Invent a Better Gearbox
It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. It now appears that the Honda Racing Corporation has come up with the mother of better mousetraps in the form of a seamless shift transmission that skirts the new FIM rules that were made specifically to avoid just this sort of costly innovation in the most elegant and legal of fashions.
The FIM drew up new regulations to avoid dual clutch gearboxes, the purpose being to avoid increased costs. But the language of the regulations, specifically eliminating dual clutches and effectively preventing Honda from applying their DCT technology that is now available with the VFR1200F, may have been seen as a direct challenge by HRC engineers.
It will be seen as blasphemy by many that the FIM would discourage innovation, but the purpose was to control costs. If a seamless gear change mechanism is essential to winning, the other manufacturers, unless they are already well advanced in the project, will be caught on the wrong foot and with the seasons first race only two weeks away.
It is unfortunate that there was speculation that Honda might be running an illegal system. By working within the letter of the law, Honda seem to have sneaked a glorious sunrise past the sleeping FIM rooster.
Unlike Ducati and Yamaha, Honda are a major automobile manufacturer, and in addition to their involvement with Indy Car, Honda were competing in Formula 1 until withdrawing at the end of the 2008 season.
HRC have always been the smartest guy in the MotoGP roomjust a little short on people skills (they lost Rossi, and with him probably several MotoGP titles as well). But when it comes to technological innovationthat is what HRC is all about.
Without going into a history of Formula 1 gearbox technology over the last two decades, suffice it to say that F1 has been there and done that.
Various firms have been working to develop fast, compact gearbox mechanisms both with and without DCT.
When a journalist from the Italian Mediaset TV company went online two weeks back claiming that Honda were running a DCT system, GP journalists immediately pointed out that this system was banned under FIM regs and this led to several clutchgate articles.
Honda HRC Vice President Shuhei Nakamoto responded at the end of the Sepang tests by saying, Obviously HRC is not using anything illegal, but its true that we have something new on the transmission that currently allows for faster gear changes. We are not talking about a DCT, but I cant tell you how it works
because I dont know!
Honda have a right to be proud and even a little precious about their innovations. The Honda RC212V is very, very fast anyway. At the end of last season the Honda of Dani Pedrosa was often the fastest bike on the track and Jorge Lorenzo admitted as much. So, add a slight new advantage to a bike that ended the 2010 season very strongly and you have the makings of a significant advantageenough to slot Hondas into the top four places at the Sepang tests.
Whether this is HRC in-house development or the work of a supplier (several journalists have speculated about Britains Zeroshift), the fact is that Honda have found something that seems to be a game changer. The company has been working with another British company, Xtrac, in Indy Car racing for some time. Xtrac provide the gearboxes for the 3.5-liter Honda V8 used by all competitors.
So what has Xtrac been up to lately? Well, they just surfaced with information about their Instantaneous Gearchange System (IGS) that is described as doing the same thing that a dual clutch system does but with a single clutch.
The Xtrac IGS system incorporates a ratchet and pawl mechanism between each gear hub and the main shaft to allow simultaneous selection of two consecutive gear ratios.
Read about it yourselves at this link:
http://sgeauto.com/2010/12/679/
How much is gained by this seamless shifting? An article published today at as.com in Madrid speculates that Honda is using a Zeroshift gearbox and quotes the manufacturer as saying that, on an average of 30 shifts per lap, the saving in time compared to a conventional gearbox would be 0.9 of a second.
In a 2008 article about the Zeroshft automobile gearbox the estimated improvement was 0.3 of a second.
In Sepang the fastest of the Honda riders, Casey Stoner, took 1.013 from the fastest of the Yamaha riders, Ben Spies, fifth overall. The slowest of the four factory Honda riders, Andrea Dovizioso, was a half second faster that 2010 World Champion Jorge Lorenzo, who was seventh.
Casey Stoner/Honda/159.665
Dani Pedrosa/Honda/159.803 +0.138
Marco Simoncelli/Honda/200.163 +0.498
Andrea Dovizioso/Honda/200,541 +0.876
Ben Spies/Yamaha/200.678 +1.013
Colin Edwards/Yamaha/200.966 +1.301
Jorge Lorenzo/Yamaha/201.003 +1.338
So, whether Hondas gearbox, whoever made it, is giving the Honda riders a couple of tenths or even a lot more is something that only Honda really knows. I can imagine this getting into the heads of Yamaha and Ducati riders.
Honda have got something going, and with Stoner and Pedrosa tucked in behind the screens it could be a rough start of the season for Yamaha and Ducati.
This all reminds me of the start of the 1992 season when Honda suddenly came out with the big-bang 500. By midseason Yamaha had their big bang winning races, but by the time big bang was the accepted configuration, Honda went back to the screamer with major improvements in mapping (plus unleaded gas) to make the screamer as rider friendly as the big bang.
After four years without winning a title, it looks like Honda is back on top, and, as usual, doing it their way.
I keep fingers crossed for him though as he's 1st czech rider that made it to MotoGP and that's a great thing for motorsports in Czech republic.
How much un-adapted can someone be to a bike? I think that thing may just be too terrible for (at least him) to ride.
