, call it good business - but bad public relations. Anyway, while a Single five-lap session on one of Barros' bikes (we'd been promised a second session each on one of Nicky's, but for whatever reason this was canceled, and instead it just posed in pit lane for the cameras) might be just sufficient to get a taste of the uprated performance of the '04 V-five, even five times as many laps wouldn't have allowed any of us to detect the handling problems some Honda riders complained of this season. Because whether experienced journalist, former GP racer or hired current hotshot such as German Superbike star Michael Schulten, giving his verbal impressions to a writer from a compatriot magazine, none of us had the speed to take the Honda to the last 2 percent of a lap time, where the chattering problem starts to occur. So I'm afraid that, like all my colleagues, I'm not able to criticize the handling of this year's RC21 I V. except to say the bike as a whole feels more nervous than previous models, both of which were paragons of stability, where you could brake into a turn as if on tramlines, then power on out with the Honda holding a tight line with minimal wheelies, thanks to the long-ish I 440mm wheelbase, forwardweight distribution and rider-friendly traction-control program. However, though it doesn't have a particularly high rear ride height and thus feels quite balanced without too steep an effective head angle, this RC21 IV seems to turn in qUicker than before, and it's much easier to pick up for the exit of a turn than the Ducati GP4 I was riding three weeks earlier - though we had standard Michelins fitted for the test, therefore not the wider, new-for-'Q4 rear (another reason not to be able to decipher the dreaded chatter), which would presumably ---'""". have made the steering heavier. As tested, though, the Honda was less good at turning from side to side. especially In comparison to the faster- The RC211V continued to win races in 2004, but without Valentino Rossi at the helm it wasn't able to secure the rider's World Championship' though it did capture the Manufacturers' title. CYCLE NEWS • FEBRUARY 16, 2005

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