Monday, September 4, 2017

Factory Proximity





















Dan Linfoot, Honda Racing British Superbike Team, Druids Hairpin, British Superbikes, 2017. The flames erupting from the exhaust aren't just spectacular to look at. They hint at something deeper, something that is relevant to the very core of professional racing.


Linfoot, like most other professional racers on the new 2017 Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade, had struggled, with little in the way of help coming from Japan. At this round, he qualified third, led Race One and took his first podium of the season.

After the qualifying news conference, we spoke about a comment he'd made - that he'd gone to Japan to ride the Honda Fireblade put together by Moriwaki Motul Racing for the Suzuka 8 Hours. Linfoot had just gotten back from testing the bike, and he said he'd tried to get his team to make the BSB bike react like the Suzuka bike.

Linfoot said what he got most from the Suzuka test was a feeling that he wanted replicated in the BSB machine. Specifically, he wanted a smoother, more direct response to the throttle, which would make it easier for him to dial in the power and get out of turns more quickly. It is an axiom of racing of any sort: The pilota who gets on the power earliest wins.

"I told the team, the feel of the Suzuka bike - that's what I want this bike to feel like," Linfoot said.

The flame coming from the exhaust could be an indication that the team, unable to use electronics to dial in throttle response, had resorted to some old-time tuning techniques like richening the mixture to avoid lean on-off throttle response. It's crude and inefficient, but when you're banned from using more sophisticated techniques, you use what you've got.

Linfoot isn't the only Superbike rider who went to Japan and came back impressed by the machinery they rode, even though in some cases the spec of the Suzuka 8 Hours bikes were nearly identical to the spec of the machine they rode in series like World Superbike.

It is the phenomenon of Factory Proximity. Not all the information the factory knows leaves the building, the series or sometimes the country. As one BSB racer told me, "If Honda wanted to win World Superbike, they'd be winning World Superbike." Obviously, what Honda knows about making the new Fireblade competitive isn't transferring to Europe. 

Linfoot made it clear that the Honda at Suzuka was a much better machine. Alex Lowes liked the Suzuka 8 Hours Yamaha far better than his WorldSBK machine.

It is one of the fascinating subplots of racing, that information goes as far as it needs to go to achieve a company's greater goals. And winning at all costs isn't always the goal. To get that information, that data, that first-hand experience with the front-line weapon, the closer you get to the factory, the better.

 

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