By Adam Arnold
In a recent visit by Japanese tuning specialist Yoshimura to Rizla Suzuki - in order to give a technical briefing on the new Suzuki GSX-R 1000 – chief developers claim that power figures are already up on last years race bike, fuelling rumours of a possible need for Superbikes to switch to a big bang type engine configuration.
The new Suzuki K5 Superbike, already proven to produce 165bhp in standard road form, is claimed by the Yoshimura group, which has developed the bike hand in hand with Suzuki, that even at this early stage the bike is already more powerful than the K4 Superbike that is said to produce 207bhp at the wheel.
"We have only had a very short development period but even at this early stage, the new GSX-R1000K5 is already starting to supply higher power figures on our engine dyno,” commented Fujio Yoshimura, the head of the world famous tuning firm.
Rizla Suzuki's team coordinator Simon Green admitted in a recent lecture to University students that a rear wheel power figure of the new K5 model is expected to be around 220bhp, taking the performance of the Superbike into MotoGP territory.
But in
MotoGP, riders and engineers found a limit to the amount of power that is usable with certain even-firing engine configurations and by the end of last season nearly all the factory teams were running some form of ‘big bang' firing order.
A typical big bang engine allows two cylinders to fire almost simultaneously, thus giving the rear tyre more time, in terms of crank rotation, between each pulse of power, allowing the tyre time to find grip before the next pulse. In a normal inline four-cylinder engine, where each cylinder fires evenly in succession, the rear wheel is prone to lose grip and not retrieve it until the throttle is eased off, losing forward speed or even high-siding the rider in extreme cases.
2004 MotoGP world champion
Valentino Rossi even credited Yamaha's introduction of a big bang engine as the most significant improvement to the YZR-M1.
