Goodbye Suzuki?

[Mr Orange]

Suzuki might also make a little moolah on the side if they supply engines to crts.

Aprilia has announced they will supply engines and chassis to crt, but they won't be factory bikes. Dunno how that works! There are rules in place to try to prevent a sneaky factory posing as a crt. If any other team wishes, they can put 20k on the table and have a peek at your engine. Can't imagine Aprilia want that happening.

[King Kenny]

Even though I want to see Suzuki on the grid next year I think they made the right decision for a no. of reasons.

- Firstly they don’t have a 1000cc bike ready yet (most like due to pure cost reasons)
- Next Ezpeleta wants to make the series use a uniform spec ECU with 16,000RPM rev limits in 2013 so much of the development over the next 2 years could be potentially wasted
- They are battling with VW with big risks involved so all non essential activities have to be cut


Other factor come in the mix too. Apparently the Suzuki 1000CC GP bike they are testing has a Inline 4 engine although they don’t say if it’s crossplane or not. Why this is may have to do with crossover tech from MotoGP to road bike (like Yamaha) which can only be exciting. Also Ezpeleta seems hell bent on wrestling all the power back from the Factories & seems well set up to do this already. He as openly said that if 24l of fuel is not enough to make CRT’s competitive then he’ll give them 26l or 27l or weight reductions – whatever is needed.

Also worth mentioning is the tyre situation. Bridgestone’s 2012 tyre has more flex in the sidewalls & warm up much faster with a consequential step down in performance as the tyres reach 2/3rd’s race distance – much like all the other ‘normal’ tyres so. This will have the biggest impact on Rookie performances I believe more so than anything else as the old Bridgestone tyres seemed alien to Riders & Chassis Engineers alike. They had to constantly be worked hard by rides to keep heat in them & chassis’s/setup had to be designed specifically to keep heat in them (a major weakness for Suzuki for the last few years). I’m sure overall race times will suffer as a result (a lot of recent MotoGP races had fastest lap times set in the last laps with no discernable differences in lap times over the whole race)

Is all this bad for the MotoGP as a whole – I don’t think so. Yes you lose the pure prototype aspect of the series but then again huge advances have been made in the last 10 years:

Traction Control,
Ride by Wire,
Multiple Engine Mapping,
Intelligent/Learning software,
GPS assisted data logging/acquisition,
Active Dynamic Fuel Mapping,
Linear-Non Linear Throttle Response/Mapping,
Torqductors,
Controlled Flex Chassis,
Lean Burn Long Life Engines,
Pneumatic Valves,
Ultra High Performance Tyres,
Fast Shift Gearboxes
Engine Braking Control
Wheelie Control
Launch Control

There is not so much to be done conceptually after all this without spending mega-bucks on refinement. Half of it is of no use in the real world but the other half is extremely useful & should be transferred to road going bikes without losing a technical advantage to their competitors. By ‘dumbing down’ MotoGP with CRT it saves new privateer teams having to spend vast amounts of money/time they cant possible have to compete. The same has happened in F1 over the last 20 years. Anything that was radical & only useful to F1 cars was banned to keep costs down (if that terms can be used in F1 without laughing). Next year their engines are going down to 16,000RPM 1600cc V6’s with a turbo charger. This will give similar performance to the 20,000RPM 2400cc screaming V8’s but use 35% less fuel & the tech learned will be applicable to real world cars because of it. KERS proportion of thrust will be increased & only KERS may be used in the Pit Lane which will no doubt be invaluable for Hybrid cars tech that switch from Electric Motor to Engine. Even WSB will be dumbed down soon with Control ECU’s, RPM limits, etc. As they are nearly at current MotoGP levels of sophistication.

This is the future gentlemen & it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Suzuki are playing a ‘Wait & See’ game for sure.