Reality Racing

Reality Racing

TDC

KEVIN CAMERON

IS ANYONE BUT ME OLD ENOUGH TO remember the old TV show “Sea Quest” starring Lloyd Bridges? Bridges plays a sort of underwater private investigator, so the show was split between long clips of frogmen swimming and helicopters bobbing meaningfully overhead. Then my uncle popped the illusion by explaining how much cheaper it is to do this than to pay name actors to remember and deliver lines on elaborate sets built by skilled stage carpenters. “Sea Quest,” seen this way, was purely a cost-cutter.

The same is true of “reality TV” because there are no expensive actors, no cranky scriptwriters and no sets. Someone with a half-fancy shouldercarried camera is under orders not to make the result look too professional. What’s desired is that jerky, always a little out of focus, grainy look of a $40 phone camera—gritty, down-to-earth, real. Drab women, bruised by abusive boyfriends, blubber shamelessly. Drunks, lying on their bellies as porky officers cuff them, say unintelligible things. Irresistible.

But this, we’re told, is what the public really wants now. This is it! And, by the happiest of accidents, it’s dirt-cheap to produce.

Now, let’s consider motorcycle roadracing. Like a lot of other young men 40 years ago, I stayed up late torquing crankcase fasteners, cutting exhaust ports, welding pipes, trying for an edge for my rider. After 1984, U.S. racing went four-stroke, so now you also needed a Norton cam grinder, but you could still port your own cylinder head using a $1200 Superflow flow bench—power to the people. Despite that, all of us dreamed of titanium fasteners, long

rows of SIP Swiss jib borers and factory technicians in company caps singing the company song. We yearned to “do it properly” as we saw it.

We dreamed of such things because they existed, first at MV Agusta in 1950’s Italy, then at Honda, Yamaha and the others in Japan, and now at BMW, Aprilia and Ducati in Europe. The most beautiful and potent motorcycles ever built have come from their efforts to win races, and so have advances in design found in all production bikes today.

Racing is expensive, and there’s a worldwide economic depression on, especially in Europe and Japan. It’s unclear what the ultimate effect of this depression will be on our industry or even upon motorcycle design itself, but it certainly squeezes racing. On the world scene, introduced this year is the Moto2 class—replacement for the 250cc GP class that has existed since 1949. In order to engineer needed cost savings into this new class, its planners based it upon a slightly hotted-up Honda CBR600RR—a spec engine that would be the same for everyone. This, the notices for the class raved, would set free a torrent of chassis innovation by eliminating the expense of engine development. At present, it appears that many teams are turning to the Swissmade Suter chassis. A next step, the participants being willing, might be to make the Suter the only chassis in the series, saving teams even more money through economies of larger-scale production.

Now that Moto2 racing has begun, ecstatic commentaries testify to its superclose racing, its paint-tradin’, elbowjammin’, start-to-finish action. We are also told that this new kind of racing has crowds on their feet, shouting and cheering for favorites as they duck and weave for position. There are also those lesstalked-about crowd-pleasers: crashes.

One can’t argue with success. If this is the racing of the future, those raised on the older form of racing must respectfully stand aside. Manual typesetting was pushed aside by the Line-OType machine, which in turn has been made obsolete by the computer. Time’s arrow can fly in only one direction.

Meanwhile, in MotoGP, when Dani Pedrosa led earlier this season at Jerez, Spain, you knew that the motorcycle he rode represented the absolute maximum effort of Honda Motor Company, straining every fiber to achieve power, road-

holding and handling. Coming up from behind was Jorge Lorenzo on a motorcycle that was the highest expression of Yamaha’s considerable technology. The outcome of that contest interested me intensely because this was a clash of two of today’s greatest riders, experienced and determined, on the maximum motorcycles existing in the world. For me, that is Grand Prix racing.

Of course, the joke is on me and on those who think like me, because some technician dropped a decimal point when Pedrosa’s fuel-economy system was programmed, improperly driving it into its “green econo-mode” so that he was unable to carry the fight to Lorenzo. I hope such silliness can be eliminated so that MotoGP can return to being a straight contest of ability and speed. If image concerns require an economy run, may I suggest awarding prizes to those spectators who burned the least fuel coming from the greatest distance?

What next? In MotoGP, each rider gets only six engines per season to save money. This is a big change but represents a trend that will surely continue.

There are plenty of Moto2 teams at present but will that last? What if it, in its turn, becomes too expensive? The cost accountants will go back over their ledgers, looking for large line items they may be able to delete. Just as with “Sea Quest,” they will notice that “actors”—that is, riders—command top pay. Some of those accountants will surely have attended club races where anyone with eyes can see that the most exciting race of the day is the novice race. These riders, with zero racing experience, have no idea what they’re doing. They weave, collide, run off the track and pile up. Of course, nothing is proved because it’s just a track full of unknowns on jalopy bikes. But who cares? It’s a thrill-a-minute!

Then the truth burns through. This is it, the future of racing! The bikes cost nothing, the nameless pilots ride for the fun of it and the result of their inexperience is guaranteed traffic jams, four abreast into every corner and crashes that delight the general public! Who needs special bikes? Who needs name riders? PURE EXCITEMENT! U