The Black Art Of Racing Vehicle Design, Part 3

"For all the rhetoric last year, the Honda wasn't a disaster. You want disasters? Go back and look at the NR500. Or the first NSR500 with the gas tank below the engine and the expansion chambers over the top. THOSE bikes were disasters. Last year's 'disaster' won seven races ..."

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The Black Art Of Racing Vehicle Design, Part 2

"Yamaha's not the only manufacturer to make this work. The current Kawasaki ZX-10R in WSBK looks a lot like the machine the manufacturer has been racing for several years. Slow, steady evolution has a lot of advantages ..."

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The Black Art Of Racing Vehicle Design, Part 1

"Gigi managed to get his bike a ton of publicity with an innovation that could have been remarkably cheap to create ... The bike wasn't winning anyway, so why not (metaphorically) put a little money on a longshot of an innovation?"

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R.I.P., Production GP Racebike - Part 3, Or Sympathy For The RC213V-RS

"It is honestly hard to figure out if the RC213V-RS was a good or bad bike at its core, because it came hamstrung from Day One with an inability to control its temper ..."

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R.I.P., Production GP Racebike - Part 2

"Between the Yamaha and Honda machines, private teams had genuine GP machines at their disposal, designed to allow a variety of riders to perform well on them and to run on a lower operating budget ..."

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R.I.P., Production GP Racebike - Part 1

"A look back at some of the notable production GP racers of the modern era might provide some insight as to how GP racing has changed, why the RC213V-RS was so evil and how the current rules have made the production GP racer extinct ..."

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World Superbike 2015 Review, Part 7: 2016

"Sometimes a simple, careful evolution is better than revolution. And sometimes revolution makes everything else instantly obsolete ..."

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