Salvaging The 600s - Back To Racing's Roots

Anthony West. Photo from worldsbk.com.

Eds note: This post is sponsored by http://www.bikebandit.com/

As racing is pretty much the center of my universe, the off-season can be difficult for me to take. I need racing to get me through the long, dark tea-time of the soul between the final round of one year and the opening round of the next.

This year, I indulged in a couple of books to feed my addiction. I purchased Colin MacKellar's Yamaha: All Factory And Production Road-Racing Two-Strokes From 1955 To 1993 and Joep Kortekaas' Honda's Four-Stroke Race History 1954-1981.

One of the things that immediately struck me was that extremely early in their histories, both Yamaha and Honda followed each model of their factory racebikes with production racers available to the general public. 

In 1959, Honda turned its CS71 250cc four-stroke streetbike into the racer-with-lights CR71 and the full-race RC71, aimed at clubman races and contests in Asia. Yamaha sold a kit that turned its YDS1 250cc two-stroke streetbike into the YDS1R; the kit contained ignition bits, new cylinders, new heads, new pipes, new handlebars, new carbs, new gears - you get the idea. Again, it was available to all who wanted it and could afford it.

When Kawasaki flipped the middleweight sportsbike market on its head, first with the GPz550 and then the Ninja 600, the appeal was that the bikes offered amazing performance for significantly less money than the big-bore machines of the day. And you could take one racing with a minimal amount of modifications. I know this for a fact. My first racebike was a GPz550.

The collapse of the middleweight streetbike market is visible for anyone to see. Honestly, literbikes have become so capable, and so easy to tame with the electronic rider aids, that most riders - who are financing the bikes anyway - simply pop for a few extra dollars a month and go with the big boy. This has cast a serious pall over middleweight road racing - at the GP level, only the adoption of a spec motor saved the middleweight category from extinction.

Perhaps it's time to take a page from racing's roots, exploit the capabilities of the modern middleweight streetbike and, paradoxically, craft a class that relies less on direct factory participation.

The fact is that a modern middleweight is virtually race-ready. And if you want more performance, race parts are available through the company's catalog via the Internet and delivered to your door to be bolted onto the racebike. The race tuner of yesterday would kill for the ease with which today's racer can get incredible stuff delivered. 

We can use BikeBandit.com as an example, as they are the sponsors of this post. If you Google "Yamaha Replacements Parts" you will find a link to their site and Yamaha OEM parts. Or you could click on the phrase in the preceding sentence and it would take you to BikeBandit's Yamaha OEM parts site. Similarly, for gear, Googling "Motorcycle apparel" will get you links to all the gear you need to go racing, or again, clicking on the highlighted phrase in the preceding paragraph will take you straight to BikeBandit's gear section.

The other fact is that the rules packages of most series allow for modifications that simply aren't necessary, and are affordable to few. There's little need for aftermarket wheels in a support class.

So. Couple of thoughts:

- Here's a rules package for middleweight Supersports racing: If it ain't OEM, it doesn't go on the bike. Sure, some manufacturers will come up with special racing parts. It will be up to the sanctioning body to choose which ones to allow. Aftermarket triple clamps? Sure. Not too, too expensive. Racing cranks? Depends on dollar-to-reliability ratio - if an expensive part lasts four times as long as the stocker, expensive might be better for the racer in the long term. Aftermarket wheels? Don't think so ...

-  Encourage manufacturers to offer race-only versions of their streetbikes. No lights, no license plate, no headaches of meeting noise and emissions regulations. Think of all the stuff a racer pulls off a street machine virtually on the way home from the showroom. Some of it can be sold. Most of it just piles up. Such a machine should be less expensive, and even if it isn't, if it doesn't have to meet street regulations, it can come with a race-ready pipe and mapping. The pipe would be cheaper to make than the street-legal one, and the racer doesn't have to buy a pipe and re-map the machine.

Looking at the golden ages of motorcycle road racing shows that production racers are the backbone of the grid. Today's streetbikes are this|close to being those production racers. Anthony West, the evergreen Aussie, just took a home-built last-gen Yamaha YZF-R6 to the podium at the Supersport World Championship race at Phillip Island. A few tweaks of the rulebook could make middleweight classes around the world that much more accessible to larger numbers of racers. 

And that could, in turn, restore some of the public's interest in the amazing middleweight machines that can be found on the showroom floor, waiting for someone to remember how good they really are.

This post is sponsored by:
http://www.bikebandit.com/
http://www.bikebandit.com/oem-parts/yamaha-parts/s/m14 
http://www.bikebandit.com/riding-gear-and-accessories

WERA West at Auto Club Speedway: The 2017 Season Begins, Part 5

The final images from the 2017 WERA West season opener at Auto Club Speedway:
 

Brad Saenz won the Senior Superbike Heavyweight Expert race on his Honda CBR600RR.

Edgar Zaragoza continued his domination of the mediumweight classes.

Brenden Ketelson took his Honda 250 to the wins in D Superbike Novice, Formula 2 Novice and Formula 3.

WERA West at Auto Club Speedway: The 2017 Season Begins, Part 4

More from WERA West at Auto Club Speedway, the 2017 season opener:

David Henderson won the A Superbike Novice race

Keir Leonhardt (above) won the Grom Cup race after a battle with Greg Clouse (below).

Rocco Landers, Mini 80 winner.

