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(old article from the looks of it)
http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/12645/
Dude, You Gotta Watch the Bikes!
Written by: Greg White
Charlotte, Nc – 8/25/2004
If you are an avid viewer of SPEED Channel, then you know that we have a lot of automobile programming. We show a variety of race programs from the coveted high technology of F1 (Formula One) to the off the showroom floor production cars of SPEED World Challenge. Now, watching cars go around a track can be fun on the first lap and perhaps the last, but in my humble opinion, week in and week out, it lacks some real excitement.
If you are a real RACE fan -- someone who likes to watch races unfold in front of your eyes, not wait for a yellow flag or pace car to decide things, then motorcycle roadracing is what you are looking for. If you are craving good, fast, clean (most of the time), seat-of-the-pants racing, then motorcycle roadracing is what you are looking for.
I love auto racing like F1 and SPEED World Challenge, but pound for pound you cannot beat two, four, six, even eight motorcycles going at it all the way to the checkered flag. In a recent AutoWeek Magazine interview, even the great F1 Champion Michael Schumacher said “…if you want to watch racing, watch motorcycles.”
First of all, there is something that can make racing really exciting – it’s called passing! Week in week out, lap in lap out, there is always passing in road racing. One reason for all the passing is simply the size of the vehicles. With the smaller stature of motorcycles, there is much more room on a race track to race. Often times in a race, you will see a gaggle of 600cc based machines going five wide into a turn, a sight that will put your heart in your throat.
Let me take you through a typical AMA Superbike series professional road race. Let’s say you have a grid of 40 machines, revved up to 14,000 rpm, eyes focused on the starting light with the intensity of a sharpshooter about to earn his paycheck. The light goes green. Now, imagine 40 machines storming into turn one like a heard of gazelle trying to escape the deadly clutches of a lion jockeying for position to be the first to arrive. The riders’ wrist at max pull for full acceleration with the rear tire spinning and bucking in protest. Rushing up towards the front tire is the first corner. An acrobatic series of maneuvers is about to take place, and all in front of your eyes.
You witness the riders body go from a full tuck to sitting up. At that moment the right wrist rolls out of the throttle, fingers grab the front break, left hand fingers extend to work the clutch. All the while, the feet start to dance. Right foot moves on the peg to work the break, while the left foot positions itself to work the downshifts. But that is not all you can spy, the riders head works the line of sight, from the entry of the corner to the apex to the exit point. Body position changes to manage the forces translating though the stiff chassis, with legs flexing, arms and shoulders moving.
But perhaps the most exciting thing and the most important part of motorcycle roadracing is going from straight up and down to full lean angle in a matter of milliseconds. The only way to turn a motorcycle is to lean it over. This action alone defines motorcycle road racing more than anything else. Riders knees touch the ground acting as an outrigger to tell ‘em just how much lean angle they are carrying, in some cases the angle is so extreme elbow’s actually touch ground as well. This is also the time when man and machine are most vulnerable to the forces of Mother Nature, the time when keeping the motorcycle from crashing means you have managed to negotiate this art form correctly.
The next part of the process is getting power to the ground. Now, think about this for a moment, the total amount of rubber touching the road on a motorcycle roadracing bike is the same size as the footprint of a size ten shoe. So the job now is to twist the grip and try to get all 200 ponies from the crank to the ground and accelerate without sending yourself to the moon. A ham-fisted rider can launch themselves well over ten feet in the air in what is called a “High Side” crash -- by far the most exciting of crashes fans love and hate to see.
So, here comes turn two with the rider performing all the actions noted above … but he has 39 riders chasing him. Not only that, but he has one rider on the inside showing a wheel and another on the outside trying to get a better drive to out break his opponent into the next corner.
This goes on corner after corner, lap after lap, race after race.
If this lights your fire, you need to check this stuff out. So far this season, we have three great racing series airing on SPEED -- AMA Superbike Series, World Superbike and MotoGP. The AMA series is a domestic series using production-based motorcycles. You can actually purchase a bike from your local dealer, put a couple grand into it and go racing. World Superbikes are similar to AMA Superbikes, just done on the world stage.
Then there is MotoGP.
MotoGP is the F1 of motorcycle racing. MotoGP separates itself from the other series by only allowing “Prototype Machines” to compete. MotoGP bikes are full of “unobtainium” and are the next generation of street bikes. If you see a new transmission in F1, you might be able to get it on the “two generation” down the road $300,000 Ferrari that you cannot afford. However, in the world of motorcycles, you can see a swing arm (the arm that connects the rear wheel with the main part of the frame) on a MotoGP bike this year and next year that technology is on a production based machine. So, not only are you watching great racers go as fast as humanly possible, but you are looking at new, experimental technology that actually shows up in your garage.
There are so many great stories to tell in all the series for this season, but perhaps I will use another time to tell those. For now, if you enjoy RACING and want to see what real racing looks like, you can check out AMA Superbike Series, World Supebikes, and MotoGP on SPEED If you give it a chance, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
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