Honda RC212V
Work In Progress
Honda had a reminder of how easy it is to fall from the top in MotoGP's debut 800cc season. After regaining the championship courtesy of Nicky Hayden aboard the 990cc five-cylinder RC211V, it took 10 races for Honda to finally score a win in 2007 with its troubled V-four successor, the RC212V. Honda riders unexpectedly struggled, scoring just four podium finishes in the first five races in a season that everyone from company president Takeo Fukui-himself a former HRC engineer-on down at Honda will surely want to forget.
The day after Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa at least ended the '07 season on a somewhat positive note by winning the final GP of the year at Valencia, Spain, Honda conducted a PR event so unwieldy that the horde of many ex-racers, TV commentators, journalists and media figures invited to ride the Hayden and Pedrosa bikes were each rationed to just three laps of the short Valencia track (the fact that engine life was reputed to have been cut back to 300km after Hayden's engine dropped a valve two races earlier during the Australian GP surely didn't help). This meant everyone got just a taste of the bike that most HRC executives would probably like to carve up with a bandsaw and throw in a dumpster anyway. Even the cursory technical briefing Honda gave before the ride was essentially worthless, with barely any meaningful information divulged in contrast to previous years.
Just as with Stoner's Ducati the following day, I was given the "honor" of first-riding duties on Hayden's bike early that morning, which meant I would be doing those measly three laps on new, unscrubbed tires on a cold track. Naturally the new Michelins took ages to warm up to working temperature in the chilly conditions, not helped of course by my slower pace compared with Hayden's. So it took me two laps before I began to feel comfortable on a bike that-even with the more spacious ergos for Hayden, compared with the diminutive Pedrosa-seems incredibly small and compact with a 56.7-inch wheelbase allegedly identical to the 990cc V-five, presumably to give stability in fast bends and help keep the front end weighted. The RC212V definitely feels a lot shorter and certainly more nervous.
It took me awhile to come to terms with the surprisingly fierce response of the Honda's full ride-by-wire throttle (which replaces the previous so-called "dual control system" modular layout used on the V-five). The engine mapping Hayden opts for verges on explosive and is in complete contrast with the more controlled initial pickup of Stoner's Ducati I rode later.
The electronic settings can be fine-tuned individually by the rider via a maze of buttons and switches. On the Honda's busy left clip-on, there's a three-position switch that gives you a soft/medium/strong choice of combined traction control and antiwheelie settings, as well as a button for scrolling through the readings on the digital dashboard panel to the right of HRC's trademark analog tachometer-then there's the separate pit-lane, speed-limiter button and the front brake lever adjuster knob. On the right handlebar there's another three-position switch, this one controlling deceleration by changing engine-braking control via the variable-idle-speed setting that adjusts according to gear ratio and other parameters. My riding time was too short to start playing around with the settings to see how much of a difference they made, but presuming the deceleration program was the same one Hayden used the day before in the race, he still likes a fair bit of engine braking dialed in, as befits a former Superbike champion.
The Honda engine is pretty shrill and raucous-sounding compared with the V-five, using the latest of 10 different exhaust layouts HRC tried last season matched to at least five different engine specs in the development rush to get back on terms with the competition. Judging by the way Pedrosa blasted past Stoner's Ducati down the front straight the day before en route to victory, the unstinting efforts of HRC's engineers to claw back the Ducati's horsepower advantage seem to have paid off. It's important to rev the engine right out to somewhere near the 18,800 rpm rev limiter, though-at least 1000 rpm higher than at the start of the season, when Honda was forced to reduce engine speeds due to consumption issues with the new 21-liter fuel tank limit. The blue shifter light flashes at 18,600 rpm to give you a wake-up call, and it pays to wait until you see it before upshifting, not only because power keeps on building all the way to the limiter, but mainly because the wheelies will get higher and longer if you short-shift any earlier.
The European race technician who handed the bike to me in pit lane said, "Nicky don't use clutch," and I noticed when setting off that the clutch had a very sudden pickup just as it engaged. That was the last time I used it until I returned to the pit lane five minutes later. The Honda gearbox worked flawlessly, shifting up or down without using the clutch with no jerks or hiccups as on other bikes where I've been told to forget about working the clutch lever once on the move. Even braking hard and downshifting three gears in swift succession for turn one as I started my faster final lap didn't faze the system, with the Honda's electronics ensuring the bike stayed stable and planted without snaking around. Not having to worry about the clutch meant I could use more concentration on other tasks, such as dealing with the very responsive Brembo carbon brake setup that Hayden prefers. The electronic engine-braking system is a pretty liberating function that allows you to focus more on your riding.
While it certainly seemed pretty nervous on my one and only reasonably hard lap, there's no denying the RC212V's nimble handling. A factor in this might be the vestigial fairing, supposedly minimalized to allow it to change direction from side to side more easily at speed. There is also the continued mass centralization development of the bike that surely contributes here, although Hayden and Pedrosa have complained that the concept might have been taken too far, with the RC212V suffering from excessive weight transfer under acceleration and braking. The bike definitely felt nervous climbing up and over the hill into the final turn, where it seemed that steering was very much a function of throttle and power as well as input at the clip-ons; differences in throttle setting affected steering a lot more than usual. This is a bike that in its present guise requires a lot of precision in the way it's ridden.
But Honda has been in this situation of not quite getting it right the first time before. In 1984 Honda unveiled its first ever V-four two-stroke GP racer, the NSR500. With its initial layout featuring the fuel tank beneath the engine and exhausts running over the top, the NSR struggled with teething problems, hindering the title defense of Honda's then World Champion, American Freddie Spencer (kind of sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?). But Honda responded the following year by completely redesigning the NSR500 along more conventional lines-and was rewarded with seven GP wins for Fast Freddie and a convincing world title victory that answered all its critics, as well as putting the NSR500 on the path to becoming the most successful 500GP racer of the two-stroke era.
Could history be about to repeat itself in 2008? We'll see.