THE FIVE BIKES THAT MATTER THIS MONTH
From BSB winning Yamaha R1s to blown Triumph Bobbers.
There are just two Yamaha R1s in BSB, but as Bike goes to press, one is leading the championship and the other is fighting for third. Not bad for a machine based on a six year old road bike. So how does the old R1 manage to beat BMW M1000RRS and V4 Ducatis?
‘We’ve been flat-out with changes in the last year,’ says Chris Anderson, the technical director of MCAMS Yamaha and crew chief to one of its riders, Tarran Mackenzie. ‘The Yamaha wants to wheelie [the Ducati and BMW S1000RR have contra-rotating cranks to help reduce this] so we built a different spec engine to bring down the torque and increase the power. We’ve got a new cylinder head spec, new cams, new air-filters with different bell-mouths and a new exhaust that’s the same as the factory WSB bike’s. We’ve done lots of dyno work too.’
The result is an engine that puts out around 240bhp which Chris hopes will be enough to fight the Ducatis at the faster tracks without wheelieing as soon as the riders touch the throttle. ‘You have to remember our bike comes straight from the showroom of Raceways Motorcycles [owned by the team boss, Steve Rodgers],’ says Chris. ‘Unlike the Ducatis, which are £180,000 from the factory, you just pour petrol in ours and away you go. When you see their bike in pieces, especially the engine, you can tell it’s a race bike. So it has an edge. ‘At Brands, last season, when they went over that brow after Surtees, the Ducatis had something we were missing. That’s why we developed more of a screamer, with less torque [but more top-end power].’ This clearly suited Jason O’halloran, who won all three races at the first round at Oulton Park. But when he tested it in preseason, Tarran Mackenzie didn’t like it and wanted something more manageable, so Chris came up with another option. ‘We built him an engine nicknamed The Shitter, which goes back two steps from The Screamer – it’s got more torque lower down and 15bhp less at the top. It’s transformed Tarran. When Jason won the first race at Oulton Park, Tarran finished less than a second behind him, and it’s usually his worst track of the season. At Knockhill he got two podiums.’
The chassis has had some changes too. One of the key problems was the head angle was not adjustable. The factory Yamaha World Superbike team solved this by just milling the headstock and fitting an adjustable steering tube, but you’re not allowed to remove chassis material in BSB. ‘I solved the problem my own way,’ says Chris, ‘and developed a system where we can move the whole head tube forward and back and change the angle too. So we’ve got the same adjustability as the factory bike, but without removing material’
The link with the factory Yamaha WSB squad in Italy is another reason why MCAMS manage to compete. Though MCAMS is a professional outfit, they only have two full-time staff and modest resources compared with a factory team.
‘We work closely with the Italians,’ says Chris, ‘especially Riccardo Tisci, who’s the factory chassis development man. But it’s not just one way traffic, they’ve got our gearbox, for example.’ The gearbox is designed to ensure riders never hit neutral accidentally. Instead of the usual racing arrangement of one-up, five-down, the MCAMS bikes have all six gears down, with neutral engaged by a lever on the handlebar. ‘The factory team are testing our gearbox now,’ says Chris. ‘At Navarra [one of WSB’S Spanish rounds] there are five first gear corners, so you’re going through neutral 150 times per race and you’re going to hit it. Our gearbox stops that.’
‘We built Tarran an engine nicknamed The Shitter, which goes back two steps’