In the past, when race bikes were upgraded and developed in full view, it was hard to tell just what or where the upgrades were because the very vast majority of R&D was taking place under the fairings. These days, it IS the fairings and bodywork being subjected to the scrutiny of very clever people, and if you're anything like me, you find yourself all too often looking at a MotoGP bike and wondering what all the winglets, scoops, ducts and bulges are all doing.
With MotoGP manufacturers now using Formula One teams, resources and know-how in the development of their aero packaging, it occurred to me that I have a contact in my phone of someone who is from that world and who has more recently been immersed in motorcycle aerodynamics, but of a different sort– the slippery sort. Rob White is founder of White Concept Motorcycles and brainchild of the radical WMC250EV concept bike that he designed and built entirely by himself to prove a… err… concept.
Think what John Britten did when he created the BrittenV1000 race bike. He designed and manufactured every single part of a bike that didn't follow the perceived rulebook and broke the mould like all the best engineering mavericks do. Rob White quit his job, sold all his bikes, remortgaged his house, got a divorce, used the £2500 his grandad left him in his will, and borrowed another £70,000 from his mates to design, make and test every part a machine he hopes will one day take the land speed record for an electric bike.
Rob cut his teeth in engineering during an apprenticeship in a motorcycle tuning shop at Silverstone. He then moved into combustionthen moved over to Aston Martin's Le Mans race cars. After a stretch in Australia working on V8s and powertrain stuff like gearboxes and diffs, he came back to UK to be part of a group of technicians working for the Mercedes F1 team on the V6 turbo hybrid, building and testing engines. He also worked trackside with Mercedes in 2013 for the last year of the V8 with Nico Rosberg, and then, since they were Mercedes customers, he went to McClaren for a season, and then Williams for a couple of seasons to look after the engines in their cars.
