Kawasaki's Grand Prix Future?
KAWASAKI'S GRAND PRIX FUTURE?
ROUNDUP
FIRST SIGHTING OF KAWAsaki's fledgling MotoGP entry came this past February in Sepang, Malaysia, with veteran World Superbike competitor Akira Yanagawa at the controls of a ZX-7RR-based development mule. Thus began a plan to contest some MotoGP races later this season with a 990cc four-stroke, and the whole series next year.
More recently, the latest evo lution of this bike finished third in the Experimental class at the All-Japan Road Race Champi onships. At that race, the ma chine appeared with a triangular central nose air intake, but the Superbike-style rectangular air box ports could still be seen in the production chassis beams, suggesting that this was still an ad-hoc prototype. Power will come from a classic, transverse inline-Four.
An artist's rendering of the "Ninja ZX-RR" has also ap peared. Press release commen tary says that instead of the "streamlined shape" of Superbikes (and of the All-Japan mule, above), the coming GP bike will employ "an aerody namic approach that aims to eliminate turbulent airflow through the use of its strategi cally located edges."
The fact that the illustration appears to lack any exhaust system shows how far it is from reality. Further, the idea that edges fight turbulence puzzles the aero people whom I asked about this. Sharp edges are a fa vorite of stylists and, evidently, the general public because they suggest the shapes of superson ic fighters or jagged stealth air craft. The drawing shows a front wheel fairing integrated into the main bodywork and covering most of each brake disc. (The test mule has a conventional fender). A chin-mounted oil cooler exhausts heated air through a slot beneath the fair ing. All is points and angles.
Motorcycle aerodynamics could be greatly improved (pres ent drag coefficients resemble those of bread vans), but the problem isn't a lack of ideas but rather FIM regulations dating to 1958, which ban almost all streamlining behind the rider.
The continuing Japanese fi nancial fallout has forced small er producers Kawasaki and Suzuki to seek economies in a joint-development alliance. Be cause of this, Kawasaki's lack of new models and a Superbike that remains the oldest design running, I doubt Big Green can spend big green on a full GP program. Rather, I see these ef forts as a public-relations at tempt to build interest in future Kawasaki models, in the hope that faithful buyers will not switch brands in the meantime.
Although Kawasaki originally established itself in the market as
a super-performance producer, it has treated racing as something that can be turned on or off ac cording to the policy of the mo ment. The promising KR500 GP bike, with its aluminum mono coque chassis, came and went in four seasons. The company briefly raced an innovative 250cc GP bike in 1995, but when it was not immediately successful, it dis appeared. When Kawasaki's U.S. KR250/750 roadrace program ended in 1977, the team's experi enced engineer, KazuhitoYoshida, was sent off to Indonesia to apply his unique knowledge to produc ing step-throughs in a knock down factory.
This is traditional in Japan, where engineers are reassigned almost as soon as they have be come competent at a given job. Western counterparts joke that information could leave some Japanese R&D programs faster than it is generated! Compare this with the continuous devel opment and integration of racing into production design that are practiced at Aprilia and Ducati.
Whatever current Kill policy may be, it is a habit of creative engineers to work in spare mo ments on advanced concepts that interest them, even if no funding is available. I hope work of this kind is being encouraged at Kawasaki. And that it will be ap plied to something new (with an exhaust system!) that we will see in the near future on either road or track. -Kevin Cameron
