For many years, I'e wondered why the auto and motorcycle racing communities have always based their production racing classes on DISPLACEMENT of the engines.
To me, this is a meaningless criteria. What does it matter, the size of the motor? Why should we not see production type racing classes based on PRICE???
Imagine.....many of the world's motorcycle manufacturers building homoligated street machines that maximize performance for the PRICE! Isn't THAT kinda cool for us?
You could, for example, have various racing classes such as:-
- Group A - $6000 MSRP or less.
- Group B - $9000 MSRP or less.
- Group C - $12000 MSRP or less.
- Group D - $17000 MSRP or less.
- Group E - $25000 MSRP or less.
- Group F - Unlimited MSRP.
You could allow ANY engine displacement, ANY cylinder count, naturally-aspirated OR turbo OR SUPER-charged, etc, etc - provided it's homoligated, street legal and available for general public purchase.
Wouldn't it be cool to see what the manufacturers would build when they're competing to build the fastest bikes available for the PRICE?
Lots of pitfalls and things, to control/administer this - but isn't it a good idea? What would be the major negatives to this approach? My assumption is that the very large manufacturers would build "loss-leaders" in every category, to race - even if they lost money, but as the bikes would have to be available to the public, and if sufficient demand was there - it would cost them a lot of money to lose so much on these sales, or...?
Thoughts?
__________________ Old Baldy / WWBO #451
Ducati 996
Kawasaki KLR 650 '02
Kawasaki KLR650 '06 OB's Blog
Guess I don't follow the basis here. Who cares what a race bike costs? Costs who? How do you monitor such a thing? Maybe the Ohlins front forks on an R6 would be priced by Yamaha at $5 to their inhouse race team? How do you know that that is a bogus number? In any event, this is not a criteria for establishing race classes. Racing costs $$$$$. Everyone knows that and accepts it. If you do not have any money then other options in life are open to you. Not being sarcastic or wanting to jab anyone in the eye with a sharp stick....just stating the obvious and accepted. Life ain't fair. Never was (some cavemen were bigger and stronger than others and got the best cavewomen and more of them while the weak and meek got none and did not have the opportunity to reproduce thus shortening their family tree). Every race series in existance tries in one way or another to "level the playing field" by limiting testing, approved parts, tire changes and whatever...usually ends up being a joke.
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Displacement is the first yardstick of power. Thinking that a factory will homologate a twin turbo V6, and then sell it at under 6K so they can race it is just a little too optimistic.
The racers here go by displacement, then they scale the bikes before and dyno the top 3 after the races. Pretty simple.
The GSXR, RZ cup races follow the affordable formula you've described to a point.
For many years, I'e wondered why the auto and motorcycle racing communities have always based their production racing classes on DISPLACEMENT of the engines.
To me, this is a meaningless criteria. What does it matter, the size of the motor? Why should we not see production type racing classes based on PRICE???
Imagine.....many of the world's motorcycle manufacturers building homoligated street machines that maximize performance for the PRICE! Isn't THAT kinda cool for us?
You could, for example, have various racing classes such as:-
- Group A - $6000 MSRP or less.
- Group B - $9000 MSRP or less.
- Group C - $12000 MSRP or less.
- Group D - $17000 MSRP or less.
- Group E - $25000 MSRP or less.
- Group F - Unlimited MSRP.
You could allow ANY engine displacement, ANY cylinder count, naturally-aspirated OR turbo OR SUPER-charged, etc, etc - provided it's homoligated, street legal and available for general public purchase.
Wouldn't it be cool to see what the manufacturers would build when they're competing to build the fastest bikes available for the PRICE?
Lots of pitfalls and things, to control/administer this - but isn't it a good idea? What would be the major negatives to this approach? My assumption is that the very large manufacturers would build "loss-leaders" in every category, to race - even if they lost money, but as the bikes would have to be available to the public, and if sufficient demand was there - it would cost them a lot of money to lose so much on these sales, or...?
Thoughts?
