The Role Of Engineers In Motogp – If you look at a MotoGP motorcycle and it is a feat of innovation and engineering. Everything is designed and maintained within nanometer tolerances, and not a single thing is out of place. Perfection distilled into a raw racer.
I sat down with Red Bull KTM’s Sebastian Riesz – the team’s technical director – at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, ahead of the COTA round of MotoGP, and we talked about what goes into a race bike. But our conversation became incredibly interesting midway through as he walked me through the level of compromise that actually goes into building a championship race bike.
The Role Of Engineers In Motogp
“A bicycle is a complex thing. Everything has to work together,” says Rise, “When we were developing the setup and the bike concept [we] focused on the lap times, the run lap, and we ended up with a setup that was also good for the wheel limit. But then you have these options to change this just to begin with… That means you also have to compromise.”
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The idea of a compromise on a top MotoGP bike intrigued me, so I pressed Risse for more, and to my surprise, he added a lot more context and pretty much said that they’re enough of a compromise.
“I mean, life is a compromise. Motorcycles are usually even more complex compromises,” he told me with a laugh, adding, “You can’t make it perfect for this and perfect for that. But with these [new technological systems] it is much easier to make an acceptable compromise for everyone. So usually with bike geometry, tuning, you just focus on the flying lap (quali-tuning). You try to make the best compromise, let’s say the least damage, for a perfect start to the race and straight line performance.”
From an outsider’s perspective, this looks like heresy. MotoGP bikes are supposed to be sharp instruments of certain doom. Powerful projectors in the same way as the F-22 Raptor. There are no weak links. And they still are, but the amount of compromise
Rhys continued, saying, “And also the rider has a huge effect. How he can do it or not. It’s a personal matter. Some guys struggle to get on the front tire, some others are very happy to have more contact with the rear and will pay any price to have it. And that means you can’t have the same solution for everyone.”
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Rhys continued that thought, adding, “We know what would be technically, theoretically the best, and you try to get it as close to that as possible with every rider until he’s struggling with something. Then you try to fix this thing that’s limiting it, like more ride height, and see how far you can take it.”
I then asked Rise how they communicate what the engineers see as technically possible from the setup to the drivers and how they get the drivers to that theoretical peak, to which he replied, “At some tracks we already know from previous years’ data what the limits will be. And if you don’t see the limit as a particular concern, aim for the maximum and then face the problems that the driver explains to you. But of course, when a driver reaches this limit in five races and every time again, you’re not going to do the same thing. You start making compromises.”
That’s all to say that Rise and his team are starting with the best setup from an engineering perspective. His last words to me were, “[We’re] trying to make maximum usable [performance] first.” But they’re not going to drive the definition of insanity into the ground. If that tip doesn’t work for the riders or the track, they iterate with the riders and other engineers, and the two sides compromise to get the most out of the bikes. Mike Leitner, the man brought in to lead KTM’s MotoGP project from the start, will be moved by the Austrian factory.
KTM has announced that the engineer and former HRC crew chief – he was Dani Pedrosa’s crew chief for most of the Spaniard’s career – will be moved into a consulting role.
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Although KTM’s press release did not give a clear reason for the change, other than a desire to “restructure the KTM Factory Racing hierarchy”, the move reflects a sense that KTM’s progress towards its goal of winning the MotoGP title has stalled.
While KTM progressed well in 2019 and won their first races of 2020, 2021 saw the Austrian factory take a step back. Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira continued to win races, but just as often struggled to finish in the top ten.
Leitner will make way for Pramac Ducati team manager Francesco Guidotti, as widely reported in the Italian media.
Guidotti was previously part of KTM’s efforts in the 250cc GP class, the predecessor to Moto2, and was successful at the helm of Pramac, Ducati’s satellite team that regularly won races and fed a number of riders to the factory team.
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The poaching of Guidotti from Pramac fits into KTM’s long history of poaching top talent from other factories and teams (a practice in which they are by no means unique).
Previously, VP Suspension, KTM’s own suspension brand, snapped up senior Ohlins engineer Peter Bergwall, they brought in Jun Miyazaki from Honda, where he helped design HRC’s first seamless gearbox, and recently they brought in Fabio Sterlacchini, one of Ducati’s oldest Corse engineers.
Respected journalist Matt Oxley recently blogged about KTM’s history of bringing outside talent to the team.
Guidotti will be tasked with restoring KTM’s MotoGP title challenge. They don’t lack talent – if anything, they have too much talent, not too little, and not enough room to accommodate it all.
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Guidotti will need to take that talent and make sure they are given the tools they need to contend for a championship. This seems obvious, as the fact is true for the average biker on their daily commute. This is even the basic philosophy of the motorcycle: for it to work, there must be a match between machine and man. This complicity will exude satisfaction and therefore performance if you are riding on the track to challenge the clock. But this inevitable osmosis must obviously be remembered. And at the highest level, since it was the engineers mobilized in MotoGP who recently became its champions…
The driver and the motorcycle must become one for happiness to be at the end of the road. The act that seals the clock at the finish line. Otherwise, at best, we deal with current affairs. During their intervention, the minds of the manufacturers involved in MotoGP shed light on this basis of all motorcycling: the pleasure and complicity between man and machine.
“At Yamaha, the emphasis is on the interaction between the rider and the motorcycle,” underlines Takahiro Sumi. “
That’s why we spend a lot of time finding the right environment. If only one side works perfectly, it doesn’t help us. That’s why we always pay special attention to the right balance between rider and motorcycle. The team tries to achieve this as best as possible
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In the world of motorcycles, the rider plays a very important role. A more important role than in other categories, for example on four wheels
They take a lot of risk every time they hit the track and need 100% confidence on the bike to push them to the limit. This is exactly why the technical side, the team and the bike are very important
It is not only about exhausting the physical limitations of the motorcycle, but also, on the contrary, about adapting the motorcycle as best as possible to the rider, so that he feels comfortable and can push without hesitation.
Of course, there’s always a lot of technology involved. You are always trying to push the boundaries of what is physically possible. But at the end of the day, a motorcycle is a means of doing sports. And the tool and the driver must work together
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The team is there to bring all the components together, not only from a technical point of view, but also to make the driver understand how we can use this tool better. It’s a package where we focus a lot on the needs of the driver. We concentrate on making it comfortable and fast
Certainly, but there is also the tire factor that the machine has to adjust to and that enters into the overall confidence equation, the score matrix. ask Andrea Dovizioso… (Editor’s note: They would be called crew chiefs in MotoAmerica Superbike racing, but are called race engineers in Grand Prix racing…)
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