Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 29 JULY 21, 2015 P147 Yamaha and Suzuki two-strokes with 10 or more gears—settled down with a bit of help from some dumbing-down rules into UJMs. If, in the last days of the two-strokes, you didn't have a V4 500, you might as well have brought a Manx Norton along instead. MotoGP started with some options: the Aprilia triple, in-line and V-4s, and Honda's sono- rous V-5. The Blata V-6 existed only on paper, but it made for some marvelous drawings. By the time the class was 10 years old, the urge for universality was reinforced by rules that de- creed the number of cylinders (four) and even the maximum bore size. All are V-4, whether actual or (in the case of Yamaha and Suzuki) virtual. There is still a little room for unorthodoxy, however, and while there is little point in look- ing to Japan, we have Ducati to thank for breaking the mold of the UJM racer. Desmodromic valve gear is the key—the Bologna com- pany's unique selling point. But that's invisible. Maybe the desire to be seen to be different was the reason for the addi- tion to this year's all-new GP15. Winglets. Little stubby aero- dynes that took a visible step forward at the last Grand Prix in Germany, becoming biplanes. As we all know, the Ducati Desmosedici has struggled in the years since Casey Stoner won the championship in 2007, and 13 more races after that. Nobody could illustrate the slump more clearly than Valen- tino Rossi and his crew chief Jerry Burgess, hitherto all but invincible. This year, a new technical chief filched from Aprilia (Gigi Dall'Igna), and a major turn- around. Dovizioso on pole for the first Grand Prix, earning the instant nickname "Desmo Dovi," on the podium for the first three races, and once more in France; teammate Iannone taking his first pole at Mugello, and twice on the podium—eas- ily his best-yet results, putting the self-styled "Maniac Joe" an impressive third overall. All with the new winglets. Not that new, but those essayed in 2010 were more to do with controlling airflow to improve cooling. The 2015 version was different—stubby inverted airfoil sections with big end-plates, and a touch of anhedral (a fancy way of saying down-droop); and for a different reason—to provide down-force to help prevent wheelies, they said. This kind of might work, when the bike is upright. Ducati laugh off suggestions that if the bike does hoist the front high enough they might have the opposite effect. This is to do with angle of attack—aircraft can fly inverted, when the airfoil section of the wings should be doing the opposite of providing lift. But if the winglets are really effective, what happens when the bike is at a 60-degree lean angle? They'd still push the front down, and the bike would understeer and run wide. The very problem that spoiled the results of the previous Des- mosedicis, the problem that Dall'Igna's reworking had, to a large extent, solved. Funnily enough, the hitherto achingly reliable Dovizioso—a thoughtful, articulate, self-con- tained and very safe racer—has been doing the opposite in more recent races, flying off into the scenery almost as often as class rookie Jack Miller, for whom this is rather more understandable (it's easier, as the saying goes, for a fast rider to learn to stop crashing than for a slow one to learn how to go fast). Is it too facetious to suggest that Dovizioso's wings might mistakenly have been put on upside down? Of course it is, because this would suggest that the winglets actually work. But without them, it would look just like another UJM. CN

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