I founded this link on another forum...some from an july august interview with Burgress..it's a little old article but has some intresting points...
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE <div class='quotemain'>If you’ve got the new, July/August issue of Road Racer X, then you know it contains a great interview with Jeremy Burgess, Valentino Rossi’s legendary crew chief. Much of that interview centers on Burgess’ relationship with Rossi and Mick Doohan (his previous rider), but the conversation was wide-ranging. Here are some interesting out-takes from the same interview, which was conducted in the Camel Yamaha hospitality center at the Mugello MotoGP round.
RRX: What are your thoughts on traction control?
Jeremy Burgess: Well, it’s very simple. It’s not a difficult system, because you can see that the guys can actually ride through the traction control and spin the wheel. It’s just really an assistance to them, and you can dial in more or less traction control. Essentially, a guy can over-ride it. I think it helps them ride consistently fast. I don’t think it’s the difference between winning and losing if everybody’s got it. It probably helps with tire-conservation [because it minimizes spin], and the tires have a terrifically difficult job to do. I think it gives the rider a little more throttle control, and that’s essentially all it does.
Do laypeople tend to overemphasize the importance of throttle control?
I think they perhaps do because they don’t quite understand it. A lot of them have got anti-lock brakes on their cars these days, and very few of them ever put their brakes on hard enough to understand what it does; when the pedal shudders under their foot, they think something’s wrong. [Traction control] is not a difficult concept; there’s different ways of doing it, of course: one is a reverse of anti-locking brakes, or any abrupt increase in the rise in rpm can ...... the ignition system and cut the fuel, with various amounts dialed in.
Do exceptional riders like Valentino find traction control frustrating, since it tends to level out the playing field somewhat?
Yeah, but I’d go back further than that, to ’96, ’97, when they took away the rocket fuel we used to use. That softened out the engines, and for Mick Doohan at the time, he lost a very serious [advantage]; that throttle control was his strength. In ’98, people like Max [Biaggi] would just get on and twist the throttle, and it took Mick like four or five Grands Prix just to get his head around the fact that he could do this [mimics whacking throttle], whereas throughout his entire career, he’d had to do this [mimics feathering throttle]; he’d crafted that. I suppose the bottom line is that it tends to assist the rider to make the bike easier to ride. The millions out there who watch are here for the spectacle, and [traction control] doesn’t detract from the spectacle.
Not even with the decrease in sliding happening?
I still think, when the tire goes off, and the lean angles are high enough, and the guys are going fast enough on mid-corner speed, you’re still going to get a degree of movement. I don’t get to go out on the track that often, but I still see the fast riders’ bikes moving around on television. They’ll always ride at the limit of adhesion, and that’s it.
Again, though, wouldn’t great riders like Mick and Valentino prefer there to be no traction control?
Valentino grew up with it, so he hasn’t really had it any other way. The first year we ran with the RC211, up until about three-quarters of the way through the season, we didn’t have it. We tested it in its infancy on the four-stroke in Valencia, about three-quarters of the way through the season, and he just said, “Now it’s easy.” When the bike spun up a little bit, it just dulled back down, so it just assisted—gave them a bigger margin to work with.
Formula One is going with a spec ECU. Is that a solution for motorcycles?
Certainly, when you have a regulation, as you do in Formula One, which states that an engine has to be eight cylinders and 2-point-whatever liters, then an ECU screw-in is okay, just like they do in the touring-car racing in Australia. You’re basically rev-limited to 7,200, and the ECU maps everything so you can’t cheat. That’s fine. However, if you’re going to have multi-cylindered engines, that one-off ECU isn’t going to be any good, unless they say, “If you’ve got a five-cylinder, you can rev to this; if you’ve got a four-cylinder, you can rev to that.” But then you get back to extra rules. If they came along here and said, “We’re going to make this category for V4 four-stroke 800s,” all the manufacturers would still compete. Then your regulation about the ECU, which controls only the rpm, would be okay.
