The 2017 MotoGP rider of the year?

With the 2017 MotoGP season behind us I've been thinking about who I'd vote for rider of the year.  I tend to steer clear of the factory riders because when you have truckloads of people getting you around the track as quickly as humanly possible you should be at the sharp end of the championship.  There are exceptions to that, like Marc Marquez in 2014, when a rider seems to be in a class of one, but this year that didn't happen.

It was a scrappy season with many leaders in the championship.  What first looked like a runaway by Yamaha's new rider Maverick Viñales turned into a season long fight between Marquez on an ever improving Honda that only he seemed able to ride and Andrea Dovizioso on a Ducati he has stuck with and helped develop into a race winning weapon.  At various points in the season Yamaha, Honda and Ducati all led the championship.

As exciting as all that was the rider of the year for me was Johann Zarco.  In his first MotoGP race he leapt into the lead and although he didn't last there very long it made a huge splash.  While the top riders are making big bucks and have dozens of support people, Zarco, a rookie in a small, private team using last year's bike and making a fraction of the money ended up being the only Yamaha rider fighting for wins by the end of the season.  Marquez' mum wasn't begging anyone else to not do to her son what he does to everyone else.

That's another reason why I like Zarco, he's an odd duck.  He doesn't play the whining in the media game many of the top riders do, he just gets on with the job without the retinues, fancy sunglasses and stylists.  He's known for spending his time in the pits with his crew and sleeping in the truck.  At each race he sorted out the bike and then got into the mix.  While riders like Marquez (with a long history of crashing and general nonsense) whined about Zarco's 'aggressive riding style', Zarco just shrugged and did the business, on a year old bike, for a fraction of the money, with a fraction of the support.  That's why he's my rider of 2017.  I look forward to him giving the big money riders some more grief in 2018.  Hopefully they won't whine about it quite so much, but I wouldn't count on it.

I went looking for some TechTrois / Zarco kit, but it's sadly lacking.  There is a photo of Johann at full lean on the Tech3 bike - I've pulled the colours out of it so it could go on any coloured shirt as an outline.  Between that and his logo, you'd have a nice bit of custom shirtery that celebrates the warrior monk of MotoGP.  

Here's the link to it on Zazzle.  Below is the image and the graphic I pulled out of it if you want to DIY up something.

The photo simplified into a coloured graphic...

The Wolverine & Corporate Product Placement

Filmed In Japan, Manufactured in Italy

I just saw The Wolverine and enjoyed it.  I lived in Japan for a couple of years and have a soft spot for it.  The idea of Logan in Japan was cool and I was looking forward to seeing what local vehicular colour they put into it (Japan does a lot of domestic one-offs that you don't see anywhere else).

Unfortunately I'd forgotten that Marvel is in bed with Volkswagen Group.  Imagine my disappointment when everyone in Japan is driving Audis or riding Ducatis (Ducati is owned by VW Group).  To top it off most of it was filmed in Australia and made to look like Japan.  If you're looking for a film that shows you Japan, this ain't it.

So while Logan and his sidekick are on Ducatis (in Japan, sort of), I wonder what the local manufacturers are thinking.  Since the whole advertising/placement thing is sorted out by lawyers, I imagine that Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha had no say in it anyway.  Isn't it a shame that brilliant local engineering like that can be made to not exist in a film?  Can you imagine if they did a film in America and everyone was riding Ducatis with not a Harley in sight?  It would seem unrealistic.  If film makers are more interested in milking advertisers for product placement than they are in making a film seem properly placed, it bodes poorly for the future of film.

I'd read an online discussion about the best summer riding gear and someone suggested looking at what Boorman & McGregor wore on Long Way Down.  It was immediately suggested that this wasn't the best kit but merely the one that sponsored them.  Like Ducatis in Japan, media is more about advertising than fact.  With that in mind, can you trust anything you see on film about motorbikes or even the kit being used?

Ninjas! On motorbikes!

One scene that was motorbike crazy was Logan taking on a squad (clutch? herd?) of ninjas on motor-cross bikes.  I couldn't see what they were (it was dark, there were ninjas everywhere), but it made for some frantic fight scenes, especially when one of the ninjas did a stoppie and hit Logan in the face with the back wheel.

I enjoyed The Wolverine, it was a good action flick, but it would be nice if they made more of an effort to create a genuine vehicular experience in the film instead of chasing hidden advertising revenue.

Future Bike

WIRED recently did some articles based on the Tokyo International Motor Show.  I spent a couple of years in Japan paying off all the debts I accumulated living in North America.  I've got a soft spot for Japan and the tech they produce.

Kawasaki's neon green ode to anime bikes scratches that anime itch, though it is fairly ridiculous.

Of more interest from an engineering point of view is Yamaha's ultralight bike.  Since watching McGregor and Boorman trying to right seven hundred pound BMWs in the Long Way Round, I've wondered why bikes aren't lighter than they are.  Why aren't we getting more horsepower out of smaller engines and saving weight that way?  Why aren't we using our modern engineering prowess to build bikes with smarter materials?

Case in point, as a high school student I thought the Honda Interceptor was awesome. It weighed 443lbs ready to go.  The current 500CBR is a modern equivalent, wet weight? 428lbs.  In thirty odd years of materials research and development a company as forward thinking as Honda has managed to shave 15 pounds off a bike's gross weight?

How about Triumph's last year of the original Bonneville?  A 750cc bike, 441lbs.  The new one?  496lbs.  It's a bigger engine, but it would need it to lug that fat ass around.  Even Triumph's brilliant and athletic naked Street Triple still tips the scales at over four hundred pounds.

Motorcycles are, by their nature, minimalist forms of transportation, but instead of finding ways to make them even lighter and more efficient we're SUVing them just like we did with four wheelers.  Bikes like KTM's new 390 Duke give me some hope though.  At 300lbs I bet 390cc has never felt so powerful.

I can't help but feel that alternate building methods and advanced materials haven't been explored by conservative

motorcycle manufacturers.  Yamaha asks a good question when it asks, where are the two hundred pound motorbikes?

McLaren could put together the three seater 200mph+ V8 F1 super car twenty years ago with a curb weight of only 1062kgs (about 2340lbs).  We've got massive cruisers tipping the scales at 900lbs, meanwhile Mercedes-Benz is putting together Smartcars that weigh only 1600lbs.  Even a back to basic bike like the KLR650 with only a single cylinder and basic bodywork still weighs in at 432lbs.

A bike frame in one hand? It's possible,
but bike manufacturers aren't
considering it?

I'm still not a fan of electrical bikes as long as we're stuck with medieval chemical batteries.  With lousy storage and even worse disposal characteristics, rushing into electric bikes right now isn't the way to go, though one day I hope to see an unlimited charge bio-tech battery that recharges off the buried kinetic/flywheel battery under my house.

Our issue with electricity isn't the making of it, it is the storage and transmission of it.  One day I hope to be able to unplug my bike from my locally generated and stored electrical system and get a thousand kilometres out of it before I have to plug it in again.

There are levels of efficiency we still need to move through in order to get to that place and the conservatism and marketing focus I'm seeing in bike manufacturer aren't moving us in that direction.  A little less focus on building to marketing niches and a bit more focus on advancing engineering would help us toward a necessary evolution in motorcycling.

While Formula One develops energy recovery systems that also act as full on torque turbo-chargers, perhaps it isn't too much to ask bike manufacturers to go after other areas of efficiency such as weight improvements in chassis and drive-trains.  I'd very much like a 400cc bike that weighs only 200lbs.  From an efficiency point of view it would be unbeatable as a means of transport and something that would get many more people interested in riding on two wheels.