Diesels

[Hugh Janus]

Like Superbike racing before it, the King of the Baggers class has raised some eyebrows. But you can’t argue with 180 mph top speeds at Daytona! (MotoAmerica/Brian J. Nelson/)

I’m pleased that most of the people who’ve commented on my recent stories about Harley’s involvement in the new King of the Baggers (KOTB) roadracing class have shown willingness to accept it. But not accepting new classes has historical precedents.

Kyle Wyman heads Harley-Davidson’s factory effort in King of the Baggers. (Brian J. Nelson/)

When from 1988 onward four-stroke racing was given a fresh European basis as World Superbike, the folks involved in “real” racing (that is, FIM GP racing, which had been 100 percent two-stroke since 1975) dismissed Superbikes as “Diesels”—the implication being that Supers were heavy trucks and that four-strokes were lo-po industrial engines.

Related: Evolution That Made Today’s Sportbikes Possible

Fred Merkel won the first two championships in the then-new World Superbike series. (Cycle World Archives/)

Supers were also seen as derivative—they were created initially in exactly the same way that heavy touring bikes become KOTB racers—by bolting-on components already developed and perfected in “real” racing.

There was another source of friction—the aggressive promotion of Superbike as a class requiring floods of testosterone. As we know, as Superbike got its start in the US, the men who won the races on those wobbling, weaving, unsuitable monsters were the very ones who would shortly become world champions in GP racing: Eddie Lawson, Freddie Spencer, Wayne Rainey, and Kevin Schwantz.

Kawasaki’s KZ1000R groomed many US racers for Grand Prix success. (Cycle World Archives/)

There had already been a “testosterone test” in the US. Among the claims being made for early Superbike was that it required a special kind of rider: older, wiser, and somehow tougher than the pixies in dancing shoes who rose to the top on purpose-built GP racers (which, being engineered for the job, were so easy to ride). And for a time, the men at the top of US supers were definitely older, even perhaps wiser. But then one day someone at Kawasaki decided, “What the hell—everyone seems to rate this kid Spencer. Anyone got his number? I have a job for him.”

Spread two from our 1982 story on the Eddie Lawson replica Kawasaki KZ1000R. (Cycle World Archives/)

As soon as Freddie got on Kawasaki’s extensively reengineered and originally very unsuitable production literbike, he disappeared up the road from the older, wiser, tougher and nothing more was heard about special qualities being required to ride Superbikes.

As lifelong motorcyclist Bill Dutcher (for years the operator of Aspencade and a veteran of several kinds of racing, on and off-road) once said: “A motorcycle is a motorcycle. If you can ride one kind well, chances are you can ride them all.”

He could.

The new Superbikes of the 1970s were challenging to ride—as I watched the field round the old Riverside, California, Carousel, every single bike (including those claimed to have “European flair”) was weaving vigorously. A blame game developed between those who reckoned the 1960s-technology pipe chassis (steel-tube) were responsible, and those who saw Goodyear’s new slicks as the problem. It’s an old story that I first heard in 1969 from Harley’s then racing manager, Dick O’Brien, who commented not so much to me as to the air that, “Just when we get the goddamn chassis working half-decent, along come the tire people with more grip and we’re back in the shit.”

Goodyear had the means of defending itself—ever hear of Goodyear Aerospace? The chassis in question was quickly instrumented with multiple strain gages and a data recorder, then run around a test track at good speed by a professional rider. The data were processed through software intended to magnify and make diagnostically visible the chassis flexure. I was shown the resulting graphic in late fall 1978 and it was impressive. There was the extensively reinforced and gusseted Superbike chassis, writhing and twisting. The blame game quieted and in Japan, engineers prepared to design a new family of more capable production bikes.

Related: Works Motocross Bikes Of The Early ‘80s Were Insanely Exotic

1982 Kawasaki KZ1000R Eddie Lawson Replica. (Cycle World Archives/)

Superbike evolved quickly because the manufacturers realized that the more suitable their production bikes were for racing, the more easily they could be made to win races in modified form, covering the company name in glory and filling showrooms with eager buyers. The decision was made to produce a new generation of streetbikes that were no longer a lash-up of 1960s chassis, suspension, and tire limitations, set into multidimensional jiggling by twice the horsepower they were originally designed for. Instead they would incorporate what the manufacturers had learned the hard way in GP racing—stiffer, lighter chassis, suspension that did not lock up hitting the Daytona banking out of turn 5, and tires that did not turn to blackberry jam in eight laps (as they definitely did in 1982).

This was a truly wonderful result that benefited everyone, street riders most of all. Better motorcycles were designed and built when racing revealed the shortcomings of existing designs. Production-based racing was where design for street and design for race came creatively together.

The late 1980s delivered bikes like Honda’s CBR600F that allowed aspiring racers to get on the grid for a lot less money than the skyrocketing prices of 250 two-stroke would allow. (Cycle World Archives/)

The new designs of the later 1980s did in fact turn out to be much more raceable—so much so that regional racing clubs quickly improvised classes for them, in which the tremendous expense of reengineering the 1970s product for racing, having stronger swingarms fabricated, and buying $30,000 racing forks was no longer necessary. The basic rules were that you could upgrade tires, suspension, exhaust, and brake pads, and you could perform a clean-up of the original factory three-angle valve job, altering only the valve seat rings. The beauty of this was that for the price of a 600cc sportbike plus about $2,500 worth of aftermarket parts you could be on the grid. It was a revolution, the more so because at the same time, traditional designed-for-racing two-strokes were skyrocketing in price. The 250s that had ignited so many professional riding careers began at $1,147 (plus destination and setup) in the mid-1960s, but in the 1990s their soaring price was soon looking down at 20 grand.

That’s how it goes in racing. Classes are born, they mature, succumb to old age and decrepitude, and then die. New classes, of greater interest to spectators and manufacturers alike, take their place. The only “purity” that can exist within this set of facts is to remain a racing enthusiast rather than becoming a complaining old duffer who yearns for leather belt drive or to ride the Isle of Man TT with spare pushrods down one boot top and a spring compressor down the other. Times change, but the competitive spirit endures.

Source

[Pedro]

On that note in fake news, Lewis Hamilton joins a very competitive racing category: