Honda RC211V: greatest of all time?
When the first Motogp rules were announced, Suzuki and Yamaha went away and pretty much shoehorned 990cc four-stroke engines into revised 500 chassis, while Honda started afresh.
The result was the RC211V, arguably the greatest GP bike of all time, with an ingenious engine configuration at its heart. The engine was basically a V4 with a fifth cylinder acting as a balancer. It produced very useable power – and lots of it, which is why the bike won 48 of the 82 races of the 990cc era.
The chassis was just as clever, utilising many of the lessons Honda had learned during the final years of 500 racing but hadn’t yet implemented. For example, much of the fuel tank was moved below the seat, so the bike was easier to handle, especially with a full tank.
“Before we started work on the four-stroke, everyone thought 200bhp was the limit for 500s, but our initial target for the RCV was 220,” says RC211V designer Tomoo Shiozaki. “When you obtain more power from a two-stroke, the power character becomes bad. But the four-stroke has a very gentle character from bottom to middle rpm, so we can get over 200 and the power character is still good.
“When we began, everyone at HRC gave ideas, like pneumatic valves. However, the purpose of that system is high-rpm power, which is not necessary with a 990cc engine, as it’s easy for us to get as much horsepower as we need.
“We also worked very hard on the chassis. The RCV frame doesn’t have such deep beam sections because we wanted some flex to change the harmonics of the chassis – sliding a bike is easier and not so snappy if the chassis isn’t totally rigid.
“Mass centralisation was a big target for us, so we designed new rear suspension [with both ends of the shock attached to the swingarm] to make space for the low-down fuel tank. This also reduced chatter, because normal suspension, with the shock attached to the chassis, transfers chatter forces directly to the chassis.
“With the low-down tank, the bike is better at the start of races, with a full fuel load. The NSR500 was only at 70% of its performance potential in the early laps, but the RCV is more like 80 to 90%.”
their passing by wearing black armbands at the season-ending race, because the grid was already set to go fully four-stroke from 2003. The four-strokes dominated because they had more speed and because they’re better at getting around a race track.
“A four-stroke is easier because when you’re mid-corner on a 500 you have zero power,” explained Rossi’s crew chief Jeremy Burgess. “When you open the throttle from the lowest rpm point, say 6000rpm, the 500’s not making any more power than a street bike, but then it suddenly builds to 190 horsepower. On the four-stroke, you touch the throttle mid-corner and you’ve already got tons of torque, so from that point you can open the throttle fairly quickly.”
On the other hand, the best riders and engineers also mourned the 500s, because they were so tricky to master, both on track and in pit lane. “Setting up the two-stroke was harder,” said Rossi. “And if the setting wasn’t 100% the bike was a disaster, which was a big challenge for me and also for the mechanics.” Burgess agreed: “It’s just less brain power with the four-stroke”.
Some older riders who had enjoyed and suffered earlier, nastier 500s thought the same. When someone asked Frenchman Christian Sarron, winner of the 1985 West German 500cc GP, what he thought of the 990s, he replied: “They’re nice bikes... for girls”. (Sorry about that, ladies.)
Rossi ruled the 990 era, cruising to the first two titles on Honda’s RC213V, which was in a different league to its rivals. Then he fell out with HRC and defected to Yamaha for 2004 to ride the nightmarish YZR-M1, which hadn’t won a single race the previous year.
Yamaha had been so embarrassed during 2003 that they considered quitting. Instead, they decided not to go home but go hard, signing Rossi. Their plan was a two-year project: fix what was apparently a horrible motorcycle in 2004, then win the title in 2005, Yamaha’s 50th anniversary.
In fact Rossi and his crew fixed the M1 in two days during the first pre-season tests. The Italian immediately identified the main problems. First, he kept losing the front entering corners, which explained why Yamaha’s 2003 lead-rider Alex Barros had crashed his M1 so often. Second, the bike was heavy to throw around.