Pure genius! The only negative would be the whiney Ducati riders not getting their asses kicked by $8K 600's... or maybe that's a positive.
I think the only problem would be convincing the manufactures to puruse racing any classes other than the unlimited MSRP; as an example, look at the Yamaha R1LE. Yamaha built that bike specifically for the AMA series and it is an outlier in the company's pricing (even a "regular" R1 isn't cheap).
Also, if the manufactures weren't limited by having to price the bikes competitavly, they could cram a lot more "race ready" parts into them without worry about losing their market share.
Fundamentally, it's a good idea but it would be difficult to mandate that each manufacture run in all the series, with a given model per series; manufactures want to win and they're going to use whatever tool gives them the greatest chance for success - most of the time, that happens to be an expensive motorcycle.
The other side of it is, how much interest in racing do the people who buy Honda 919s have in racing (picking a bike in the < $6K category) or the new Ninja 650R? Probably some, but not a lot. So why would a given co. take on the expense of fielding these bikes if this market share already absorbs bikes without the added expense of funding a team, riders, et cetera?
Why should we not see production type racing classes based on PRICE???
Thoughts?
Because everyone would end up running nothing but Chinese bikes.
Seriously, there's no way you could do something like this fairly, with the way the economies of the world fluctuate. One day your Japanese 600 is legal for a class, then the next day the Yen rises against the dollar, and all of a sudden your bike is illegal.
If you look around, you'll notice that few racing classes any more are actually named by engine displacement. You may think of Supersport as a 600 class, but in reality there are other engine configurations and displacements allowed in it. Same with Superbike, MotoGP, World Supersport, Formula Extreme, etc., etc. It's not "1000 Superbike" or "990 MotoGP".
There's usually a common displacement within a given class, simply because there's usually one type of engine that makes the most efficient power. In Supersport, for example, the liquid-cooled, multi-valve, 600cc inline 4-cylinder four-stroke seems to be the best option within the given rules. That's why it's almost the only kind of bike you see in that class. But it's not technically a "600cc" class...
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. "MSRP" is 100% arbitrary and meaningless, while class structures in place now are based on engineering defferences and the physics underlying those differences. I will happily stick with things the way the are now; based on the machine, with regular "tweaks" depending on development of individual models, and number of entries, to keep the largest, most competitive fields. A "torque spec class" or "model spec class" would be as close as you could get to a "price class", imo.
Roadkill - "Who cares what a race bike costs? Costs who? How do you monitor such a thing? Maybe the Ohlins front forks on an R6 would be priced by Yamaha at $5 to their inhouse race team? How do you know that that is a bogus number? In any event, this is not a criteria for establishing race classes. Racing costs $$$$$. Everyone knows that and accepts it"
- Remember we're talking about production street legal racing classes here. If the R6 ran an Ohlins fork, and Yamaha had the MSRP set at $9000, then they lose (presumably) on every bike they sell at that price. Good for the public, not very business oriented for Yamaha, who clearly want to make a profit. They'd look at other opportunities to make their bikes have a better price/performance ratio.
Just Riding Along - "Displacement is the first yardstick of power. Thinking that a factory will homologate a twin turbo V6, and then sell it at under 6K so they can race it is just a little too optimistic."
- Who said anything about a twin turbo V-6 for under $6K? I'd suggest a nice cheap 1000cc for under $6K would be reasonable - remember that the size of the pistons, cylinder block and crank has little correlation on the actual cost of the bike. It's much easier AND cheaper to develop a 130HP 1200cc bike for the same price as a 120HP 600cc bike. Don't need any fancy titanium valves, special shot-peened and treated conrods, etc, etc.
The result - MORE performance at a cheaper price, when Price/performance is the criteria, rather than performance/CC.
Hubert - "The other side of it is, how much interest in racing do the people who buy Honda 919s have in racing (picking a bike in the < $6K category) or the new Ninja 650R?"
-Oh, I dunno - I think that the SV650 / Ninja 650R level bikes would have just as much racing interest for manufacturers trying to hock their sporty budget bikes.
