After months of negotiations and rumors, the FIM finally announced last week that MotoGP rules would be changed to limit maximum displacement to 800cc as of the 2007 season.
While this change was originally proposed to limit horsepower and thus reduce top speeds, it seems likely that rather than making the bikes safer, reduced displacement will make them harder to ride. Smaller displacement will mean higher rev ceilings but less torque, which means a narrower powerband and possibly more of a two stroke-style “hit” which will be a challenge to control.
Of course, the manufacturers have well more than a year to try to overcome these problems, but developing the new 800cc machines will require investment of significant R&D funds paralell to developement of the current race machines. We expect that the change in displacement will force the manufacturers to re-examine the benefits of the different engine configurations (triple vs four vs five vs six cylinder, V- or Inline layout), which will take even more time and money.
In any situation which demands significant research and developement, the advantage tends to go to the companies with the most resources. In this case, we expect that the larger manufacturers will completely redesign their powerplants, while their smaller competitiors might just make do with de-stroked versions of their current motors. Either way, the MotoGP deck will definitely be re-shuffled in 2007 as the teams are forced to adapt to completely different power characteristics in their race machines.