Rossi told his crew that the bike kept accelerating as he braked into corners. Crew chief Jeremy Burgess asked Yamaha’s electronics engineers to check the engine-braking software. They did – and found that whenever Rossi squeezed the front-brake lever, the computer program was opening the throttle, instead of closing it. How had Yamaha and its previous riders not clocked this?!
There were two quick and easy solutions to making the bike more manoeuvrable. Burgess discovered that the rubber air inlet at the base of the fairing nose was fouling the front mudguard during heavy braking – again, how had Yamaha
not spotted this?! – and suggested a massive 15mm rise in overall ride height. Yamaha engineers freaked out, but they allowed the changes and that was that – the M1’s handling problems were solved.
Of course, Yamaha also played an important role in fixing the M1, with chief engineer Masao Furusawa creating a long-bang firing configuration to improve power delivery and traction. By the end of the tests, Rossi was fastest and had broken the lap record. Two months later, he won the opening race of 2004 to become the first rider in history to win two consecutive premier-class GPS on different makes of machinery. A few months later he secured the title, which he successfully defended in 2005. So Rossi won four of the five 990cc titles, to Nicky Hayden’s single success in 2006.
The 990s started out making a gentle 220 horsepower, which quite quickly became a not-so-gentle 250. Creating a linear power curve and a flat-as-possible torque curve were the secret to success. And Honda got there first. “A flat torque curve means you can spin up the tyre at a particular throttle opening, and although the rpm comes up the torque doesn’t come up with it,” said Team Roberts engineer Tom O’kane. “Then if you hold a constant throttle, the same amount of torque that broke the tyre loose is still there – so you just hold the throttle and the bike comes back into line. That’s what riders of the RC211V always say – they can get sideways, then get back into line whenever they want.”
Which is exactly what Aprilia riders weren’t saying – the Cube behaved more like a 500, which is why the project was shut down at the end of 2004, putting factory rider Jeremy Mcwilliams out of a job. Not that he minded...
“That bike wanted to kill you everywhere,” remembers
the Northern Irishman. “It made lots of horsepower – but in all the wrong places. I think it broke every one of my ribs twice in 2004. It had this really weird torque curve, so the engineers tried to fill in the holes in the curve with clever fuel and torque maps. It started making torque at around 9000rpm, then it dropped away and then there was a really sharp torque peak at 12,500, which sent the bike sideways and fired you on your nose.”
The people who became very good at making lots of power that riders could put to the ground, thanks in part to advanced electronics, were Ducati. They arrived slightly late to the party, but they were soon popping champagne corks, when Loris Capirossi won their first premier-class victory only six races into the 2003 championship.
Ducati’s desmodromic-valve Desmosedici was immediately the fastest thing on the grid, reaching 206mph at Mugello that year. (And the bike is still Motogp’s fastest, clocking 225.7mph last summer.) Its steel trellis frame worked well, but when Capirossi and team-mate Troy Bayliss asked for too much, it spectacularly tied them in knots.
‘DUCATI’S DESMOSEDICI WAS THE FASTEST THING ON THE GRID, REACHING 206MPH’
The curtain fall of the 990 era couldn’t have been better – the 2006 season-ending Valencia GP still rates as the greatest event of GP history. Rossi went into the weekend leading Hayden by a few points, after the American had lost the series lead at the previous race when he’d been taken out by his team-mate. But Rossi crashed at Valencia while Hayden finished third to claim the title and Bayliss won the race. That Sunday had everything, like a (much better) motorcycling version of Days of Thunder.
What came next was the start of an ugly period for Motogp. The 990s were replaced by 800cc engines, which were the ultimate result of an inquiry into the death of Honda star Daijiro Kato at Suzuka in 2003. Those in charge believed the bikes needed to be slowed down, but the 800s were actually faster around many race tracks, despite peaky power delivery which engineers fixed with increasingly complex electronic rider controls. The 800s were one-line-only motorcycles, so Motogp became a boring game of follow my leader.
At the same time sponsorship by tobacco companies was banned – and then a year later the global financial crisis hit. After those five glorious years, Motogp was in a mess – much less action and no money…