Fifty-two years ago, Kenny Roberts changed the course of motorcycle racing. The three-time MotoGP world champion from Modesto, California, is widely considered the first to regularly drag his knees across the pavement while cornering.
That knee-dragging style has been a pillar of the sport ever since. It’s a skill that riders don’t think twice about, but newly introduced onlookers can hardly believe. And for the better part of 40 years, those mechanics of cornering didn’t change much.
Then riders started brushing their elbows against the kerbs. Two-time champion Casey Stoner was photographed doing that at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in 2011, setting the series alight.
“When Casey did it in Catalunya, he kind of destroyed [the elbow of his protective leather suit] in the process,” Chris Hillard, communications director for Alpinestars, a manufacturer of protective equipment, told ESPN. “When we changed the arm, we gave him the arm. The whole idea was to make a memento of it that showed how rare it was to do.”
What was once rare is now commonplace. Roberts duct-taping the knees of his leathers eventually brought about the introduction of knee sliders, and for more than 10 years now, Alpinestars has been installing elbow sliders on its leathers.
It may soon have to start adding shoulder sliders.
“Touching the elbow is a really normal thing because it’s like a reference for us, but when you lean that much and you touch with the shoulder, it’s something special,” 2024 MotoGP world championship leader Jorge Martín said to ESPN at the Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin, Texas, last month.
The 26-year-old from Madrid is pushing the envelope of what’s possible on two wheels. He did more to just set the sport alight when his shoulder-dragging spectacle at Catalunya last season, his exploits went mainstream, crossing over into the world beyond bikes.
Are the extraordinary talents of Martín and his contemporaries solely responsible for this progression of eye-catching cornering? Or are the efforts of an army of engineers in MotoGP’s paddock concocting a new wave of tech that makes it all possible?
There isn’t just one answer to that question, and they’re all interconnected.
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