Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/270748
L inks between bike GP rac- ing and the suburban wife- swapping set might seem tenuous. The bond, however, is gaining strength year by year. Racing is putting up a virtuous fight. No matter how hard Dorna tries, MotoGP stubbornly clings to the fact that it's still a motor sport. For engineers as well as riders. Having fought off the threat of a production-powered premier class (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) the factory men remain for now in direct combat: boffin- to-boffin. To those interested in more than just the spectacle, this has always been a matter of fascina- tion. So also the fact that design, as it develops, tends towards a single conclusion - a sort of per- fection, within the regulations of the time In this way, twin-cylinder 250cc two-strokes went from parallel and tandem twins (one single be- hind another) to become V-twins, all of them, by the time the class was killed off in 2009. For the 500cc two-strokes, the journey encompassed in-line and vee engines of three and four cylinders before settling on varia- tions of the V-four. (To be fair, in each case, there was never full agreement over whether such engines should have one crank- shaft axis or two.) This convergence of design is a sort of evolution, but not so much survival of the fittest, more imitation of the fastest. Which might be regarded as a bit stifling, for it doesn't leave much room for ideas out of the left field. The way to do that? Change the rules. Completely change the rules. The first years of four-stroke MotoGP were particularly fruit- ful. An Aprilia triple; Yamaha's curiously undersized in-line four (didn't take too long for them to beef it up to the full 990cc); a V- four from Suzuki, an L-four from Ducati, and the crowning glory of Honda's beautifully off-beat V-five. Not to mention another brave V-five attempt by Team Roberts. It was after this and before any convention had been established (except that three cylinders was at least one too few) that Dorna got carried away with rule-changes, with some still incomprehensible assistance from the factories. By decree, they would come at five- year intervals. The first was to cut the size, to 800cc. And limit the number of cylinders to four. Bye- bye to the sonorous fives. No sooner had that class settled, five years in, another change: back to a longer-stroke 1000cc. But rather than stimulat- ing innovation, these weren't real changes, just more-or-less point- less fiddle-faddle. But Dorna had by now de- veloped a new way with rules, showing an even more ominous attitude towards the "motor" side of motorsport. A cavalier disre- gard, in fact: as though the rid- ers and the spectacle were ev- erything, the machines there for BY MICHAEL SCOTT CN III IN THE PADDOCK KEYS-IN-THE-HAT FUTURE P108