Balancing Act

I logged on to live timing and scoring for the 24 Heures Motos in April and found exactly what I expected that I would see, although it wasn't really what I wanted to see. YART - the Yamaha Austria Racing Team - and GMT94 were in the lead, and by a margin. After four hours, the two YZF-R1s were the only bikes on the lead lap, and they would remain the only motorcycles on the lead lap for the rest of the 24-hour endurance classic at Le Mans.

It wasn't necessarily what I wanted to see, because I wanted Suzuki Endurance Racing Team to have a good race after the tragic loss of Anthony Delhalle. And after Honda's struggles on the old Fireblade, I wanted to see the new CBR1000RR perform well.

But there is little room in a racer's head for romance and wishes, and the ruthless, dispassionate analysis of racing already left me expecting to see the Yamahas in front. The reason? The latest iteration of the YZF-R1 is in the prime of its racing life, and endurance racing has proven to be a perfect fit for the combination of the machine's sublime balance of performance, reliability and rideability.

Balance. It's what makes race teams and racers successful, more often than not. When the machine, rider and race conditions are in alignment, it looks easy, because it is. The machine and rider's behaviors complement each other, and when they are driving the performance in a direction that suits the needs of that particular competitive event, it is hard for the competition to see which way they went.

Look at the last few Ducati MotoGP machines. Many, many riders have struggled to get them to work. No one can argue that Cal Crutchlow isn't talented, or that Jorge Lorenzo doesn't know how to get a racebike around a track. But Lorenzo lately looks like he's been hit with a dart tipped with thorazine, and Crutchlow - who wanted a factory bike more than anything else in his racing life - quickly found that you have to be careful of what you wish for.

Conversely, Andrea Dovisioso has made it his life's work to come to terms with the beast. He's Desmo Dovi, and he's not going anywhere else if he can help it. He's thrown in his lot with Ducati, for better or for worse. So he's spent more of his career trying to get the Ducati to work than Cal did or Lorenzo will. He's figured out ways to adapt to the evil machine - which, when conditions are right, suddenly becomes one of the fastest bikes on the track. In the rain, under heavy acceleration, the Ducati isn't wicked, it's wicked-fast. Bike, rider and conditions come together and they can suddenly make the best in the world look slow.

Racing machines have a life cycle, and there is a point in that cycle where they are fully-developed yet not obsolete. That is the point where you know how good the machine actually is. The current YZF-R1 is at that point. It's been around for a few years. Front-line teams in MotoAmerica, British Superbike, the Japanese JSB1000 series and the Endurance World Championship all have put countless miles on them. Yamaha has supported those efforts with factory involvement. There is a deep body of knowledge on how to make the machine work, and a solid foundation of aftermarket parts for building them. And the bike has proven to be, in most circumstances, really, really good - the sheer number of championships in a wide variety of specifications is persuasive evidence to support such a claim.

Contrast the R1 to the other ends of the racebike life cycle. 

SERT went racing in Le Mans with its 2016 GSX-R1000 because the all-new 2017 GSX-R1000 isn't far enough along its development cycle to be competitive. Teams in MotoAmerica - especially the Superstock 1000 teams - and in British Superbike are racing bikes that are remarkably stock. The fully-developed, last-generation GSX-R1000 is still fast, but there's nothing left to improve on. SERT was simply hoping to minimize the damage to its championship lead by bringing the old, slow charger out for points. The balance was off - the machine no longer had the characteristics of a front-runner, and nothing could be done. The new machine, even in Superstock trim, wasn't reliable enough to do a 24-hour race, with Junior Team Suzuki LMS falling to 35th and 168 laps down at the end after stopping multiple times on the track.

Honda went racing with its all-new 2017 Fireblade, and had exactly the experience that SERT wanted to avoid so badly. The leading squad had a chain adjuster malfunction on the starting line and was 55th and 11 laps down at the end of the first hour. That makes the next 23 hours of racing a very, very trying period. Team April Moto Motors Events broke a gearbox on its CBR1000RR. The balance was off - the machine simply hasn't had the time to be built into its prime.

You never really, honestly, know how good a racebike really can be. Yamaha's R1 is competitive everywhere, it seems, but in the Superbike World Championship. Well into the second year of a factory effort on the bike, it has exactly one podium to its credit. The team should be more than competent, and there's nothing wrong with an inline four-cylinder configuration - ask two-time and defending champion Jonathan Rea how well his Kawasaki ZX-10R works. Switching riders hasn't helped - Yamaha actually got rid of the rider who scored the podium.

Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that in EWC, MotoAmerica and JSB1000 specification, the R1 is balanced, meeting the needs of its riders and the racing environment. Pushed that little bit harder to try to get to the front in WorldSBK, the balance is thrown off, and the limitations of the machine and rider to meet the conditions are exposed.

And once the balance is lost, the fall can seem to go on forever, even if it's just a fall of one place off of the podium. Racing is binary at the factory level; there's successful, and there's not successful. Ironic how the harsh binary of win/lose is a function of a massive series of compromises, all seeking the elusive balance that takes you to the top.