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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VOL. 53 ISSUE 4 FEBRUARY 2, 2016 P105 maintain the bike's engines. That's something the normal mechanic would do in the past. So ad- ditional staffing is perhaps an unintended con- sequence of moving to the more complex power plants. Albrecht points out that there are advantages for the consumer in today's four-stroke technology in motocross. "The bikes off the showroom floor are powerful enough to be competitive even at the pro level," he says. "A bike you'd buy off the showroom would give you a lot of power in a very smooth and usable package. At the highest level, the pros still want more grunt, especially off the bottom end to make the big jumps, so there is a difference between a production bike and a factory bike, but it's not as much as you might think." The added power also puts additional stresses on the drivetrain. Albrecht points out the teams do go through chains and sprockets a little more than they did in the two-stroke days. He also noted that the bikes are a little heavier, so suspension set- tings are a stiffer too. Multi-time AMA Supercross Champion Ryan Vil- lopoto grew up in the four-stoke era, but did catch the tail end of the 250cc two-stokes when he was an amateur. So he's had the taste of both eras of bikes. "Four-strokes have made supercross and motocross a completely different sport than it was when they raced 125 and 250 two-strokes," Villopoto said. "You go back and watch YouTube videos of that time and they just rode the bikes a lot different. Today there's a lot of throttle control, clutch control and setup on the bike is so impor- tant. If you come from two-stokes it takes a bit of getting used to, if you're going to ride these the right way." Villopoto's former mechanic Mike Williamson says the key to today's race bikes is usable power. "For us the challenge is finding that usable power," says Williamson. "It's easy to make a ton of power, but if you can't get that to the track it doesn't do you a lot of good. We're looking for a really broad and smooth powerband. And there're a million ways to do it—head work, cams and pistons. We constantly look to the data to find the best settings for different track condi- tions and have options to change it up while we're at a track. That's where the electronics have improved things so much." Williamson went on to say that some riders like to have power that hits hard so they can break the rear tire loose, but that Villopoto al- ways liked to have it smoother, to make it easier to ride over the course of a long race. The biggest change in the modern four-stoke era is, in a word—torque. "The bikes come out of turns and climb hills so much stronger today," Albrecht explains. "A lot of people talk about bringing two-strokes back to the sport because of the cost, but as long as others guys are racing 450s, with a two- stroke you don't have a chance. The way you get traction coming out of turn on a four-stoke, you could never beat that on a two-stroke." The final element is tires. Tires are key to getting power to the ground on motocross bikes and the tire makers have gotten very good at providing just the right type of knobby tread pattern and rubber compound for a variety of dirt conditions. So critical is the tire in the whole equation that the top teams put new tires on for every qualifying session and race. While it seems the destiny of racing is ever increasing power, with motocross machines at least, making that power usable is supreme right now, so it's likely that power increase will be gradual in the coming years, instead of the revo- lutionary jump made in the sport when it moved primarily from two-stroke engines to four-strokes a decade ago. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives