Where are the game changers?

from Fast Bikes September 2022 issue

You and Yours

W O R D S > J O H N N Y M A C P I C S > H O N D A R A C I N G / M O R T O N S A R C H I V E

WHERE ARE ALL THE GAME CHANGE

Once upon a time, back in the good old days, you could safely count on there being a bike that came along and made all others old news. Bikes that moved goalposts and set new standards, such as the Honda Fireblade in 1992, the Ducati 916 in 1994, the Yamaha R1 in 1998 and 2009, the Suzuki GSX-R1000 in 2005, and the BMW S1000RR in 2010. They made us stop whatever it was we were doing at the time and recalibrate what we thought was the pinnace of performance and innovation. Such occasions occurred roughly once every two to three years, but since 2010 there hasn’t been a showstopper sportsbike. That’s not to say there hasn’t been significant advances in technology or evolution – today’s bikes are genuine improvements on their predecessors, especially in the green credentials department – but it is safe to say that all we have experienced in the last decade or more is evolution without a single case of revolution. Where have the poster bikes all gone? With possibly the exception of the Ducati Panigale V4 in 2018, today’s current crop of litre sportsbikes can be traced back in some cases almost two decades. Even in the case of the Panigale V4, it could be argued that while it was a brand-new bike, it only came about because the V-twin layout had reached what the engineers felt was the limit of possibility in terms of performance, so the switch to a V4 layout was still a case of natural evolution rather than revolution. The Suzuki got a new engine with variable valve timing five years

GERS?

Above: The original Blade was an unforgettable creation.

Right: Ducati’s carbon-framed Superleggera is a feat of engineering… and then some.

ago, but otherwise it’s the same basic formula as the original GSX-R1000 in 2001. Likewise, the Kawasaki ZX-10R has barely changed since its debut in 2004, with its engine still having the same bore and stroke today. The Honda Fireblade remained untouched for nearly a decade until a new look and a flawed ride-by-wire electronic system showed up in 2017 – probably the only reason another Fireblade swiftly followed in 2020. Yamaha’s R1 can be traced back to 2015, seven years ago, and today’s Aprilia and BMW are evolutions of their 2010 debutants.

In short, there hasn’t been anything new or groundbreaking from any of the manufacturers for some time, so why is this? Is it market demands? Well, if a lack of investment or appetite by the manufacturers was due to sales figures for sportsbikes dropping off over the past decade, we could point to the fact that since there hasn’t been a new game-changing bike from any of them to stimulate the market. What’s the point in buying a brand-new litre bike today when virtually the exact same bike can be bought second-hand for a fraction of the cost? Of course, it can’t be as simple as that, but it also cannot be denied that, for example, a 2022 GSX-R1000 is identical to a 2017 GSX-R1000, so where is the motivation to upgrade? Is it a case of build it and they will come?

Could it be that today, when we have reliable 200bhp, 200kg bikes that are loaded with electronic rider aids, we have reached the limit of what’s possible from an engineering/cost point of view? Or is it that we just don’t need any more performance full stop?

The cost argument is easy to delve into when you take a look at the money-is-noobject Ducati Superleggera V4, a bike built using only the most exotic materials to save about 30kg over the Panigale V4 it’s based on. It is undeniably the lightest superbike on the market today, with the highest power-toweight ratio of anything else that’s ever been put into production. It is a masterpiece of engineering and a joy to ride, but it is still ‘just’ a variant of the Panigale V4 that has sold in such small numbers due to its huge price tag, which proves that price point is critical. Bikes do have to be built to a price in order to sell in any meaningful quantity enough to make money.

However, the Superleggera’s existence does allow us to set aside the cost argument and understand what a world with 200bhp bikes that are 160kg fully fuelled would be like, and the answer is, of course, actually that despite being dynamically different to ride with a different way of communicating to the rider, it’s no more use on the road than a 200kg, 200bhp sportsbike... which leads me neatly to an obvious caveat for this entire stream of conscience.

Realistically, we reached the limit of what is usable on the road a long time ago, so all of this is purely me musing on why there hasn’t been a game changer for more than a decade. I’m scared that we will never have another 1992 Fireblade moment or a 2010 S1000RR moment again. The fact that improvements these days are usually made by reigning in a bike’s performance to make it faster – see Panigale V4 – should be a warning sign that we shouldn’t expect anything any time soon in terms of significant steps forward.

I feel at this point I should lift the mood and re-iterate my absolute love and appreciation of the current sportsbike and all those that came before it to get us to this point. I mean, what a time to be alive! V4s,

Carbon swinger, anyone?

Three winged wonders...

in-line fours, crossplane crankshafts, variable valve timing, endless electronic rider aids, semi-active suspension, alloy beam frames, frameless concepts, tubular frames, liberal use of once-exotic unobtanium materials, and even aerodynamic assistance are all on the menu today, and all are vegan-friendly thanks to planet-saving emission levels... which neatly leads me to my next point. Much of the recent development in motorcycle design has been forced via legislation for ever cleaner engines as a main priority, just so bikes can be sold. So, there has been a massive amount of innovation and effort gone into solving the toughest challenge of them all – how to get more from less... specifically, how to get more power from less fuel AND what fuel you burn to make it burn cleaner. A lot of work has been going on at a molecular level, and many great minds have been focused on how to make bikes meet legislation and still be exciting.

This has been successful, for the most part, but there have been casualties in the shape of the supersport category, so I suppose we should be grateful that we have what we have and stop moaning that we haven’t had breakthrough bike for more than a decade. One company that has been innovative on one hand yet cautious on the

Love it or loathe it, the H2 and H2R redefined our ways of thinking.

