CN III IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
THE LAST STROKERS OF FATE
Just a week or three more before it all starts happen- ing again, and MotoGP testing is already under way, with
people getting all excited about
times from the opening bout in
Malaysia (Rossi slow, Simoncelli
fast). My advice on that would be:
don’t get excited. It’s only the first
tests.
So I’ve been thinking about
other aspects of the year to
come. And its historical significance – for there are to be a
couple of monuments that will be
erected at the end of it.
One, of course, is for the
800cc MotoGP generation.
Over-electronic, over-revvy and
overpriced, they have won few
friends over the first four years
of life. In 2012 they will be replaced by liter bikes. The irony is
that their fifth and last year looks
like it will be a humdinger, as the
various designs reach true racing
maturity, and the specialist riders
also.
The other tombstone, which
(in the way of modern racing) will
rapidly become overgrown with
weeds and covered with graffiti,
is for the 125cc class, the last
remaining constituent from the
original series founded in 1949.
It is, of course, for something
much more than that, for they are
to be replaced in 2012 by supposedly cheaper four-stroke singles. It is the end of two-strokes
in top-level motorcycle racing.
Which, to all right-thinking peo-
ple, must surely be nothing less
than a tragedy.
This death is only a symptom.
Grand Prix racing isn’t about
technical research, in any real
sense. It is a combination of en-
tertainment industry for its pro-
moters and marketing tool for its
participants.
This is not to say that the hard-
working and genuinely inventive
engineers of the new-generation
four-stroke MotoGP bikes don’t
contribute to the advancement
of road motorcycles. They surely
do, especially electronically, and
in terms of chassis and suspen-
sion understanding.
Point is, the direction is not be-
ing led by racing requirements,
but by road motorcycles. To a
racing purist, that’s just wrong.
It means the tail is wagging the
dog.
The two-strokes took over rac-
ing, starting in the 1960s, and
class by class, for one simple
reason. When engine size was
the criterion: firing twice as often,
they produced more horsepower
than an equivalent four-stroke.
Or at least they did once MZ’s
revered designer Walter Kaaden,
operating on a shoe-string in
Communist East Germany, found
a way to harness harmonics in
place of all that clattering valve
gear. His expansion-chamber
exhausts and disc-valve intakes
unleashed all the smoky potential
of the hitherto utilitarian strokers.
In a by now well-rehearsed tale
of skulduggery, Suzuki acquired
his knowledge via the back door,
and the rest forms a history upon
which both Suzuki and Yamaha
built large motorcycle manufac-
turing empires.
But Mr. Honda liked four-
strokes, and over the years the
rest of the world came to agree
with him, to the extent that it was
actually Yamaha that first pro-
