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 MICHAEL IN "HE PADDOCK Scon Predictability Is Okay otorcycle racing is no longer a sport in isolation. Television coverage has gained it wide acceptance; it has to be seen as a part of a panoply of motorsports. MotoGP racing is no longer a game for amiable bike nuts, steeped in technology and exclusive pleasure, shared only by the cognoscenti. It still is that, and still the biggest game in town. But it is so much else more besides. The expansion has brought with it an inevitable dumbing-down. Here's an example: At Motegi last year, HRC released details of their variable-rate throttle control, operated by a servodriven differential within the linkage. As an engineering solution, it was, frankly, gorgeous - elegant, economical, highly adaptable, fail-safe. It was impossible not to be excited about a concept that wasn't necessarily easy to understand at first Sight. It reqUired some discussion, and a few diagrams. Motorcycle talk. Which was met with scorn from the assembled BBC, still at that stage a relatively small blue-shirted sort of friendly raiding party. "You must be fun at dinner parties," quoth one, witheringly. This was in the media center, and there is a thunderbolt of meaning here... that having a technical interest and appreciation somehow damages or detracts from one's appreciation of motorcycle racing. Eh? I always thought it was part and parcel of the whole thing. The BBC now attends the tracks with a small army and big vehicles. They are, of course, hugely welcome. The corporation's importance in what was until a couple of years ago a fading British market is inestimable. And the BBC's live coverage of MotoGP on the mainest of main-stream terrestriallY is pitched big. Which is only what the sport deserves, obviously. As the cognoscenti have always known. They play it big for one trenchant reason: because their major rivals, the commercial ITY, a few years ago snatched F I car racing from the BBC, winning a bidding war, and paying dearly for the privilege. MotoGP is cheap and cheerful by comparison with F I, but it also has the major advantage of being very much better as action TY, as a way to fill the small screen. This is not only because our heroes actually overtake one another during races. It's also the sheer humanity of the spectacle. F I cars have wings sticking out; MotoGP bikes have arms, legs and heads. In this context, it's easier to see why tech-heads attract such mighty scorn. They're irrelevant. It's all irrelevant to the M vast new audience. They couldn't care less about Honda's differential-controlled throttle mechanism. They couldn't care much about the bikes at all. Like FI cars, they bear little relationship with the average viewer's daily life. They're just there, like cricket bats or tennis rackets, to enable the action. In this way, the amiability of success has hijacked the heart of the sport. Which is the way of the world, and we have to learn to live with it. Motorcycle racing has to find a new way of looking at itself, in a new and much broader context. For one thing, it has to look at other motorsports, and consider what they do right and wrong. One example could be in the way regulations can have a profound effect on results. In World Superbike racing, they introduced control one-make tires last year - Pirellis, as it happens. The effect was to depress lap times, but was wholly beneficial in another area. Races became closer, and the results less predictable. Troy Corser's current run of domination has been exceptional. FI racing is (like MotoGP) a battleground between Michelin and Bridgestone, but with the whole thing overlain with new-this-year technical regulations that have had a similar effect to control tires, but more so. Among other rules radicaily curtailing engine swaps and rebuilds, drivers must now qualify and then complete the race on the same set of tires. At a stroke, what had been a Ferrari/Michael Schumacher walkover was turned upside down. Now, almost anyone could win. Sounds great, doesn't it? Makes MotoGP results look somewhat austere. In the premier championship, right now only Valentino Rossi wins time and again. He bestrides the sport, and the results. Of course, to those paying close attention, this is anything but sterile, because there is a technical aspect: Rossi's bike is not especially fast, but he still manages to win. This is by pure racing talent. His manner of doing so is perpetually fascinating. Still, you can see how those of shallower interest might frame an argument, that the racing would be better if there were some unexpected faces up at the top every week. Control tires would be one step toward this - dumbing-down technical rules likewise. Perhaps an F I-like stipulation might be introduced, that engines must complete a certain number of races before being changed. They'd have to tune them down to increase safety margins, which would in turn narrow the performance differences. And after a bit more fiddling, then almost anyone could win. This would be disastrous. Predictability in racing is nothing new in racing. It's always been that way; there's always tended to be a dominant rider and/or a dominant machine. That's why the glory years of Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, et ai, really were a golden age, because even having two such talented riders at one time is exceptional, and back then there were a handful of others, too. Happily, we expect to hear soon - perhaps at Mugello for the Italian GP - confirmation that MotoGP is ignoring all this and going its own sweet way. Which it the path chosen for it by Honda - of smaller-capacity engines leading inevitably to higher states of engine tune and increasingly sophisticated engine-management electronics. In spite of the latter, screaming 750 or BOOcc full-race prototypes, with pneumatic valve springs, rewing on toward 20,000 rpm will as inevitably be harder to ride to the limit. Moving back toward the old two-stroke days. This may be punishing in some ways, especially to Honda's less well-heeled and electronically advanced rivals. But it will reinforce one single aspect - that the pinnacle of motorcycle racing is a class that demands the maximum of its riders. Only the very finest will be able to get the best out of these bikes. Especially over full race distance. Predictability? It is the handmaiden of exceptional excellence. Which is, in the end, what the senior World Championships should be all about. eN CYCLE NEWS • JUNE 8, 2005 95