You can get the traction control by just cutting the fuel supply. Is that traction control? What is traction control? You can have your traction control based on a differential between front and rear wheel spin; you can measure increases in rear-wheel acceleration; or a reverse of an anti-locking brake, with magnetic sensors on the rear wheel that measure the speed. There will always be the guy who can make a good start, and everybody will say, “Oh, he’s cheating around the system.” I remember Schumacher making a lot of good starts in the old days, and they felt the team was getting around the launch-control rule somehow. Then after they did something, his starts weren’t as good, and they were saying, “It must have been true.” But you don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. I can see things for and against, but I think essentially, if we were production-bike racing, and we basically said everybody’s racing 800s and they’re all across-the-frame bikes, [it would be okay]. But then maybe they’re different bores and strokes. Now what are you going to do?
Do you feel that tires have become too important of a component in the overall package?
Well, I think the thing that keeps you from falling over and crashing is the grip you get from the tire. The tire companies have an enormously difficult job, with the power that these bikes are putting out, and Michelin has done a fantastic job offering the grip not only to us, but to everybody. Unfortunately, we’re not able to use the grip as well as we would like, but once we get the aluminum part above the tires to accept the additional grip, we’ll move ahead in leaps and bounds. I don’t think you can identify the suspension, the Michelin tires, the Yamaha engine, or any one of those things as being more important. You can’t say the Honda five-cylinder is too powerful or has an advantage, or whatever. It’s up to each manufacturer to select the suppliers he wants and to spend the money that he wants to do it.
Do we want to get to a control-tire situation? Do we want to have controls? I don’t think it affects the racing from the audience’s perspective much at all, but it certainly dulls down what I consider the world championship. If only certain people are allowed to compete, then that’s not a world championship. For example, if we all had to use Champion spark plugs or one brand of fuel—no, I don’t ever want to see it get to that. But without question, the costs must be going up, because the companies have to move so quickly, whereas if one tire company or another has had domination for several years, they could move along at the rate that they wanted to move. If you look at 250 or 125, Dunlop win every race, every week, but nobody bothers to compete. Why not? Because it doesn’t get the coverage that the top class gets. We’ve seen Formula One with one tire for many years with Goodyear competing, and we’ve seen pretty much the same thing in the 500 days, with Michelin being the major supplier. Competition’s a good thing, but there might be a line where somebody has to decide what it costs. I don’t know who would squeal first; would it be the tire company that can’t afford, or would it be the tire company saying, “We can only supply this generation of tire to Valentino Rossi and the top Honda rider,” if it’s Michelin, and that’s the only teams they’ve got. But they may then find that their competitor’s supplying top tires to everybody, so then they’re forced to spend the money. I don’t know [when it would happen]—until you get a consensus between the motorcycle manufacturers, or the tire companies between themselves. It’s quite likely that a tire company would lobby a manufacturer to say, “We would like to see some restrictions,” but the manufacturer’s going to say, “That’s not really our problem.”
It sounds like you have a pretty laissez-faire approach to it.
Yes, I think that there’s enough regulations and rules and restrictions out there now. If, for example—and we’re struggling specifically with tires now—we were to introduce a rule on quantity, that’s great for the guys who are now in the sport or have been in the sport for some time. However, if a new tire company comes in to accelerate its development [to become] competitive, it may need to work in a different way. It would need more tires to get a broader cross-section. So you cannot essentially put a limit on it, either; if you’re negotiating from a position of strength, and say, “Now that we’re winning, we now want to cut it back to 12 rear tires and 12 front tires,” or whatever, that’s unfair, in my opinion—and this is only my opinion—to the guy in the tire company that makes that decision. Because in 10 years’ time, the guy who replaces him might find that tire company is not in a position of strength, and this rule may be the most damning thing that’s every been placed in front of him, and he’s in no position to change the rule, so it’s better not to have the rule at all. If a company believes it can do it by spending less, I imagine they would do it anyway—self-regulation. If it can’t, it will have to continue on. There’s a thousand different little mini-situations within the whole spectrum out there, as to how or what could be done, but overall, the no-rule thing is probably the best way.
Are there other examples?
We have limits now on the amount of fuel we can use, and people say to me, “Well, that makes it safer.”
