Suzuki’s Secret MotoGP Aerodynamics Revealed

Before its surprise withdrawal from the MotoGP championship at the end of 2022, Suzuki’s GSX-RR found a remarkable turn of speed, clocking over 220 mph at preseason tests to be the fastest bike in a straight line. It then returned to the top step of the podium in two of its last three races at Phillip Island and Valencia with Álex Rins—Suzuki’s first wins since the 2020 championship when Joan Mir took the title with just one victory.

Better aerodynamics was one of the keys to the improved performance, and a new patent filed by Suzuki shows that one idea the company was working on was a form of ducted winglet that could maintain downforce when it’s most needed under acceleration, braking, and cornering, but shed drag at high speed. There’s no indication whether the idea was ever put into use—it would be nearly impossible to see in photos and Suzuki is understood to have destroyed most of its remaining MotoGP bikes and parts since quitting the championship—but it shows the level of F1-style aero tech that’s being developed for the latest generation of MotoGP machines.

Related: Suzuki Explains Why It’s Leaving MotoGP

The idea is one that can be traced back to systems that appeared on Formula 1 cars more than a decade ago, when a spate of ideas emerged that involved air intakes that ducted high-pressure airflow to thin slits in the undersides of the cars’ wings. The most famous of these systems was the clever “F-duct” that McLaren introduced in 2010, a system that ducted air through a slot in the rear wing when the driver used their left knee to cover a small hole inside the cockpit. That airflow stalled the rear wing, shedding downforce and drag at high speed. That was banned at the end of the year thanks to its driver-controlled nature, but several other teams developed passive variations on the idea, using air pressure alone to trigger the system, including the “W-duct” used on the Mercedes front wing in 2011, before a rules clampdown sealed off that development route.

In normal use, the inverted wings used on racing cars and modern MotoGP bikes work by forcing the air flowing underneath them to cover a longer distance than the air flowing over the top of them, that means the air has to travel faster, which reduces its pressure. With less air pressure underneath and more above the wing, they generate downforce. On a racing car, the idea is to increase downward force on the tires to add more grip, while on MotoGP bikes the front winglets have the added effect of helping counteract the bike’s tendency to wheelie under acceleration, letting the rider put more power down and accelerate faster. In braking zones they help increase front-end grip, too, but riding flat-out on straights the winglets do little more than add drag and reduce top speed. Feeding high-pressure air through slots underneath the winglets would have the effect of reducing the downforce they generate and the drag they cause.

Suzuki’s patent, which was first filed in Japan in 2023 after the company’s MotoGP effort had ceased, shows several variations on the idea of ducted winglets with these drag- and downforce-reducing slots in their lower surfaces. The simplest variant uses two nose-mounted air intakes to feed slots underneath the upper of the two, biplane-style winglets. By carefully tailoring the size of the intakes and ducts, it should be possible to make the system work in the same way as the Mercedes W-duct of 2011, reducing drag at higher speeds without cutting downforce when it’s needed at lower speed. This version of the system would be relatively easy to spot thanks to the positions of the air intakes, but the patent also shows alternative variants where the air feeding the winglet slots comes from within the bike’s main nose intake, making the whole system virtually undetectable.

The patent also illustrates variants of the setup where both the upper and lower winglets have slots underneath them, increasing the effectiveness of the idea, and finally a sophisticated version where the ducts are controlled by valves—either electronic or manually operated—to turn the airflow to the undersides of the wings “on” or “off” in different conditions. That might be sailing close to the wind when it comes to MotoGP rules that ban movable aerodynamics, but the FIM’s rule book is quite specific about banning systems that change the shape or angle of winglets—something that even the active, valve-controlled version of the Suzuki idea doesn’t do—so it could be argued to be legal.

At its most extreme, the patent suggests that the valve-controlled version of the system could switch the air ducts on or off on each side of the bike independently, creating a front wing system that would benefit the bike during corners by activating the downforce- and drag-reduction system selectively on one side or the other.

While we might never know which, if any, of these ideas was ever tested on Suzuki’s real MotoGP bikes before the company withdrew from the championship, it would be no surprise if some other teams are having a close look at the new patent application to see if there’s anything in it that they could benefit from.