Suzuki has been present in the Continental Circus for decades, but after the 2011 season they decided to withdraw from the MotoGP World Championship. In 2015, they returned to this category, and only took 5 years to become World Champions. It is interesting to return to this saga.
Let's start the retrospective in 2014, the year which marked their return to MotoGP.
We first saw Suzuki's new MotoGP prototype in 2014 and it was completely different from what we'd seen before. Suzuki left the World Championship at the end of 2011, and at the time their engine was an 4 cc V800. In 2014, the regulations having evolved in terms of displacement, the engine was a 1000 cc, but Suzuki chose to develop an in-line 4-cylinder engine.
In 2014, Randy de Puniet took part in the end-of-season tests in Valencia and the initial feedback was positive and encouraging. Obviously, there was development work to be done, but the base was good. Over the winter of 2014 and into early 2015, Suzuki teams rolled up their sleeves, tweaking the machine with the aim of getting it to a level where it could compete with the factory teams. One important thing to note is that Suzuki returned to MotoGP in the final year of Bridgestone tires, meaning they had developed a bike for these tires which they only used for one season.
In 2015, this prototype already looked impeccable. Suzuki's classic blue and yellow colors were finally back in Grand Prix racing and the bike was also different from its 2014 predecessor. Changes were made in all areas, the frame, the swingarm and most importantly, the engine.
Nothing technical to notice here, just this superb unique livery that Suzuki used at the German GP in 2015. The brand was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the GSX-R and had reproduced a deco similar to that of the 1980s.
What's interesting here is the main beam of the frame. It is composed of a single smooth surface, with no hole in the middle of the beam. If you go back to the very first image in this article, you'll see how much the frame has changed compared to the 2014 bike, from the previous year.
During Suzuki's first year in MotoGP, it was obvious that they were lacking in power. They often found themselves at the bottom of the standings in terms of top speed, with both drivers complaining of a lack of acceleration and top speed. Suzuki worked hard on the engine heading into 2016 and found some top speed, but more was needed. They also worked on the chassis, making minor adjustments trying to improve cornering and get better grip.
One new thing they had developed was a swing arm. It is a one-piece, non-perforated piece. The previous season's swingarm was perforated and they continued to use it in 2016 as well as riders tried both in parallel, to compare them more easily.
We can clearly see in this image how the swinging arm is different from that of the previous image. In general, pilots preferred the openwork one.
2016 was also the year that aerodynamics in MotoGP really started to take hold. Suzuki was not going to miss the boat. They had two different aerodynamic solutions to offer that year. The first was a set of three levels of fins, which were quite small. The top assembly was located just below and to the side of the air intake, with the middle located just above the large SUZUKI lettering on the side fairing and the bottom just below the lettering.
The second aerodynamic package was an evolution of the first. The three-tier style remained, but the upper set of fins became much larger and had more of a curve and angle of attack. As we know, the support with the underside of the fin, creating high pressure above the surface of it and low pressure below.
This second aerodynamic assembly likely created more downforce due to the greater surface area of the upper set of ailerons as well as the fact that they had a greater angle of attack.
So this is a very, very brief overview of a very small selection of the technical details of the Suzuki GSX-RR from 2014 to 2016. In the second part of this file, we will study the evolutions of this machine from 2017 and more .