I say to them, “How do you figure that?” and they’ll say, “Well, the bikes are slower.”
I’ll say “Why?”
“Because they can only use 22 liters of fuel.”
I say, “Yes, over 130 kilometers they can,” but we can dial those things up to use five liters a lap in practice.”
So you’re not safe in practice, and we have four hours and 20 minutes in practice and only one hour in the race, so the safety issue’s out the window for four hours and 20 minutes, and comes back into factor only for the race. In that instance, less fuel helps the safety of the race, but it doesn’t help the safety of the sport. We run four races in practice; essentially, in each practice, we run the same distance as we do in a race. If we can do that and produce 15 or 20 more horsepower—and hence better qualification times and better speeds—it’s negated the safety aspect. In that case, bringing in a rev-limiting system may help, but again, it’s a very, very difficult thing, unless the engines were all the same configurations. If they say the engines don’t have to be the same configuration, who’ll come up with a formula that says, “If you’re this bore and stroke and this many cylinders, your rev limit is that.”
Everybody will say, “Yeah, well okay, on paper that’s correct, but our torque is in this area, and we’re negated.” Again, less rules is better. If there are no rules, nobody’s cheating. We have rules in place now for capacity and the number of gears, and the weight—and a thousand other incidental rules that really don’t affect the performance of the machine. It’s almost enough. Of course there’s stuff on aerodynamics, and what can and can’t be covered. If somebody was given carte blanche to build the best racing motorcycle in the world, and were given two parameters, which would perhaps be weight and capacity, probably things would change a bit. Wheel sizes would change. Wheel size is not restricted in diameter, but in width, it’s restricted to six-and-a-quarter inches in the rear and four inches in the front. Now, this is a rule that is no longer applicable, because I was part of writing that rule in 1992, for 500s only. Essentially, that’s a rule that has moved through, into the MotoGP class, and you’d have to say, with 240 horsepower-plus, vs. 180, that rule and the extra weight, at 150 kilograms, that rule s hould be taken out or adjusted.
http://www.roadracerx.com/article_print.php?article_id=52
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE <div class='quotemain'>If you’ve got the new, July/August issue of Road Racer X, then you know it contains a great interview with Jeremy Burgess, Valentino Rossi’s legendary crew chief. Much of that interview centers on Burgess’ relationship with Rossi and Mick Doohan (his previous rider), but the conversation was wide-ranging. Here are some interesting out-takes from the same interview, which was conducted in the Camel Yamaha hospitality center at the Mugello MotoGP round.
RRX: What are your thoughts on traction control?
Jeremy Burgess: Well, it’s very simple. It’s not a difficult system, because you can see that the guys can actually ride through the traction control and spin the wheel. It’s just really an assistance to them, and you can dial in more or less traction control. Essentially, a guy can over-ride it. I think it helps them ride consistently fast. I don’t think it’s the difference between winning and losing if everybody’s got it. It probably helps with tire-conservation [because it minimizes spin], and the tires have a terrifically difficult job to do. I think it gives the rider a little more throttle control, and that’s essentially all it does.
Do laypeople tend to overemphasize the importance of throttle control?
I think they perhaps do because they don’t quite understand it. A lot of them have got anti-lock brakes on their cars these days, and very few of them ever put their brakes on hard enough to understand what it does; when the pedal shudders under their foot, they think something’s wrong. [Traction control] is not a difficult concept; there’s different ways of doing it, of course: one is a reverse of anti-locking brakes, or any abrupt increase in the rise in rpm can ...... the ignition system and cut the fuel, with various amounts dialed in.
Do exceptional riders like Valentino find traction control frustrating, since it tends to level out the playing field somewhat?
Yeah, but I’d go back further than that, to ’96, ’97, when they took away the rocket fuel we used to use. That softened out the engines, and for Mick Doohan at the time, he lost a very serious [advantage]; that throttle control was his strength. In ’98, people like Max [Biaggi] would just get on and twist the throttle, and it took Mick like four or five Grands Prix just to get his head around the fact that he could do this [mimics whacking throttle], whereas throughout his entire career, he’d had to do this [mimics feathering throttle]; he’d crafted that. I suppose the bottom line is that it tends to assist the rider to make the bike easier to ride. The millions out there who watch are here for the spectacle, and [traction control] doesn’t detract from the spectacle.
