Last season we saw quite a lot of exhaust flame from certain MotoGP bikes, mainly the factory Yamahas. Personally I noticed very little from the satellite Yamahas of Smith and Espargaro. I don’t know what accounts for that difference in bikes that are so similar.

This past weekend at Losail I noticed a similar difference with the Forward Yamahas of Loris Baz and Stefan Bradl. The former’s Yamaha spit out lots of fire, while the latter’s showed very little that I ever saw. This may have been influenced by Bradl seeming to spend a lot of time in the box, but it may also be a difference between the two sets of motorcycles.

Not only did Baz’ bike display more fire from the pipe than any other as far as I could see, but his also produced not just flame but flying sparks, such as those shown above. (You can click on the above image to view it larger.)

As you see in the image below, taken on the follow lap, the exhaust fire usually looked like ignited vapor, just like we’re used to seeing from other bikes:

But what was going on to produce those sparks I just don’t know. It didn’t happen every time, but when it did it seemed to be while shifting under acceleration. By that I mean, I never noticed sparks while he was in a turn and light on the throttle, which was a common instance for his bike to produce flames. I also couldn’t see if this happened more with one of Baz’ two bikes than the other. From trackside I can’t tell which is which.

Perhaps one of our more tech-savvy reader might comment with an explanation…

Photograph: ©2015 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved

Camera Info: Nikon D4 with Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

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Motorcycle Exhaust Flames