First Movers

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Kevin Cameron has been writing about motorcycles for nearly 50 years, first for <em>Cycle magazine</em> and, since 1992, for <em>Cycle World</em>. (Robert Martin/)

In our fast-moving world, it’s standard wisdom to assume that being first at something provides such a head start that the competition may never catch up, a business holeshot. The investment world calls this the first-mover advantage. Yet when it comes to racing technology, history proves it doesn’t always work out.

Back in 1973, Yamaha decided to enter the 500 Grand Prix roadracing class. Its four-cylinder two-stroke used reed intake valves, the induction system derived from its recent work with off-road bikes. After some intensive development Yamaha provided Giacomo Agostini with a bike, resulting in his winning the 1975 500 World Championship. On the other hand, Suzuki rightly understood that a two-stroke with a rotary-disc intake could deliver more power. Using this technology it developed a more powerful 500, on which Barry Sheene won the next two world 500 titles, in 1976 and ’77. Yamaha counterpunched, altering its approach to make not more power, but rather more usable power. Kenny Roberts proved just the man to take its 0W-48/53 to the next three world 500 titles—1978-80.

Honda Tries the Oval-Piston NR500

In the meantime, Honda had decided to teach the world a lesson in four-stroke supremacy, building its ultra-high-revving oval-piston NR500. Its ambitious goal was 165 hp at 23,000 rpm. But the racetrack only cares about results, and it proved cheaper and faster to develop increased power from the two-strokes rather than from Honda’s four-stroke. Although Yamaha reached 150 hp in 1981, fading tire grip limited advancement. Suzuki, further developing its disc-valve square-four two-stroke, took the next 500 titles with Marco Lucchinelli (1981) and Franco Uncini (1982).

At this point, with Yamaha and Suzuki locked in a two-stroke horsepower race, 500 GP looked like a closed club, its two experienced players in a commanding position. Game over?

Not so fast! Yes, those two manufacturers could rightly claim first-mover advantage, but there’s more to racing than just horsepower. Honda now made a complete switch, fielding its own two-stroke in 1982, built with a novel approach. Honda’s motocross department engineer, Shin’ichi Miyakoshi, saw that the established high-horsepower bikes were actually defeating themselves, their abrupt torque curves destroying tires in about ten laps, after which grip ebbed away. Why not, he reasoned, forget horsepower and build a bike designed to make its tires last longer?

Lighter Is Righter: The NS500 Saves the Day

The result was the light, lower-powered NS500 triple, which carried Freddie Spencer to the 500 world championship in 1983. While Yamaha and Suzuki were the first movers when it came to applying two-stroke engines in the 500 class, it was Honda, the latecomer, who prevailed that year, having had the opportunity to understand the mistakes and limits of its opponents.

Something similar had happened earlier, in the development of air-cooled radial aircraft engines. Both the Army and Navy had radials under development, as did some contractors, but each was struggling with a particular problem: poor cylinder cooling, crankcase cracking, or crankshaft weakness. Then newly formed Pratt & Whitney entered the fray; its engineers saw the strengths and weaknesses of the others’ designs and drew up an engine that incorporated only the best-proven features. The moment its R-1340 Wasp went on test, all of its competitors’ projects were obsolete, and were canceled forthwith.

In a way, this reminds me of those who avoid buying anything in the first year of its production. Sometimes, to hit the market when planned, a product will be released with “a few little problems” still to be brought under control. By the second sales year, our conservative buyers presume, such problems have been resolved, and they’re ready to take delivery.

If you want to succeed, you need to see the big picture, but that’s hard to do when you are struggling with the details. From 2004 on, Honda kept adding more and more horsepower to its MotoGP bike, negatively affecting its handling. This continued until Shuhei Nakamoto saw the pattern and had an idea: Let’s try a softer, more flexible chassis. You could see the difference on the track from mid-2010, and the following year Casey Stoner won 10 races and the championship.

When MotoGP changed formats in 2002, Yamaha had indifferent results in the first two seasons. Riders complained of a shortfall in tire grip during acceleration. So the race shop put noise and vibration specialist Masao Furusawa in the hot seat (he had designed the engine-mounting system for the RD400 and made Yamaha’s snowmobile suspensions work). He didn’t waste time appointing study groups, scheduling donut-eating committees, or devising metrics to measure progress toward annual goals. He had an idea, and he acted. Furusawa saw that all four pistons of an inline-four with a 180-degree “flat” crank start and stop together twice every revolution. The inertia torque required to do that must be either upsetting rear tire grip or interfering with the rider’s ability to feel it. When an engine with 90-degree crankpin spacing was tested, one with much lower inertia torque, grip improved. Combined with Valentino Rossi’s skill, Furusawa’s “crossplane” crankshaft machines won a string of MotoGP championships.

Pounding away on details is necessary, but is not in itself sufficient for success. Someone perceptive must see and understand the big picture, and actually have fresh ideas about what’s needed.

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