Not even with the decrease in sliding happening?
I still think, when the tire goes off, and the lean angles are high enough, and the guys are going fast enough on mid-corner speed, you’re still going to get a degree of movement. I don’t get to go out on the track that often, but I still see the fast riders’ bikes moving around on television. They’ll always ride at the limit of adhesion, and that’s it.
Again, though, wouldn’t great riders like Mick and Valentino prefer there to be no traction control?
Valentino grew up with it, so he hasn’t really had it any other way. The first year we ran with the RC211, up until about three-quarters of the way through the season, we didn’t have it. We tested it in its infancy on the four-stroke in Valencia, about three-quarters of the way through the season, and he just said, “Now it’s easy.” When the bike spun up a little bit, it just dulled back down, so it just assisted—gave them a bigger margin to work with.
Formula One is going with a spec ECU. Is that a solution for motorcycles?
Certainly, when you have a regulation, as you do in Formula One, which states that an engine has to be eight cylinders and 2-point-whatever liters, then an ECU screw-in is okay, just like they do in the touring-car racing in Australia. You’re basically rev-limited to 7,200, and the ECU maps everything so you can’t cheat. That’s fine. However, if you’re going to have multi-cylindered engines, that one-off ECU isn’t going to be any good, unless they say, “If you’ve got a five-cylinder, you can rev to this; if you’ve got a four-cylinder, you can rev to that.” But then you get back to extra rules. If they came along here and said, “We’re going to make this category for V4 four-stroke 800s,” all the manufacturers would still compete. Then your regulation about the ECU, which controls only the rpm, would be okay.
You can get the traction control by just cutting the fuel supply. Is that traction control? What is traction control? You can have your traction control based on a differential between front and rear wheel spin; you can measure increases in rear-wheel acceleration; or a reverse of an anti-locking brake, with magnetic sensors on the rear wheel that measure the speed. There will always be the guy who can make a good start, and everybody will say, “Oh, he’s cheating around the system.” I remember Schumacher making a lot of good starts in the old days, and they felt the team was getting around the launch-control rule somehow. Then after they did something, his starts weren’t as good, and they were saying, “It must have been true.” But you don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. I can see things for and against, but I think essentially, if we were production-bike racing, and we basically said everybody’s racing 800s and they’re all across-the-frame bikes, [it would be okay]. But then maybe they’re different bores and strokes. Now what are you going to do?
Do you feel that tires have become too important of a component in the overall package?
Well, I think the thing that keeps you from falling over and crashing is the grip you get from the tire. The tire companies have an enormously difficult job, with the power that these bikes are putting out, and Michelin has done a fantastic job offering the grip not only to us, but to everybody. Unfortunately, we’re not able to use the grip as well as we would like, but once we get the aluminum part above the tires to accept the additional grip, we’ll move ahead in leaps and bounds. I don’t think you can identify the suspension, the Michelin tires, the Yamaha engine, or any one of those things as being more important. You can’t say the Honda five-cylinder is too powerful or has an advantage, or whatever. It’s up to each manufacturer to select the suppliers he wants and to spend the money that he wants to do it.
