Raising the height of the rear section to blend to the rider’s shoulder will likely yield the greatest immediate improvements. Stability would improve with downforce (negative lift) both through the general body shape and ground effects at lean angle. Fixed wings or canards are not as helpfulf as on a car chassis. Just as the least drag comes from a body that is elliptical at the front and conic in the rear, the downforce is increased by a shape that is curved at the bottom and flat or even concave at the top.

Electric motorcycles and small displacement bikes will benefit most from drag reduction. Perhaps the current 125cc 2-stroke class will be replaced by a 250cc 4-stroke Moto3. In the larger 600cc Moto2 and MotoGP downforce will be more of an issue. Limits on the amount of fuel for a race will drive improvements to overall drag.

Each designer and rider will have to sort out the best combinations for riding a given circuit on race day. The full fairing is not to be rejected out of hand but carefully applied. If nothing else there will be more room for sponsor logos.

“Nose and Tail” streamlining, as minimal as possible to still flow well, BUT with enough central gap to allow both “Hang-Off” and “Blow-Through” ??

There are a couple of things a BEV does well. Torque. Sound. Instant response. Um, thats about it, Oh, you can save the planet too. The thing that BEVs don’t do well at all is going fast for a long distance. For some reason that is exactly what people try to force the vehicle to do. Why? Dumb. Put bikes into 10-15mi races, you might not have more than half the entries DNF like at ttxgp last year, shit it might even end up like real racing. you can stuff the fans(if there are any) right next to the turns and they can listen to the tires. Put lots of turns in the course and the bikes may even do well compared to ICE.

A dustbin, or ff, isn’t going to make BEVs a real racing venue, much as I like forward thinking. Lets say that a dustbin/ff is a done deal. It makes a slow race slightly less slow, and sure as shit the promotor will add another lap, pounding that peg just a bit more. Current race bikes can hang 10-14kwh on a bike, it just isn’t very much energy. In a race like Isle of mann, 40min, it amounts to 15-20hp per hour. Lame. If you make it slippery, it will give you 10-20% ‘better’ numbers. The problem is that the numbers are so shitty in the first place that 20 points dont amount to much.

Cut the time in half, a 20min race, and the bikes can use 30-40hp per hour. cut it in half again, 60-80hp per hour, and all of a sudden the horsepower gap is closed, and you might actualy have some folks bumping elbows. 10 minute race is all that batt tech is able to do right now, a 40min race is exhibition(and a slow one at that!).
If you want the event to last longer, then make it a ten minute lap with a batt swap, and run it for 3,4 or five laps.

Ten minute lap.

See ya!

Brett

The most significant factor that people overlook is that the dustbin fairings were being raced at a time when most of the circuits were basically long, high-speed street loops. They were tracks where you would be running full speed for miles at a time, and hence could gain significant advantage from streamlining.

Modern circuits are not like that any more. The longest straight on the grand prix circuit is now a little over a kilometer, if I recall correctly. While streamlining would offer an advantage down the straight, round the back of the circuit – which generally tend to be tight and technical, and often designed on a computer – such a dustbin-style fairing could well be more of a hindrance than a help.

I am reminded of Honda’s first version of the RC212V 800cc MotoGP bike, which had so little fairing that they had to paint the sponsors colors onto the frame to actually get the full logo on the bike. Honda went for flickability over top speed, guess – wrongly as it happened – that the new formula would be about maneuverability rather than horsepower. Ducati came out and blew everyone away, using the extra horsepower (and the more streamlined fairing) to obtain an advantage.

This suggests that though the streamlining of modern race bikes could be improved (which is why the Ducati riders spend so much time in wind tunnels), it is unlikely to be changed radically. I am reminded of the opening scene of Mark Neale’s iconic movie Faster, where Peter Clifford and the WCM / Red Bull Yamaha team are testing a new fairing with a kind of “pilot whale” nose bump, looking for an aerodynamic advantage. They measured an advantage, but not a big enough one to cancel out the downsides. This is, as Jim rightly points out, because riders no longer keep the wheels in line, but are sliding (to a limited extent) round corners, hanging off the bike. The wheels in line style would hugely disadvantage a properly fast race bike with big horsepower.

In other words, race bikes would only adopt streamlining to the extent that it offered a benefit to the racer. Feet Forward designs are, in my view, extremely unlikely to be adopted in motorcycle racing, as the aim of modern race bike design is to put as little between the tire contact patch and the rider’s brain as possible. At Valencia, I asked Guy Coulon why we weren’t seeing any experimentation in front end design, and he said that it would confuse the riders, and therefore mean the bikes going more slowly. The riders can’t understand the feedback from a non-conventional design, and so such designs don’t get used.

If streamlined bikes required a radical rethink of riding style, then they are unlikely to be adopted. Freeing up the current aerodynamic restrictions would not cause a revolution, but would see some minor changes, especially around the tail section, as teams fight to cut down drag from turbulence.

Electric vehicles, on the other hand, do not have huge horsepower (or they don’t for very long, anyway), and so the advantage of streamlining might outweigh the loss in corner speed. Of course, the one track where the aerodynamics would offer a clear advantage for any kind of bike is the Isle of Man, which due to the nature of the course and its exposed location in the middle of the Irish Sea is probably the track where a dustbin fairing is likely to cause the most problems.

If I was experimenting, I’d probably buy an Aprilia RS125 and play with the aerodynamics on that, as I can see that in small capacity racing is where aerodynamics will pay off most.

Of course, there is another reason for not changing the aerodynamic rules, at least not in MotoGP. Roughly half of the money that is spent in F1 goes on aerodynamics, and opening up the rules would probably cause a spending war, unless the engine rules were also opened up to allow teams to make horsepower more cheaply (e.g. turbos or unlimited capacity. Or both.) After one round of major cost-cutting measures (though the question of just how much they cut costs by is debatable), opening up the rules to allow spending on aerodynamics is very unlikely. Despite the fact that Craig – quite rightly – points out that what we really need from our vehicles is radically improved fuel efficiency – whether that fuel be hydrocarbons or converted sunlight.

Cheers,

David

I can’t address the electric-specific rules as I’m a gear head, not an electron head. I’ve nothing against e-bikes and I’d be willing to run one but the powerplant would have to remain a black-box deal for me.

The question for me is if the rules that open up vehicle design will survive their meeting with all the different sanctioning organizations who seem to have resisting change (unless the change is actively detrimental and then they’ll encourage it) as one of their major goals?

I’d be thrilled to see some vehicle innovation take place and I wish we didn’t have to wait for e-vehicles to come along to get some of it. I’m not sure that racing with organizations that have often done their best to stamp out innovation any time it appeared (and who seem determined to continue doing that) is the way to do it.

Best of luck to you!

cheers,
Michael

Jim- Re: Royce’s changes to the rule that included mirrors – You have the power and ability to change that. The changes to the rules will be documented over time and when the Wiki closes in August, the contributions will be filtered for practicality with an eye toward inclusion.

Michael Czysz — you’re invited too. There’s room for riders, engineers, fans – everyone’s invited. Be the change.