Picture the scene – you’ve just finished building a truly awesome Lego project. You turn your back on it for a moment to find your phone (to take a photo of it for Instagram as you’re a sad twat) and when you get back your kid brother has stuck a massive wing from a spaceship set on the back because he thought it looked cool.
We present to you the Yamaha wing:
‘Inspired’ by F1 the boffins over at Yamaha HQ may not have had time to upgrade their engine in the off-season but they did produce this monstrosity. The eye-offending wing was tested by Yamaha’s rider Fabio Quartarararo at last week’s test in Portugal.
Thankfully for everyone Quartarararo claimed he couldn’t feel any difference with or without the wing although did admit it would be a convenient place to hang his beret mid-sessions. Hopefully this means the team will not use the wing ever again and will be confined to the ‘rubbish and ugly’ bin along with everything produced by Pierre Terblanche.
Like all similar aero devices the wing’s potential grip is sacrificed for straightline speed – which is probably why they didn’t bother fitting it to Morbidelli’s bike.
Think Yamaha’s wing is the ugliest thing ever seen in MotoGP? Here’s some options to persuade you otherwise…
Kurtis Roberts
When the all-American hero Kenny Roberts Snr had his first son he named him ‘Junior’. Junior was a true mini-me of Senior – fast, aggressive, plump and not liked very much behind his back. Junior had all Senior’s racing DNA. Sadly, that couldn’t be said for his final son Kurtis who took most of his racing DNA from his mother…which meant he wasn’t very fast on a bike but he instinctively knew how to use the washing machine.
But that didn’t stop nepotism kicking in allowing Kurtis to race in 34 GP races over three classes. In that time the unfortunately skilled Roberts brother amassed no wins, no poles, no podiums, no friends and a career best of a 12th place finish.
Cal Crutchlow’s Xray
The gobby Englishman was known in MotoGP has being a hardman…not due to his determination but because by the end of his career he was 85% metal. He was literally hard to touch and medically classed as a tractor.
Cal’s many crashes, all which he informed us afterwards cost him a podium finish, resulted in his bones been pinned together with metal. Then, when that metal broke in a subsequent crash, it was fixed back together with even more metal – usually found in a skip behind the hospital.
These days if Crutchlow needs an xray he is legally obliged to inform the staff that the shocking results are correct and that it’s not a printout from the popular Windows ‘Pipes’ screensaver of yesteryear.
Ducati’s Winglet fairing
Ducati know a thing or two about creating a hideous looking MotoGP bike. These days our poor peepers are subjected to the horrors of a bike with a quarter of a million plastic wings stuck to every available surface.
But back in the old days, when race-ruining aero was in its infancy, the Bolognese based pipe-benders experimented with the hideous winglet fairing. This was done primarily to circumnavigate the rules that banned wings as the turbulence created was causing Dani Pedrosa to be blown off out of the circuit’s perimeter.
Ducati turned up to testing with this almost indescribable fairing that looked like a sad, sulking face – possibly inspired by Ducati’s time with Casey Stoner. Thankfully the fairing never made it out of testing but it was a precursor to the onslaught of eyesores we’d be subsequently treated to.
Uccio
When it comes to Rossi’s ‘special’ friend there’s very little that’s not already been said about the oil-seeping block of rancid bum-lard. But the problem was not the fact we had to endure him and his awkward fist pumps – but the fact we had to endure them for so many seasons.
Valentino Rossi was in MotoGP for longer than anyone can remember. When he started racing Loris Capirossi was still in short trousers – which Loris was still in when he retired. That many years of seeing the pointless Uccio in the pit garage wore away the shiny bits of our soul leaving us questioning why he hadn’t yet lost a foot to diabetes.
Special mention
1996 Yamaha YZR250
Although not a MotoGP bike we thought we’d finish on Yamaha’s glorious YZR250.
The design, inspired by a broken alloy subframe incident when giving a fat lass a pillion home, this 250 treat showed the world that fast didn’t always have to look good. Although ten minutes with an angle grinder could easily fix it.