Ten with… ....................................... Graham Irwin. The ex-motocross champ is ready to follow in the footsteps of his brothers and make the move to tarmac.
particularly incredible – although we have seen Ducati utilise such tech for that little extra gain. They were clever, though. Where Yamaha attached the device to the fairing in order to deflect rain, Ducati stuck it on the swingarm, which means that the force doesn’t have to go through suspension and be wasted through travel, rather straight through to the tyre, and thus is more effective. And it’s these little breakthrough nuggets that have arguably given Ducati that extra oomph in fighting for a title. Yeah, there’s been the odd bit of aero-innovation floating around on the odd Gilera or Aprilia in the last 30 years, but nothing like the onslaught since 2015.
THE HERE AND NOW
And that brings us exactly to where we are now, on the eve of the 2020 season. When wings seriously hit the scene properly back in 2016, there were a lot of people asking, why? Well the simple answer is, if there’s something to be gained from an unturned stone, why wouldn’t they? But also, if you look at the sheer amount of power and grip on offer, and how far both have evolved in the past 20 years, it’s almost a wonder that no one properly attacked the aero angle sooner. Okay, over the last year the extremities in the size and shape of the wings have died down, but even so they’re still aggressive; Danny Aldridge and the team behind all the rule-making in the GP paddock have literally created a silhouette box, that the bike and wings must fit to be eligible this season – talk about keeping it simple.
Away from the racing though, it’s in recent years we’ve seen wings hit the streets; Ducati, Honda and Aprilia have now utilised the tech and transferred it over to their road bikes. Ducati have been the most savage in their design, with big, wide carbon lumps, while Honda and Aprilia have been a little more conservative; yet whether it’s mainly a headline grabber, or a truly technical choice is a difficult question to answer – it’s both. The difference between having wings and not having wings isn’t night and day, but it is noticeable to the trained superbike rider. Maybe Fast Bikes Magazine will have to do a test of our own to find out for sure…
WHAT NEXT?
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I think we’ve all heard the rumours of Honda having active, electronically controlled wings... and supposedly they’ve even gone as far as to patent them. This has to be the way forward for bikes, as a single wing is designed at an optimum angle of attack; that’s fine in a car as it doesn’t actually move anywhere near as much, or alter in its surface area as much as bike and rider pitches, rolls and weaves. It’s crazy, but it’s thanks to the fundamentals of riding, combined with the inertia from the high centre of gravity. Then there’s the weight transfer from just braking and accelerating, and so much more… levels of which are unheard of in car racing. As a result, the wing might only be in its effective position for 10% of the time; from a straight, to braking, to mid-corner, to corner exit, there’s no way a fixed device could deliver for all of these aspects. Yet something attached to a fairing that could move 20 or 30 degrees, so it could adjust its optimum position in real time? That would be a massive help. It could target downforce and stability while braking, or wheelie control under acceleration without having anywhere near as much of a compromise of the two. Technically speaking, with the current wave of IMUs that control the current electronics systems being so complex, there's no doubt they could be given a simple electronic servo to actuate a set of wings – thus being able to perform better, in nearly all scenarios. Yet, with MotoGP rules continually strangling the development in order to keep the cost down, seeing it in the racing arena is unlikely – I mean, it’s been banned in car racing since the 60s. But then again, nothing’s impossible, and there’s no reason that it can’t trickle down into superbikes and road bikes… just watch this space.