 | |
| World Champion Stefan Bradl on a cooler racebike than most of us ever will ride, yet something that is barely a starting point for a front-line Superbike World Championship contender. |
Part of the mythology of Superbike racing is that the machines are related to the motorcycles available at the local dealership. It is an attractive mythology for many reasons.
It makes the racing seem accessible to the fans in a way that GP racing cannot. A Superbike, it seems, shouldn't be impossible for someone to build in their garage, or at least at the local race shop. Obviously, there will be a few unobtanium bits, but the fundamental chassis, engine and suspension are comprehensible and recognizable.
And for marketing purposes, it is desirable for the fans to believe that the performance of the machine on the track reflects the performance of the machine they can purchase and ride.
A nice belief system, indeed. And yet, sometimes you get a glimpse into the reality of Superbike racing and you realize how much of that mythology really is exactly that.
Recently, I had the opportunity to ride on the track the 2016 Honda CBR1000RR and a 2016 Aprilia RSV4 RR, back-to-back.
I took the Honda out first, because Hondas always seem to be friendly and comfortable mounts for track days as well as intensely practical street machines. And the CBR1000RR was exactly what I thought it would be: rangy and comfortable, a bit large but still flickable, stable and fast, if not the fastest-revving thing. Still, if I hadn't ridden anything else, I would have been thrilled at the CBR's performance, and if I am honest with myself, I still am. A wonderful sportbike.
But ...
The Aprilia made the Honda seem like a sport-touring machine. The Aprilia was tiny, insanely quick and responsive, torquey and revvy all at the same time. The bike felt like it was hard-wired into the pavement, riding in it, not over it. An entirely different level of performance from the Honda. If the CBR felt like a streetbike sharpened up for track duty, the Aprilia felt like a racebike tamed for street duty.
I got off the Aprilia and thought, how does anyone beat this thing on a Honda?
And yet, you look at the results of World Superbike in 2016, and that is exactly what happened. Aprilia had exactly one podium. BMW had zero. Yamaha had one, MV Agusta had zero. Honda, with its big, cushy, friendly CBR1000RR, had 10 podiums and a win, third-best of all the manufacturers. Granted, it was a long way to Ducati's second-place finish in the Manufacturers Championship and 23 podiums. But Honda was a long way clear of the manufacturers below it.
And that wasn't the only time the Honda seemed to punch above its weight category. That big, friendly CBR1000RR ran up front at the Suzuka 8 Hours against some insanely advanced Yamaha YZF-R1s and new Kawasaki ZX-10Rs. Honda's riders in the British Superbike series took fourth and fifth in the Championship there, and Troy Herfoss won the Australian Superbike Championship.
Riding the stock Honda CBR1000RR provides a whole new respect for the development that teams like MuSASHi and Ten Kate have done on the racebikes. Every part has been looked at, every performance parameter refined, and it is awe-inspiring to consider how far those incredibly talented tuners took that stock machine and refined it into a race- and championship-winning machine. It may still say CBR on the gas tank. But that's not even where the gas tank is anymore. The MuSASHI, the F.C.C. TSR Honda, the Ten Kate Honda Superbikes are racebikes, and what those tuners have done with the stock machine is something to marvel at.
(btw, lest this read like a Honda love-fest, I would say the exact same things about the Yoshimura teams in the U.S. and in Japan who were racing a GSX-R1000 that was nearly as old as the CBR1000RR. Yoshimura did stunning things with the old platform, and deserves the same respect and admiration as the Honda tuning squads.)
It will take a while for even those talented tuners to bring the replacements for those teams to competitiveness. Both Honda and Suzuki have brought new Superbikes to the table for 2017. Each are starting from scratch, more or less. Ten Kate showed up at the first winter tests with a bike that they had worked on for less than two weeks. There will be big gains at first. But the fine honing of the blade into a race-winning package is likely to take longer, half a season, maybe longer.
I can wait. I can, more than ever, truly appreciate the task that Honda and Suzuki have in front of them. And when they succeed, I will appreciate their accomplishments even more.
