We stand on our own feet
By TMX Archives on 18th Sep 08
JD, after avoiding hurricane Ike during his break in the USA, re-visits the question: Does racing still improve the breed?
A FEW weeks back the T+MX Page 5 editorial column posed the question, "Does racing still improve the breed?”
It was inspired by spotting an old (British) motorcycle maxim, "Racing improves the breed!” which I pointed out was a phrase no doubt coined by some devious Black Country factory team manager trying to wheedle a few extra quid from the notoriously fiscally tight management of Norton, AJS, Matchless, Francis Barnett or whatever to boost his road-racing squad's strength.
In fairness, as all motorcycles in the days when Britain ruled the motorcycling roost (and yes, that was indeed a long, long time ago) there was a deal of truth in the saying. All competition bikes of the time, whether road-racing, scrambling or trials were, to a lesser or greater degree, variations of production road bikes. The factory comp shops obviously tuned, tweaked and beavered away in their basements, making extra horsepower here, better brakes there, lighter and stronger components etc, etc and invariably these mods, if successful, eventually filtered back to the road bikes – hence, "Racing improves the breed!”
So, I wondered if the truth was still true today. Frankly, I decided the answer is ‘probably not!' In these days of hyper specialisation it is difficult to see how the development of the modern trials bike, to take an extreme example, could possibly have any effect on a manufacturer's road bike.
Interestingly, in a recent issue of American quality weekly mag Cycle News, esteemed MotoGP journalist Michael Scott asks exactly the same question. I can't believe that Scott, a man with a mind of his own and definitely the scourge of the knee-scraping paddock, reads T+MX (although maybe he is a secret off-road fan) so this fascination must clearly be a case of great minds thinking alike – given that I posed the question first!
Mike Scott's piece is concerned purely between the relationship of the development of MotoGP machines in relation to road bikes. Interestingly, having read the piece, I am not really too sure where Michael believes motorcycle development is heading.
He starts off pretty sure that yes it does but by the end has convinced himself that actually no it doesn't. That there is a relationship between competition machine and road bike development but that it runs these days on a parallel course rather than with any direct link. Blunt as ever, and Scott never holds back any punches, he even offers the crumbs that by having a tentative link between mundane machines and the factory racers it actually ‘justifies' factories going racing, rather than just admitting that they love burning millions just for the fun of it.
He even drags F1 into the equation (as did I) pointing out that this business long-since lost any relationship with normal motoring, save for the fact that the vehicles tend to have four-wheels. And as an aside, what a joy to see the rookie driver in the Minardi (re-badged Tauro Rosso) win last weekend!
Re: Improving the breed – the ultimate question is really, "Does it matter?” Does it matter a monkeys whether or not developing an off-road racing machine has any effect whatsoever on a given factory's road bikes.
I believe that it depends on your perspective. Maybe you are trying to convince yourself that the results of racing has an effect on your road bike machine sales? Maybe you really believe that Joe Public thinks he is getting a genuine spin-off from Valentino Rossi's results? These are questions that I can't answer.
All factories pay lots of people lots of money in order to justify (or otherwise) their racing and marketing strategies. And depending on whether the year is 2007 or 2008 these people will come up with two very different answers – in order to justify their existence. If they trotted the same answer.
I personally still don't think that modern competition advances road bike machines (or sales) significantly. On the other hand I don't think that it has to any more. Motocross, trials and enduro have evolved into such highly specialised sports that they merely develop in their own way. And specialist manufacturers have evolved along with them such as KTM, Gas Gas, Husky, Sherco, TM, etc, etc. That there is money to be made in these sectors is obvious by the way that the major Japanese manufacturers stay involved in off-road.
So does it actually matter these days? As far as off-road goes I think we are fine. The industry as a whole is currently more than big enough to stand on its own two feet so I don't think we have to worry too much.
The days of dear old Joe Metalworker chugging to the daily grind on his British Bagonails are long gone – thank goodness!