VOLUME 58 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2, 2021 P101
the sidecars.
Sadly, or otherwise, the three-
wheelers have long since been
condemned to the outer dark-
ness occupied by endurance
racing and other non-Dorna
variations.
But there is a substitute.
Superbikes. And, hence the late-
January test sessions at Jerez.
Testing the water for the rest of
racing.
Sadly, "testing the water"
turned out rather too literal, at
the first attempt anyway. Two
planned days were washed out
and cancelled on the spot to
avoid using up an allocation of
just 10 days of private testing per
team.
For MotoGP, the notion of
using Superbikes as test dum-
mies goes a little further than
just me trying to lift the gloom by
being facetious. Honda had test
rider Stefan Bradl along to take
advantage of the track time, with
an updated RC213V MotoGP
bike for some early gallops. He
even managed to get a handful
of laps in.
Eager for any news, observ-
ers spied a beefier carbon
swingarm and rear frame mem-
bers. Though without vernier-
calibrated measuring equip-
ment, it is hard to see by just
how much, from the gallery of
pictures on the Italian GPOne
website. Chassis stiffness being
a somewhat subtle art not readily
revealed to the naked eye.
Thanks to cost-saving restric-
tions triggered by Covid, Mo-
toGP development has mainly
been frozen, aside from chassis
mods and a permitted bodywork
upgrade. So, detail changes will
have to suffice.
And, just at present, specula-
tion likewise.
This pre-season period should
be marked by growing excite-
ment, and it is right to feel the
same at present. It's that "any-
thing is possible" period. Even
that Aprilia will smoke them.
But it is also hard not to feel
trepidation. The trials facing
MotoGP, like those facing the
world at large, are without doubt
game changers—and sending
out the Superbikes to pave the
way is no long-term solution.
Most especially since the breed
of superfast road bikes on which
the class is based must them-
selves be considered as increas-
ingly threatened and irrelevant
dinosaurs.
If motorbike racing is to have
any relevance to actual motorcy-
cling, then it needs to be explor-
ing and developing alternative
power. This means that MotoE is
much more important than its lev-
els of excitement and enjoyment,
which, even in its second sea-
son, were basically zero. There's
a long way to go before petrol-
heads are going to embrace the
whining high-torque/low-thrills
class, with hapless riders heaving
around on bikes that are, when
they fall over, too heavy for one
man to pick up again.
Meanwhile, it's probably best
to look no further than the tip
of one's nose. I predict another
truncated season, mainly in
Europe and largely in Spain, with
a reduced number of races and
several Groundhog-Day events
repeating at the same circuits.
But we're entitled to hope it will
be at least as tense and exciting
as it turned out in 2020. CN
There's a long
way to go before
petrol-heads
are going to
embrace the
whining high-
torque/low-
thrills class,
with hapless
riders heaving
around on bikes
that are, when
they fall over, too
heavy for one
man to pick up
again.
