Michael Scott | February 5, 2017
Commentators no doubt wiser than I have waxed sentimental about the return of Triumph to GP racing, when the historic British marque becomes Moto2 engine supplier in 2019.
I am here to play dog in the manger, and to tell anyone sharing that sentimentality not to be so silly.
Triumph is just a name, and its heritage has nothing to do either with modern Triumphs nor even with World Championship GP racing—although Percy Tait did achieve a best of second at Spa in 1969, one of very few occasions when Triumph scored points. And, ironically enough, that was with a production-based bike.
The switch to Triumph will have as little to do with adding depth or changing the nature of Moto2. The class will remain not only a fancy-dress party for road engines, but for all too many good riders a graveyard of their talent.
I can explain.
A couple of days ago I came across a modern Triumph Bonneville in a car park. There it stood, looking almost exactly like those paragons of power of the 1950s and 1960s. A modern motorbike, in retro fancy dress.
As I looked, its proud owner walked up, and started bragging. Curmudgeon that I am, I’m afraid I felt it incumbent upon me to puncture the balloon and spoil his day. It does look like the real thing, I agreed with him, except for one glaring difference—the welded seams plainly visible round each side at the bottom of the fuel tank. The original had a seam over the center at the top, while the curve round the bottom was perfectly smooth. The modern tank just looks all wrong.
He agreed, but riposted: “The pistons go up and down alternately instead of together. That means it doesn’t leak oil.”
“No,” I replied. “That means it sound like a Honda. It is the horizontally split crankcases, along with better quality alloys, gaskets and manufacturing techniques that stop it leaking oil.”
By now thoroughly ashamed, he wordlessly donned his replica open-face helmet, folded his white sea-boot stockings over the top of his boots, and rode away.
Or, more likely, thoroughly pissed off, he narrowly avoided punching me.
But I defend my position.
Modern Triumph has as much to do with the ancient marque as a rebadged Aprilia with a Spondon chassis does at the TT, where it is called “Norton.” Or an American one-off carbon-fiber Moto2 bike called a Brough Superior. It’s shallow marketing clap-trap.
Truth is, a clever industrialist called John Bloor purchased the name “Triumph,” and proceeded to build proper modern bikes much in the Japanese mode. To meet the demands of a blinkered buying public, he elected to put some of his models in clothing that harked back to quite different glory days for the brand. This achieved great marketing success. And good luck to him.
But a pitying shake of the head for the sentimentality that made people buy them.
They are the two-wheeled equivalent of VW’s so-called “Beetle,” which is nothing but a Golf with less space and worse aerodynamics—subverting years of fine engineering development for the sake of putting a flower vase on the dashboard.
Now we come to Moto2, which will switch from its current mildly tuned four-cylinder Honda CBR600 engines to mildly tuned three-cylinder Triumph 750 engines. In each case, to reduce costs and ensure they are identical, these are supplied by Dorna in one way or another.
As now (and as with that car-park Bonneville), these road-bike engines will be in fancy dress. They will wear full-race chassis, suspension and bodywork. And be straddled by full-race riders, including a number of past World Champions.
Because of having three cylinders, they will sound different—a little deeper and lower-revving than the shrill CBRs, and with that tantalizing twang that is the preserve of odd numbers of cylinders (like the Aprilia “Cube” triple back in 990 days, and the mysteriously alluring five-cylinder Honda).
But I’m afraid that’s not going to help Moto2 sound much better.
As now, every bike will sound quite identical to the next.
More tellingly, saddled with road-bike gear ratios and stuck in queues all going the same speed, they’re all doing the same revs.
As we’ve learned from a gang of Hondas doing the same thing, the sound is more irritating than inspiring, and more fitting to a one-make learner series than a World Championship GP class.
I realize Moto2 has fans. Not least team owners, whose financial outlay on engines is capped, along with a number of other costs in a highly homologated set of regulations.
And even some spectators. Apparently.
It’s the riders I feel sorry for.
And putting them on Triumphs in fancy dress isn’t going to make any difference to that. CN