STM: MotoGP - Where to Now?

I am somewhat nervous about writing this month’s edition of STM for a number of reasons. First, because I intend straying into the area of serious comment and this rather encroaches on MCUSA’s real journalists. Second, there is always a danger of older motorcyclists looking at the past through rose tinted goggles and saying, “Well, it’s not like it was in...”

And it isn’t like it was in the good old days when one death a GP was acceptable and getting scraped off a stone wall was a mere occupational irritation. However, I hope that you will indulge me on this one occasion because I have spent a lifetime loving GP racing - and now I am seriously concerned for its future.

The first problem may be considered a heresy by younger readers but please accept that I am as hardcore a speed freak as any 18-year-old. The difficulty is this: bikes in both WSBK and MotoGP championships are simply too fast for most of the tracks available throughout the world. Quite simply, speeds have to come down or, just as happened with GP racing on road circuits, there will be terminal problems.

Even in bike racing-obsessed Britain, we now have only one circuit, Silverstone, which is suitable for either MotoGP or WSBK. To make tracks safe for riders – which must always be the priority – spectators are now hugely distanced from the action. Is this important or will the crowds still come even if they need their binoculars to see the riders? Cash strapped 2010, when everyone will be chasing spectators' admission fees, will provide the answer.

There is an ancient Greek saying which really does fit the current MotoGP mind set. It is this: “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

Let’s look at madness in action. First, despite winning everything, including the Medford Grannies and Expectant Mothers’ Softball Tournament, Yamaha is in financial crisis. In 2009, the company declared that it had recorded a consolidated net loss of 216.15 billion yen - compared with a profit of 1.85 billion yen a year earlier.

Sales tumbled 28.1% to 1.15 trillion yen as motorcycle sales nosedived, particularly in the United States and Europe, amid the economic downturn triggered by the global financial crisis. Let’s not chocolate coat the situation, Yamaha is deep in the smelly stuff.

For the 2010 MotoGP season, Yamaha, like every other manufacturer, is restricted to using a maximum of six engines during the whole season. Use a seventh motor and you start from the back of the grid. Now close your eyes and watch this video. We arrive at the final MotoGP round in Valencia and Yamaha’s #1 Enfant Terrible, Jorge Lorenzo, is leading the World Championship but crashes his Yam heavily in practice and fills the airbox full of the nasty stuff which the motor happily ingests. Jorge is fine except that his allocation of engines for the season gone.

But that’s no problem because Jorge doesn’t start and so gifts the championship to Casey Stoner, who still has a fully functioning engine. How pleased are the fans? How good is the resultant TV coverage? How happy is Yamaha? What do the bean counters back in Yamaha’s corporate headquarters think of this as a way of promoting their company? They’ve spent a fortune on MotoGP racing as a promotional tool - money, remember, which is taken from a company making a loss - and now an artificial regulation robs them of the benefit. How good do you think the chances will be of funding Yamaha’s racing for the 2011 season?

Let us change the script slightly. To keep the championship alive, and the TV executives happy, Jorge is allowed to use a seventh motor and carry on racing. Now, what is the reaction of Honda who have restricted the performance of their motors all season so that they still have something left to race at the end of the season.

You don’t think that this is a possible scenario? Just look at Jorge’s championship challenging speed in 2009 - and the number of times he dumped the bike.

The engine rule is the most extreme example of the madness currently prevailing in MotoGP but the core problem is that Dorna, and Carmelo Ezpeleta, are not from the bike racing world. Dorna always looks to the multi-billion dollar industry which is Formula 1 car racing - and then tries to replicate its commercial success with motorcycles.

This is the reason for everything from the dull, lifeless, sterile paddocks to the plethora of VIP areas and the insane racing regulations. Bring in the big corporate sponsors and sell MotoGP to the unknowing masses - and the bike racing fans can be treated as a noisy, irrelevant, blue-collar nuisance.

Unfortunately for Ezpeleta, F1 spectators are not the same animals as bike racing fans. I was once given a very expensive VIP package to watch a F1 race. I think that sponsors confused me with someone important but regardless, I wasn’t going to refuse the offer. The food was great, the champagne excellent but I was utterly amazed that no-one in the carpeted VIP box had a clue about the racing which was taking place a vast distance away.

Compare that situation with the much rougher hospitality I enjoyed at Donington last year, where every single person, crammed on to the veranda in the lashing rain, was a bike racing expert.

Trying to force the square peg of bike racing into the round F1-shaped hole is why the sport is in such a bad way - and will get rapidly worse.

In the golden days of GP racing, the blue-ribbon 500cc class attracted between 30 and 42 starters at every single event. Compare that with 17 for MotoGP. Even a tiny number of non-starters will make the starting grid look absolutely ludicrous.

Again, the question has to be asked. How much are you going to pay to spectate at Laguna Seca or Indianapolis for a grid of 15 - or even fewer riders?

It’s all well and good to criticize but what would I do if I was suddenly given control of MotoGP? Ironically, all the answers lead to one solution: slow down the bikes and so reduce costs and improve the spectacle.

We simply do not need MotoGP technology on road bikes, so it is fatuous to suggest that racing has got to feed more outright performance into road technology. For goodness sake, if your 185 mph hypersport bike isn’t quick enough, buy a fast sports aircraft! Certainly, if you are homeless in Britain the easiest way to become a guest in one of her Majesty’s prisons is to use more than 50% of a sportbike’s performance on a public highway.

MotoGP racing is now first, last and middle a marketing tool and everyone might as well accept this. If it’s a show, why not make it a cheaper, more accessible, more entertaining show?

Here are my regulations for simpler, slower, cheaper and more attractive racing. First, any form of motor with any number of cylinders - prototype or modified production engine - but with a maximum capacity of 999cc.

Next a maximum of five speeds, so that the motor has to be driveable. This would be a truly useful transfer of MotoGP technology to road machines.

Then, a minimum post race weight of 350 lbs, so there would be no benefit from using exotic materials.

Fourth, ignition by a basic igniter only. No anti-wheelie, launch control or anti wheelspin aids. Simply something to make the fuel go bang. This is precisely what is being proposed for Moto 2, so the regulation can clearly be policed.

The argument has always been that manufacturers demand the right to raise the electronics bar ever higher but how true is this in practice? The Honda engines being used in Moto 2 are being deliberately restricted to 125bhp - that’s 30bhp less than World Supersport engines - by means of the electronics. Is anyone howling in protest? On the contrary, when it suits Dorna, restricting the electronics is considered to be the universal panacea.

The lack of electronic aids would lead to an improvement in tire technology in terms of producing rubber which would have to manage the wear and tear of untamed power for a whole race. High performance tires, with longevity, would be a road riding benefit worth having.

However, I would retain fully tuneable fuel injection, so that the benefits of racing continue to be transferred to road machines and also to give designers, and race engineers, the opportunity to be clever.

Finally, no fuel restrictions except the use of 95 Octane pump fuel, so that engines produced are directly beneficial to road riders. As for fuel consumption, an extra 100 liters of fuel used, or saved, in a MotoGP race is going to have no effect on global warming - but it will make the show less attractive. If you want to use 30 litres, and bear the weight penalty at the start of the race - go ahead. But let’s hear those engines screaming to their limit.

Leave the chassis design completely untouched to allow innovation and interest for the spectator.

The result would be a huge drop in race speeds because the bikes would be heavier and slower, both in terms of cornering and outright speed - and costs would plummet because development would be heavily curtailed.

Best of all, the result would be racing for motorcycle racing fans - and that’s what we deserve.