Racing has always been the ultimate proving ground for motorcycle technology. You only need to look at modern road bikes to see where competition-proven concepts have fought their way through to the mass market, so the race machines of today are a crystal ball to the production bikes of the future.
Even relatively mundane modern road bikes today often feature inverted forks and radial-mounted front brake calipers, for example. Both are ideas that made an immediate impact in competition circles, proving themselves on the track and being snapped up for the road as a result. Upside down forks first started emerging on mainstream competition bikes in the late 80s and by 1990 you’d struggle to spot a bike on a Grand Prix or WSBK grid that hadn’t adopted the idea. Road bike owners clamouring to get the same tech meant USD suspension became the superbike norm by the mid 90s.
Radial brakes followed a similar pattern of overnight success once adopted in bike racing but took a surprisingly long time to reach two wheels in the first place. Brembo had started using the radial mounting idea in F1 cars as early as 1982, immediately showing its advantages, but the company’s initial attempts to persuade motorcycle race teams to adopt the idea hit a brick wall. Despite the known shortcomings of axial calipers, nobody wanted to take the chance on a completely different approach. It wasn’t until 1998 that a bike company took the plunge – Aprilia, in the 250cc GP class – winning first time out and creating a stampede among rivals wanting to get in on the radial caliper action.
Although initially seen as pure racing tech, within five years the idea had made the leap to the road: again, it was Aprilia, with the RSV Mille R in 2003, that took the first step and led to a scramble among rivals, with every major sports bike following suit over the next couple of years. Do road riders at normal speeds really benefit from either USD forks or radial brakes? That’s irrelevant, really. The technology was proven to be superior on the track, so customers wanted it on their street bikes and any model that lagged behind was at a disadvantage in the showroom.
But it’s not always a matter of fashion. Useful ideas like modern traction control based on inertial measurement units were put through their paces on track before hitting the street. There was even some initial reticence among manufacturers to offer the technology to road riders in fear that if they managed to crash despite traction control technology, they might take legal action against the manufacture. This wasn’t a trend-led transition to the street like inverted forks and radial brakes, but one driven by practicality and the fact that the technology was proven, well developed and increasingly affordable.
The importance here is the close relationship between top level motorcycle racing, be it WSBK or MotoGP, and mass-produced street bikes. It’s a factor that simply isn’t replicated on four wheels: there’s little technical crossover between an F1 car and the SUVs that fill our streets, while race bikes and road bikes share huge chunks of their technology, whether it’s suspension, powertrain or aerodynamics.
Perhaps the clearest recent evidence of racing changing the direction of an entire company can be seen in Ducati. For decades the Italian brand was firmly committed to V-twins, seeing vast success in WSBK thanks to its signature desmodromic valvetrains and, for many years, to regulations that gave twins a capacity advantage over four-cylinder bikes. When Ducati first entered MotoGP it initially toyed with the idea of a twin before falling into line with rivals and adopting a V4 layout. Today? The V4 dominates Ducati’s street bike range, proving beyond doubt that customers will follow when an idea is successful on track, even if it’s seen as a betrayal of a brand’s heritage.
That close connection between road and race in the motorcycling arena isn’t without its downsides. It’s sometimes resulted in promising ideas that could have benefitted customers being dropped if they’re either useless in racing or banned for being too effective. Perhaps the clearest example in the history of bikes is the decision, way back in 1957, to ban ‘dustbin’ fairings. Ostensibly made on safety grounds, many were suspicious that the new rules for 1958 that demanded a bikes wheels should be visible from the side (a requirement that lives on to this day) were created to level the playing field. It’s a Sliding Doors moment for motorcycling as a whole: if those slippery, all-enclosing mid-50s fairings had lived on, would every faired road bike have a similar design today? We’ll never know, but logic suggests they would. More recently there have significant MotoGP restrictions on fairing dimensions and the size, shape and positions of aerodynamic winglets, instantly ending development of ideas that would be more effective but illegal under the current rules.
So, improving the show doesn’t always mean improving motorcycling as a whole, but there’s no question that if a new technology does fit within the racing ruleset, it will develop faster and more effectively under the pressure of competition.
