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MARC MARQUEZ COLE SEELY HRC TECHNICAL DOMINANCE
THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PADDOCK
POWERED BY HRC
HRC
Honda Racing Corporation was created to win races. And it does.
Kevin Cameron
Honda Racing Corporation was created in September 1982, its highly focused purpose to win races and to work with Honda R&D to develop new technologies for Honda products. Its highest expression is constructing the tools a genius rider like Marc Marquez needs to express himself to the fullest.
Which is what happened at the Austin, Texas, round of MotoGP. Marquez, on an HRC Honda RC213V, topped three of the four practices then, in a stunning display of mastering chaos at the edge, set a new qualifying record to take pole position after his A bike failed and the Spaniard jumped pit wall to sprint back to the garage for his B bike to get a fast lap in as the clock ran out on the session. It was an amazing athletic performance all around.
HRC Vice President and MotoGP program manager Shuhei Nakamoto was beaming all over his face at the result, but his usual look is impassive, even grumpy. Is there drama here? Ducati is back. It led the first practice session at COTA and had finished second and third at Qatar. The other Japanese companies know their place in the MotoGP pecking order, but to Honda, Ducati is an unpredictable upstart—pirates! So I wonder: Was Marquez pulling brakies in qualifying, wobbling and chattering across the curbing, and putting a foot on the ground for fun? Or was it more serious?
During the race weekend I was one of a group of journalists invited to speak with HRC engineers, one on the roadrace team, and three assigned to HRC’s return to US Supercross, contesting a national at Houston’s NRG Stadium.
Honda and HRC have won many Grand Prix championships since Freddie Spencer’s soocc GP title in 1983, but in the US, HRC parted company with American Honda in roadracing and supercross in the early 2000s. Now HRC is back in supercross, and it was explained to me that its role, for the moment, is “mainly managerial and organizational.” At Houston I could see this in machine preparation. After each event, the bikes are completely torn down, all consumable parts are replaced and everything is inspected, reassembled, and verified in function There is no guessing. There is
AIRING IT OUT: Honda's Cole Seely won in Houston the night before Marc Marquez ruled in Austin.
no, “It’s probably okay.” Drawer after drawer of gleaming new parts make certainty easier. One HRC engineer is the “engine guy,” Masamitsu Hirashima, another is the “chassis guy,” Satoshi Matsushima. It is Masa who plugs in the laptop to check engine data. Sensors for chassis data—Toshi’s area—are fitted only for testing.
Harshness is the quality of an MX machine that sets the upper limit to rider performance. Is harshness spikes of acceleration somehow getting past the suspension? Is it fatigue caused by vibration, transmitted by chassis
stiffness? When I asked these HRC men, “What is harshness?” they laughed, and one said, “We’d like to know!”
When I asked rider Cole Seely about harshness, he said, “I don’t know about that, but when we get a new frame, I don’t race it until I’ve got six hours of riding on it. It softens up a lot.”
What will it take? Threeaxis accelerometers on bars and footpegs, followed by frequency analysis and long series of comparative tests? NASA-style rider biometric monitoring?
AFTER EACH EVENT, THE BIKES ARE COMPLETELY TORN DOWN, ALL CONSUMABLE PARTS ARE REPLACED, AND EVERYTHING IS INSPECTED, REASSEMBLED, AND VERIFIED IN FUNCTION. THERE IS NO GUESSING. THERE IS NO, “IT’S PROBABLY OKAY.”
THE BATTLE: Valentino Rossi trailed in Austin but bumped with Marquez in Argentina to win. The Italian led in points after three rounds.
This is HRC’s meat—finding out what is actually happening and using that knowledge to advance technology.
Ryan Dungey and KTM have dominated 450 Supercross this season, but the consistent, improving HRC bikes have been on the podium every time. The evening after our conversation, Cole Seely won in 450, building up a 13-second lead then conserving his energy. In MotoGP, it is tire conservation around which race strategy revolves, but in SX, it is the rider himself who must be conserved—perishable organic material in both cases!
The HRC riders study and discuss videos of their own and their rivals’ performances. Some use has been made in SX of Dartfish, TV software that allows two sports performances to be overlaid to reveal their smallest differences.
In the later 1980s and ’90s, Yamaha and HRC duked it out in 500CC Grand Prix. Wayne Rainey ruled on Yamaha, then Kevin Schwantz was champion on Suzuki in that 1993 transition year then Mick Doohan made it five in a row. Championships result from systems of operation, worked out by trial and error.
HRC exists in racing to remove as many unknowns as possible. The riders on the podium are standing on high ground created by such systems. No one wins because he “deserves” to.
I was able to speak with Takeo Yokoyama, Honda’s MotoGP technical director. When I asked about the current hot area of chassis-flexibility development, he parried by saying that this is controlled by the number of spec Bridgestone tires made available for the few permitted annual test sessions.
Flexibility is central to lap-
time improvement now. A very rigid chassis—once considered so essential—cannot “spring” enough to make the tires follow high-frequency pavement roughness at large lean angles. Atoo-rigid chassis skates, losing grip without warning, as Ducati’s carbon “pyramid” of 2009 did too often for Casey Stoner. But flexibility of the wrong kind encourages chatter or even instability.
Detailed study, not shots in the dark, is the key here.
Tire quotas cannot prevent chassis testing on hydraulic shakers like those used for tracktest simulation in Formula 1, and MotoGP teams have the necessary knowledge of “secret” tire properties from the data they incessantly collect. The pioneer in this area is MTS in Minneapolis, each of whose labs has high-pressure hydraulic fluid plumbed in.
Marc Marquez commented that no one could push at COTA because of the threat to front-tire life presented by the constant turning in the “flip-flops.” Marquez’s job was a ticklish affair of staying ahead of Valentino Rossi and especially the Ducati men (he won from Andrea Dovizioso by just 2.35 seconds) without making his front tire go on strike in the last laps. Rossi’s “destroyed” front tire lost him the long back-andforth battle with Dovi.
Yamaha is surely considering some basic change of strategy.
Its years-long dependence on the long-and-low setup required for corner-speed-based rider style has not prevailed against Honda’s improved chassis, high braking stability, and horsepower. Yamaha has for more than a decade relied on the rideability of deliberately lower engine tune, but the rapid roll ability fostered by the Mi’s reverse engine rotation compromises its braking stability. Corner speed, five-time soocc world champion Mick Doohan once observed, works only until the tires fade, after which you must revert to something like Marquez’s turn-it-at-the-apex style.
In supercross, speed through series of whoops is pretty much fixed. You pick your sequence (doubling, singling...), and if you go slightly too fast or slow, you land long or short, losing time. That makes it more a contest of
staying strong enough to keep your timing precise. When I uttered the word “carburetor” to the SX engineers, they laughed and one asked the air, “What’s a carburetor?” The instant response of fuel injection is essential to the timing of bursts of power necessary to keep speed up despite the rear tire’s interrupted contact with the ground. SX is playing the violin flawlessly while being worked over by thugs.
We love racing’s intense drama of rider versus rider, its contrast of styles, the exotic machinery.
Yet we have an unspoken awareness that, behind the scenes, racing is a grinding contest. Small teams dream of trumping money with ideas, but in general the big question is, “Which manufacturer can assign the most engineers and budget to key areas?” HRC’s success in racing brings to mind the old song “Paying the Cost to be the Boss.” CTU
SMALL TEAMS DREAM OF TRUMPING MONEY WITH IDEAS, BUTIN GENERAL THE BIG QUESTION IS, “WHICH MANUFACTURER CAN ASSIGN THE MOST ENGINEERS AND BUDGET TO KEY AREAS?”
