Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Cycle News 2005 02 23

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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By IN THE PADDOCK MICHAEL SCOTT Back To Normal hat's a bit more like it. The second round of MotoGP tests at Sepang in Malaysia seem to have set things straighter. Ducati may have dominated the previous round, being the first serious players out of the garage with their 2005 model. But Honda was still fiddling with their old bike at the time. Bring out the new one, and they take the top three positions. And Rossi, meanwhile, fourth fastest, is still waiting for the racing to start. These preseason tests mean little more than checking and verifying obvious and almost eternal truths ... that, for example, Honda's V5 remains the best package out there, four years on; or that Suzuki has improved again ... but so have all the others, by at least the same amount. Just because these things come around year after year doesn't mean they might not change. That's why they have to be checked. And it's also nice to have my predictions about Tamada proving accurate. He was fastest at Sepang, in spite of suffering (as did Rossi) from a virus that left the happy Japanese rider somewhat below his best. He'll have to do a whole lot more, but I retain the suspicion that he is the only Honda rider who seriously believes he is better than Rossi. Right or wrong, this belief is an essential starting point. Much more significant was the growler noise coming from those in the Kawasaki pit. They've been muttering rather unconvincingly for a while now about the need to follow Yamaha's MI "big bang" lead, in order to make their otherwise unfashionable in-line four competitive. For some reason, not everybody took them seriously - but the new engine was there at Sepang, and it elicited the usual comments, familiar from Yamaha riders last year, and from the first of the "big bang" bikes back in the two-stroke days. Although the motor was still very new, and the final configuration not yet decided, Shinya Nakano said it was already easier to ride the bike, more stable and better out of the corners. Cue drum roll. This effect is remarked upon by all who ride "big bang" bikes and is a property naturally occurring in V engines, and artificially induced in the MI and Kawasaki. Which thus become virtual V-twins. An admirable example of literally offbeat T thinking in Yamaha's ideas department. Countless words have been expended in discussing this but, rather surprisingly, nobody is quite sure exactly why an engine with nominally the same amount of power can put more of it down on the road if the firing intervals are irregular. It clearly has something to do with having overlapping power strokes, as well as extended intervals between power strokes. But it remains the subject of much debate, and not even the tire boffins can explain the details of what's happening. By the way, it is wrong to say that this or the Yamaha before it has a "changed firing order," although the description is nearly universal. Last year, Proton and looking at another big jump toward being truly competitive with the major teams. But the significance goes beyond the immediate prospects of riders Nakano and Alex Hofmann, and their Germanbased team. In all forms of racing governed by engine capacity, one type of engine will come to prevail. It will be the right thing to have, for a period of time anyway. In the 500cc class, V4s were it for a long time, until their demise in 2002, and in spite of efforts by Kenny Roberts' Protons to prove otherwise. In Formula One car racing it's a VIO. Superbikes are still debating the issue, but they're led by what's available in the showrooms. We're talking about pure prototypes a vee). This gives different areas for engineers and riders to work in. There are other issues, about length of crankshaft, but again these are imperfectly understood. Plenty still to be found out. MotoGP has another way of delaying ultimate technical stagnation: by having moving goalposts. As well as this year's 22-liter (5.72 gallon) fuel tanks, two liters (.52 gallons) down on last, an even bigger change comes into effect in 2007, with a reduction from 990cc to 900cc engine displa.cement. This might easily be enough to readjust the parameters once again promising yet more technical adventure on the way toward the ultimate truth. It all makes MotoGP racing more interesting and more of a technical proving UJ en § .. o ~-,--g ~ § . J:: ;KaWasaki busted out their "big bang" ·ZXRR at Sepang. Suzuki did change the firing orders of their motors, V5 and V4 respectively; Honda's V5 might also have done so at some point. But the in-line four firing order remains the same: 1-3-4-2. It is only the firing intervals that are changed by changing the crankshaft timing. Not that pedantic terminology really matters, when the green light goes. If Kawasaki is as successful with their attempts as Yamaha, then they could be here, and inevitably MotoGP bikes will eventually all go the same way. The clever virtual V4 design means that Yamaha and now Kawasaki have delayed this process, by blurring the edges between the in-line and V engines. Since both can express their power in the same way, the differences are purely physical, and an in-line engine gains some advantage - more compact and potentially lighter (only two camshafts, vs. four on ground. It's an expensive way to go racing, but at least you come away having learned something. Then again, as with the lap times from early preseason tests, don't get carried away here. After all, it's only a few months since Rossi demonstrated once again, on a Yamaha fully 15mph slower than the Hondas and Ducatis, that in motorcycle racing the man matters more than the machine. eN CYCLE NEWS • FEBRUARY 23,2005 83

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