tech talk: ride height, road bikes, and entertainment
last week, we witnessed fabio quartararo relinquish a hard-fought race lead due to a unique type of mechanical error: the rear ride-height device of his Yamaha M1 was stuck in the low position. i was struck by the similarities of that incident to maverick viñales' DNF at sachsenring in 2022, the first real peek at the potential unreliability of rear ride-height devices.
the process is simple: the back end of the bike drops down when exiting a corner, improving acceleration and stability. lowering the bike's center of gravity reduces its chance to wheelie, meaning all that low-gear torque from the engine goes straight into the front wheel.
the ride-height device that MotoGP bikes use is, under the current rules, entirely mechanical. a sensor at the fork reads the front position as the bike corners, then starts a sort of rube goldberg machine-esque series of reactions to trigger the back to drop during corner exit.
the front ride-height devices that Ducati used briefly until they were banned in 2023 were a similar system, but were triggered by the rider instead of automatically. in this clip, you can see pecco disengage it coming out of the last corner at mugello.
when front ride-height devices were banned in 2023, it was with the support of 5 out of 6 manufacturers -- Ducati were the only ones opposing it. i'm conflicted; on one hand, ducati worked hard to develop and integrate the technology, and even if it gave them an advantage, that's just how improvement works in a machine-based sport. on the other hand, if one team can guarantee success by just pouring the most money into development, the sport becomes increasingly asymmetrical and frankly boring.
with all ride-height devices now set for elimination in 2027, i'm again split on the rationale for turning the clock back and regressing a lot of racing technology. in terms of making MotoGP more road-relevant and accurate to the average consumer, eradicating ride-height devices is supposedly an obvious solution. but consumer ride-height add-ons exist, and they're not mechanical, they're electronic! they're more reliable as well. in fact, when the ducati front ride-height device was banned, both romano albesiano of Aprilia (now Honda) and sebastian risse of KTM both raised that example.
albesiano said,
risse said,
it's the same argument that Dorna has used to justify the 2027 tech rollbacks, but in reverse: front ride-height tech wasn't road-relevant because it was behind what production motorcycles can do, not ahead.
this exposes a contradiction in Dorna's plan. if MotoGP should exist as a sport to help manufacturers test and develop technology specifically to improve production motorcycles, why eliminate tech that exists in better forms for the average consumer? why not simply mandate that ride-height devices be electronic, thus resolving the issue of unreliability and making the technology more accurate to something a normal person could buy?
Dorna has also been clear that the tech rollback is a response to negative reactions among fans and viewers, who feel that the sport has become uninteresting. i'm one of them. but i would point to World Superbike, which is significantly more road-relevant since the bikes used are (theoretically) actual road bikes: World Superbike is fucking boring. i'm sorry, it just is. and a lot of that is because the bikes are slower and more realistic, not in spite of it! now that BMW has lost its superconcessions for the current season, they're running a very stripped down machine that's on par with or worse than most others on the grid. and because of that, the only rider that can find any success on it is Toprak Razgatlioglu, who is leaving anyway.
i'm not saying Dorna should just allow teams to pour money into futuristic rocketship motorcycles that win a million championships. but if Dorna wants to make the sport more fun and more realistic, they need to make more specific, in-depth changes than just sweeping bans. an electronic ride-height system would be a great way to test that principle.