WERA West at Auto Club Speedway: The 2017 Season Begins, Part 3

More images from the WERA West season-opener at Auto Club Speedway:

The backpack contains an intercom so Jeremy Toye can yell at his Fastrack University students in real time, which he did on Saturday. Toye then put his knowledge to use on Sunday, winning Formula One, A Superbike and A Superstock.

Greg Clouse (above) took the Formula 2 Expert and D Superbike Expert wins, with Anthony Morrison (below) second in both.

Toye and son.

WERA West at Auto Club Speedway: The 2017 Season Begins, Part 2

More of the race winners and top finishers from the WERA West Sportsman Series/Presented by Lucas Oil Products race event last weekend at Auto Club Speedway.

Armen Manougian (34) took the Heavyweight Twins Superbike Expert win.

Patrick Fiore (713) won the C and B Superbike and Superstock Novice races on his Yamaha YZF-R6.

Corey Sarros started his defense of his 2016 Formula One and A Superstock championships with a pair of second-place finishes.

WERA West at Auto Club Speedway: The 2017 Season Begins, Part 1

Race winners and top finishers from the WERA West Sportsman Series/Presented by Lucas Oil Products race event last weekend at Auto Club Speedway.

Rob Weaver won the Heavyweight Twins Superstock Expert race on his EBR 1190.

Ryan Harper (192) won the Senior Superbike Mediumweight Expert race on his Yamaha YZF-R6.

Louis Jutras (117) won three Novice races - Formula One, A Superstock and Senior Superbike Heavyweight - on his BMW S1000RR.

It'll Be Just Like Starting Over ...

World Champion Stefan Bradl on a cooler racebike than most of us ever will ride, yet something that is barely a starting point for a front-line Superbike World Championship contender.

Part of the mythology of Superbike racing is that the machines are related to the motorcycles available at the local dealership. It is an attractive mythology for many reasons.

It makes the racing seem accessible to the fans in a way that GP racing cannot. A Superbike, it seems, shouldn't be impossible for someone to build in their garage, or at least at the local race shop. Obviously, there will be a few unobtanium bits, but the fundamental chassis, engine and suspension are comprehensible and recognizable.

And for marketing purposes, it is desirable for the fans to believe that the performance of the machine on the track reflects the performance of the machine they can purchase and ride.

A nice belief system, indeed. And yet, sometimes you get a glimpse into the reality of Superbike racing and you realize how much of that mythology really is exactly that.

Recently, I had the opportunity to ride on the track the 2016 Honda CBR1000RR and a 2016 Aprilia RSV4 RR, back-to-back. 

I took the Honda out first, because Hondas always seem to be friendly and comfortable mounts for track days as well as intensely practical street machines. And the CBR1000RR was exactly what I thought it would be: rangy and comfortable, a bit large but still flickable, stable and fast, if not the fastest-revving thing. Still, if I hadn't ridden anything else, I would have been thrilled at the CBR's performance, and if I am honest with myself, I still am. A wonderful sportbike.

But ...

The Aprilia made the Honda seem like a sport-touring machine. The Aprilia was tiny, insanely quick and responsive, torquey and revvy all at the same time. The bike felt like it was hard-wired into the pavement, riding in it, not over it. An entirely different level of performance from the Honda. If the CBR felt like a streetbike sharpened up for track duty, the Aprilia felt like a racebike tamed for street duty.

I got off the Aprilia and thought, how does anyone beat this thing on a Honda?

And yet, you look at the results of World Superbike in 2016, and that is exactly what happened. Aprilia had exactly one podium. BMW had zero. Yamaha had one, MV Agusta had zero. Honda, with its big, cushy, friendly CBR1000RR, had 10 podiums and a win, third-best of all the manufacturers. Granted, it was a long way to Ducati's second-place finish in the Manufacturers Championship and 23 podiums. But Honda was a long way clear of the manufacturers below it. 

And that wasn't the only time the Honda seemed to punch above its weight category. That big, friendly CBR1000RR ran up front at the Suzuka 8 Hours against some insanely advanced Yamaha YZF-R1s and new Kawasaki ZX-10Rs. Honda's riders in the British Superbike series took fourth and fifth in the Championship there, and Troy Herfoss won the Australian Superbike Championship.

Riding the stock Honda CBR1000RR provides a whole new respect for the development that teams like MuSASHi and Ten Kate have done on the racebikes. Every part has been looked at, every performance parameter refined, and it is awe-inspiring to consider how far those incredibly talented tuners took that stock machine and refined it into a race- and championship-winning machine. It may still say CBR on the gas tank. But that's not even where the gas tank is anymore. The MuSASHI, the F.C.C. TSR Honda, the Ten Kate Honda Superbikes are racebikes, and what those tuners have done with the stock machine is something to marvel at.

(btw, lest this read like a Honda love-fest, I would say the exact same things about the Yoshimura teams in the U.S. and in Japan who were racing a GSX-R1000 that was nearly as old as the CBR1000RR. Yoshimura did stunning things with the old platform, and deserves the same respect and admiration as the Honda tuning squads.)

It will take a while for even those talented tuners to bring the replacements for those teams to competitiveness. Both Honda and Suzuki have brought new Superbikes to the table for 2017. Each are starting from scratch, more or less. Ten Kate showed up at the first winter tests with a bike that they had worked on for less than two weeks. There will be big gains at first. But the fine honing of the blade into a race-winning package is likely to take longer, half a season, maybe longer.

I can wait. I can, more than ever, truly appreciate the task that Honda and Suzuki have in front of them. And when they succeed, I will appreciate their accomplishments even more.