Do we want to get to a control-tire situation? Do we want to have controls? I don’t think it affects the racing from the audience’s perspective much at all, but it certainly dulls down what I consider the world championship. If only certain people are allowed to compete, then that’s not a world championship. For example, if we all had to use Champion spark plugs or one brand of fuel—no, I don’t ever want to see it get to that. But without question, the costs must be going up, because the companies have to move so quickly, whereas if one tire company or another has had domination for several years, they could move along at the rate that they wanted to move. If you look at 250 or 125, Dunlop win every race, every week, but nobody bothers to compete. Why not? Because it doesn’t get the coverage that the top class gets. We’ve seen Formula One with one tire for many years with Goodyear competing, and we’ve seen pretty much the same thing in the 500 days, with Michelin being the major supplier. Competition’s a good thing, but there might be a line where somebody has to decide what it costs. I don’t know who would squeal first; would it be the tire company that can’t afford, or would it be the tire company saying, “We can only supply this generation of tire to Valentino Rossi and the top Honda rider,” if it’s Michelin, and that’s the only teams they’ve got. But they may then find that their competitor’s supplying top tires to everybody, so then they’re forced to spend the money. I don’t know [when it would happen]—until you get a consensus between the motorcycle manufacturers, or the tire companies between themselves. It’s quite likely that a tire company would lobby a manufacturer to say, “We would like to see some restrictions,” but the manufacturer’s going to say, “That’s not really our problem.”
It sounds like you have a pretty laissez-faire approach to it.
Yes, I think that there’s enough regulations and rules and restrictions out there now. If, for example—and we’re struggling specifically with tires now—we were to introduce a rule on quantity, that’s great for the guys who are now in the sport or have been in the sport for some time. However, if a new tire company comes in to accelerate its development [to become] competitive, it may need to work in a different way. It would need more tires to get a broader cross-section. So you cannot essentially put a limit on it, either; if you’re negotiating from a position of strength, and say, “Now that we’re winning, we now want to cut it back to 12 rear tires and 12 front tires,” or whatever, that’s unfair, in my opinion—and this is only my opinion—to the guy in the tire company that makes that decision. Because in 10 years’ time, the guy who replaces him might find that tire company is not in a position of strength, and this rule may be the most damning thing that’s every been placed in front of him, and he’s in no position to change the rule, so it’s better not to have the rule at all. If a company believes it can do it by spending less, I imagine they would do it anyway—self-regulation. If it can’t, it will have to continue on. There’s a thousand different little mini-situations within the whole spectrum out there, as to how or what could be done, but overall, the no-rule thing is probably the best way.
Are there other examples?
We have limits now on the amount of fuel we can use, and people say to me, “Well, that makes it safer.”
I say to them, “How do you figure that?” and they’ll say, “Well, the bikes are slower.”
I’ll say “Why?”
“Because they can only use 22 liters of fuel.”
I say, “Yes, over 130 kilometers they can,” but we can dial those things up to use five liters a lap in practice.”
So you’re not safe in practice, and we have four hours and 20 minutes in practice and only one hour in the race, so the safety issue’s out the window for four hours and 20 minutes, and comes back into factor only for the race. In that instance, less fuel helps the safety of the race, but it doesn’t help the safety of the sport. We run four races in practice; essentially, in each practice, we run the same distance as we do in a race. If we can do that and produce 15 or 20 more horsepower—and hence better qualification times and better speeds—it’s negated the safety aspect. In that case, bringing in a rev-limiting system may help, but again, it’s a very, very difficult thing, unless the engines were all the same configurations. If they say the engines don’t have to be the same configuration, who’ll come up with a formula that says, “If you’re this bore and stroke and this many cylinders, your rev limit is that.”
Everybody will say, “Yeah, well okay, on paper that’s correct, but our torque is in this area, and we’re negated.” Again, less rules is better. If there are no rules, nobody’s cheating. We have rules in place now for capacity and the number of gears, and the weight—and a thousand other incidental rules that really don’t affect the performance of the machine. It’s almost enough. Of course there’s stuff on aerodynamics, and what can and can’t be covered. If somebody was given carte blanche to build the best racing motorcycle in the world, and were given two parameters, which would perhaps be weight and capacity, probably things would change a bit. Wheel sizes would change. Wheel size is not restricted in diameter, but in width, it’s restricted to six-and-a-quarter inches in the rear and four inches in the front. Now, this is a rule that is no longer applicable, because I was part of writing that rule in 1992, for 500s only. Essentially, that’s a rule that has moved through, into the MotoGP class, and you’d have to say, with 240 horsepower-plus, vs. 180, that rule and the extra weight, at 150 kilograms, that rule s hould be taken out or adjusted.
http://www.roadracerx.com/article_print.php?article_id=52
