WINGING IT, AGAIN

Dear CR, So after reading the excellent article on wings on racing motorcycles through the ages, I have a question: Should we be calling these protuberances from fairings wings, aerofoils or – as I have heard done recently – winglets? I suppose that if an aerofoil has parts that move like an aileron, then one can truly describe it as a wing, but in other instances where a part does not move but the desired downforce is a static affair, then we should refer to the aero parts as an aerofoil only. And seeing as how the parts are still being allowed to continue in modern racing (yet, I notice upon reading the latest missives from GP bosses, not on the smaller class of bikes where surely their effect would be much more noticed in lap time improvement) I wonder if there are any other inventions from the glory days that we might see introduced into the modern era? I, for one, don’t relish the idea of watching somebody like Valentino Rossi on a supercharged four-stroke unless he wishes to contest Daytona or something similar on it. But then, we might find that our luck is in and we soon have a return to the blue haze days of a two-stroke grid full of 500cc factory machines. Ah well, we can all dream! Ron Turner-hapfield

Hello Ron, ahhh yes. You’re definitely preaching to the converted as far we are concerned! However, Rossi and the modern brigade might not be returning to that type of bike soon, but we’ve still got the like of ICGP et al. to go and see for our two-stroke haze fix! Tony

With all the uproar about ‘wings’ or ‘winglets’ in modern racing, many have conveniently forgotten that it wasn’t too long ago when the likes of Mike The Bike and even the pioneers at MV Agusta were getting the aero work down to a fairing-mounted art...