AZ Scott - "Seriously, there's no way you could do something like this fairly, with the way the economies of the world fluctuate. One day your Japanese 600 is legal for a class, then the next day the Yen rises against the dollar, and all of a sudden your bike is illegal."
Treu, but MSRP do not change within a given model year. Or at least, it's very uncommon. The manufacturers would need to confirm/realign their bikes into the appropriate classes every year, but they at least know what the rules are, ahead of time. Any changes to the Class Price limits would be distributed well in advance, of course.
The Law - "Would get boring quick -- almost everyone would run 1000cc+ bikes. No replacement for displacement -- or so the saying goes."
- And you'd turn down a 1000cc sport bike for $9000? Why would they need to limit the motors to 1000cc for the top classes? What about a nice easy 1500cc 180 HP sportbike in the $12000 class - you wouldn't want to buy such a bike?
bmxr - "That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. "MSRP" is 100% arbitrary and meaningless"
_ ehhh....I'd say NOT meaningless to anyone who's actually in the market to BUY a sportbike, ya? You DON'T want the maximum performance you can buy for the money? You'd prefer a 120HP 600cc for $9000 than a 140HP 1200cc for the same price?
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Admittedly, difficult to implement, but one way to get manufacturers to start producing the maximum PERFORMANCE for the PRICE, rather than some arbitrary CC limit - which is completely meaningless to the street rider or trackday rider.
Anyway - thanks for the replies. There I was, thinking it's a cool idea.
__________________ Old Baldy / WWBO #451
Ducati 996
Kawasaki KLR 650 '02
Kawasaki KLR650 '06 OB's Blog
They're already doing it, called price points and no one will hang their neck out with a midweight that's 2K more than the others. Sticking another model at 10K between 9 and 11 only means that there will be more dead stock at the dealers. Of course that $ based class structure is really only going to hurt the boutique brands.
The problem is every now and then a manufacturer would take a loss to win a class. They would make the loss up by their other models (maybe).
Thus if Yamaha was having trouble selling 600's and their marketing department thought it would help to win one of your classes ... they would pump out just enough at a cheaper price to kill that class for a season.
So you would have to have an enormous amount of rules stopping them doing this, etc. Otherwise the racing would be close to meaningless.
Pete
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'90 Suzuki GN250 - Sold 57000 km's later. Cost less than 12c per km to run ...
Grumpy Kiwi.
Why fly when ya can make a lot of noise
Daytona 200...Buell charges $30k for theirs. A fair club level supersport bike is $14k. I'd bet that Honda's FX bikes are $70k. Honda won't sell you one of their bikes though.
Daytona 200...Buell charges $30k for theirs. A fair club level supersport bike is $14k. I'd bet that Honda's FX bikes are $70k. Honda won't sell you one of their bikes though.
Did you say please?
Most of the "real" race bikes are hard to buy. R7, needed resume, kit RC51, needed resume and a hefty non-refundable deposit, and so on.
Remember that the "rules" would state that the bike must be homoligated, street-legal and available to the general public. Of course, there would be a calculation of minimum number of bikes, very similar to what they do for homoligation purposes - and likely based on overall production numbers from each manufacturer.
Again, the plus side is more performance to the sportbike buying public for less money, when the there is no restriction on the size of the motors, or their configuration. Forget about engine size. It's irrelevant in this situation. It doesn't COST any more to build a motor of 1500cc that produces 180HP than a 1000cc motor that produces 160HP - and very likely much less. I'd take the 180HP, 1500cc, cheaper bike over the more expensive 160HP 1000cc bike any day of the week....why not?
Appreciate the thoughts. So far, no-one's biting, eh?
__________________ Old Baldy / WWBO #451
Ducati 996
Kawasaki KLR 650 '02
Kawasaki KLR650 '06 OB's Blog
Racing classes and stuff
A "torque spec class" or "model spec class" would be as close as you could get to a "price class", imo.
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