HALF OF ALL SUZUKIS SOLD IN 2008 WERE GSX-RS, AND NOW THE BRAND

DOESN’T HAVE A GSX-R.

Kawasaki’s awesome H2 motor has been put to use on many platforms. This is what full boost looks like...

other is Kawasaki. In 2015 it dropped the supercharged H2 on us at a time when 200bhp was unheard of, and openly admitted that supercharging was a solution to the challenge of producing more power with fewer emissions – but not until it had its fun with the H2 and H2R. Craig Watson, the UK sales and marketing manager for Kawasaki, reminded me that it is a a business first – and the public must get what the public wants.

“Game changers do still occur,” he said. “Remember the Ninja H2 in 2015 – it rewrote the rule book but was a line in sand, a moment in time that gave a hint on future model development.

“The Ninja H2 and H2R couldn’t be described as a volume seller, but the Ninja H2 SX was the real world evolution with Balanced Supercharger technology; a bike with 200hp but better fuel economy than a 140hp Ninja 1000SX, which is a genuine feat of engineering.

“The market has also changed, which can’t be ignored. It’s not as big as it was in, say, 2004, when we were selling thousands ZX-10Rs and ZX-6Rs in the supersport sector. The biggest sector in the market now is adventure sport. The Ninja 1000SX came out in 201 and since then has been our numberone selling bike. It’s never been knocked off

It’s sad to think that the GSX-R family has come to an end… at least for now.

Race bikes have traditionally aided showroom sales and model development.

the top, which tells you everything. Can our engineers build 300bhp bikes? Yes, they can, but we need to sell them. For us, development has gone down two avenues. The first is racing, and that’s what the ZX-10R is to us – it’s there to win championships. The second area of development nowadays is to make clean, environmentally-friendly bikes that people want to ride and enjoy on the road. Don’t forget, it’s a business.”

It’s a harsh reality that Craig highlights. When all is said and done, there’s no point in building something that nobody is going to buy. Half of all Suzukis sold in 2008 were GSX-Rs, and now the brand doesn’t have a GSX-R. The 1000 didn’t get updated to meet the Euro5 standards so is still a Euro4 spec bike, which means they all had to be registered by December 2020 or there was a 24-month dispensation to sell what’s left. It’s effectively been discontinued.

While that might all sound depressing, it is also true that all of today’s sportsbikes are circa 200bhp and circa 200kg, which is hardly dull. And while they all arrive at virtually the same point via different routes, the fundamental formula is the same.

Us journalists spend our time picking up on the nuances between the bikes, whether it be power delivery, electronics refinement, or handling characteristics, and form an opinion on which we prefer, or which we think is better suited to the road or track. The days of having one stand-out bike in the group which is head and shoulders above the others are gone, and there’s no sign or indication that this will return any time soon.

It’s the same story on the race track. If you take a look at the form in both productionbased classes right now, there is no one must-have bike if you want to bother the Superbike or Superstock podiums. Honda, BMW, Aprilia, Suzuki and Kawasaki all won races in the 2021 British Superstock season, and likewise, in the British Superbike season Suzuki, BMW, Honda, Ducati and Yamaha have all won races, which backs up the point that they’re all more or less the same.

Maybe there is another possibility in plain sight as to why the cycle of significant development on sportsbikes has slowed to a virtual standstill in recent times. The introduction of control tyres in 2008 and control ECUs in 2012 to superbike racing has meant pretty much any bike can win a superbike race, as last season results bear out. This change in regulation timed pretty much exactly with when we stopped getting game changers and the beginning of the downturn in sportsbike sales.

To be blunt, what’s the point of a manufacturer developing a significantly superior bike if they’ve then got to put it on the same tyres and ECU as everyone else on the grid? If manufacturers aren’t going to bring out new big bikes regularly anymore, it means they will race old models, like Honda did with the previous version of the Fireblade. It was still winning races in the

Race teams are marginally limited by control ECUs and tyres.

last year of its production in 2016, but what happens then? Are the people buying that sort of bike losing interest in the hardware because they’re used to it? For the people who run racing, it’s all about the show and providing entertainment in the form of close racing that control tyres and ECU’s contribute heavily to. They have no interest in providing motivation to bike manufacturers to push as hard as possible on motorcycle development for the purpose of going faster; for them, their show is more important than breaking lap records or bike sales.

The sport is still there and always will be, but where all the manufacturers were once producing bikes to go racing and then selling those bikes, today they are still going racing but aren’t selling them, and that is not sustainable. Just look at Suzuki. At the time of writing this, it has announced that as well as withdrawing from MotoGP, it is also pulling out of endurance racing. It has decided that racing no longer has a benefit, in terms of marketing power and brand awareness but also from an R&D perspective.

I am realistic enough to know that the market has changed, too, the demographic of today’s biker not being what it was in the glory days of brand-new bikes every couple of years. And I’m acutely aware that going back a couple of decades is going back to a whole different era in terms of the amount of young people coming in to motorcycling. I’m not apportioning all of the blame for a lack of new models and more revolutions in design instead of measured, incremental steps on the doorstep of the rule makers in the race paddock, but the timings do add up.

So, is that it? Have we reached the end of the line? Have we reached a point where a software update or an extra couple of teeth on a sprocket constitutes a new model?

I hope not, and I don’t believe it is. I prefer to be more optimistic than that, and have more faith in all the designers, engineers, and even the marketeers who need a ‘Halo’ bike for their brands.

You can’t stop progress, not least because as human beings we are hard-wired to always want more, so I do think it is inevitable that someone somewhere is, as I type this sentence, out there working on a project that is going to blow our minds and make us all think again.