Why THIS Engine is DOMINATING in MotoGP

👋 I did miss talking about the pulses in the firing order allowing the tyre to recover for a crossplane I4. I also made a few minor mistakes on balancing between flatplane crank vs crossplane crank with regards to their primary and secondary balances. The feedback is appreciated and I will take it onboard and make better videos! Sorry about that all :)

Meanwhile honda: -Sells flagship inline4 -Race a V4 GP bike -Not competitive in GP -Fireblade sales still up

Little old suzuki did great before they got pushed out the door with an inline and yamaha dominated until they stopped spending money in motogp and rolled over and played dead!

1 note, a flat plane i4 ALSO has perfect primary balance. It's the secondary balance where it struggles a bit. The cross plane i4 has HORRIBLE primary balance and the same bad secondary balance of the flat plane. This requires it to have balance shafts and extra counter weights and THAT is why YAMAHA's i4 is heavier than a v4 engine. Flat plane i4 engines do not have that problems and are significantly more powerful than Yamaha's i4 motors. the reason yamaha went for the crossplane is the odd firing interval that is similar to a shared pin v4. By spacing the power strokes at irregular intervals with bigger silence gaps allows a more easily manageable power delivery both by the riders and the rear tire. As the tire has very limited capacity for grip, the gaps in power delivery allow it to recover better. That's an issue that comes from the delayed elasticity of tire rubber called hysteresis, it causes the rubber to have a delay in going back to its normal shape after leaving contact with the road. Put too much load on the tire too fast and it's over, you lost grip. An i4 engine, aka a screamer, has NO POWER GAPS and it will easily break grip, shared pin v4 engines and yamaha's cross plane have big gaps that allow the tire to recover. In terms of power, a v4 with separate crank pins for each piston CAN work with the same power delivery of a screamer engine as they can be set in a way that it fires every 180° like an i4. THAT v4 would completely blow the other v4 engines out of the water with its power. My question is, would that v4 lose its balance?

From someone who spent nine years at one of the big four, that was a very informative and accurate video, excellent.

I owned a 1983 Honda VF750F. It was Honda's original V4 design for racing.

That crossplane noise is just unbeatable, its heavenly at WOT.

Half of the information in this vid is straight up lies. Having a longer moment of inertia gives more vibration and less handling. The V4 is not more powerful, what it does is spread out the power pulses so the tire can "relax" and recover grip, since power has already hit a ceiling in moto gp, where more power wouldnt be a benefit since bikes have problems putting it to the ground. Also V4s do NOT have perfect primary balance, I4 DO have it. V4s have perfect SECONDARY balance, which does help with revs. V4s also have cooling problems and are definetely LESS compact if you count the independent intakes and everything. Also the concept of moment of inertia being good is true, but not applicable here since the crank spins on itself, not around the bike. Having more mass on the sides is good, but doest have to do with the crank spinning.

Did I miss it? What about aerodynamics? Isn’t the V4 narrower? That should help tremendously

holy crap, you're probably the most underrated analysis moto guy ive ever seen. your production level is much better than most of other channels, keep it up!

I have an R1, I can say that my engine is the same volume and configuration as GP bike 😊

I can attest that the Wisconsin V-4 absolutely dominated back in the ‘50’s when we used it on a John Deere hay baler and a wooden tanked orchard sprayer.

2 little complements: The reason for the 90° degree crank is that it creates a irregular firing order, which gives a bigger recovery window to the rear tire (the tire has more time to care about cornering when it is not „stressed“ by the ignition strokes), which improves traction during corner exit. In a race bike, the center of gravity should not be as low as possible. A high center of gravity gives advantages in cornering. With the same leaning angle, you can compensate more centrifugal force when the center of gravity is higher. A higher center of gravity is bad for acceleration, because the tendency of doing a wheelie is higher, but this is compensated by the different lowering devices.

Great vid and analysis! An excellent point on how all this racing is just a marketing exercise. Suzuki left MotoGP cause it wasnt profitable, they make more in ATV and Boat engine sales than they do on motorcycles (at least in North America). Yamaha is just holding on, there isnt really a reason for them to spend all that addition mkney on developing a new engine when they probably outsell Ducati and KTM with their piano sales ahah. Subbed

This is a quality video. Here's to your growth

Great content mate - thank you. Maybe invest in a mic to avoid the "echo" effect in your audio track. Just a minor thing. Keep doing what you're doing and this channel will grow.

The moment of inertia argument doesn't wash. The v4s typically have an external flywheel which allows them to tweak engine inertia for each track, so it would be easy for them to increase it and match the inline 4s. All motogp bikes also run their engines backwards to cancel out the wheel inertia, Ie to reduce overall inertia.

I had 1985 Honda VF500F Interceptor with gear driven cam it was a jewel of a motor.

Wow, what an awesome vid! There's so much absolute junk out there on the internet and what an excellent explanation especially for the Motogp newb. I instantly subscribed! Best of luck on your channel, you're a great presenter.

How does the inline crank flex more if it sits on bearings in the middle? It's not like there's only two bearings at the ends and that's the endofit... This doesnt make any sense...