Kawasaki giving the H2R bigger wings. Design drawings point the way to proper downforce increase

These drawings from inside Kawasaki show how the factory is having to up the amount of downforce on its next-generation of the brutal H2R to MotoGP levels, just to keep the front wheel of the coming-version of the bike on the floor during top-end acceleration.

There’s no details about an increase in the bike’s power for 2017 (although as the aerodynamics are being beefed up there’s a high chance that the power is going up, too) but from these detailed drawings you can see that the top ‘wings’ are getting a completely new design specifically to drive the front end towards the floor.

The documentation that goes with the drawings describes how the new wings: “Take the disordered flow of the air guided by the front cowling and suppress it over the front cowling. As a result, the aerodynamic force generating section can generate a downforce effectively.” (sic)

So, in effect, what we have here is a set of new wings for the H2R (options of which with both mirrors and no mirrors – with supercool ‘down tips’ – are shown) that now take the roughed-up air being fed off the fairing ‘shoulders’ and use that as a direct feed in order to increase the amount of downforce of the hyperbike.

Interesting stuff, and a serious pre-cursor to more work being done on the H2R in the near future.

So that you can compare the two designs, here’s the original bike’s wings as they appeared on the H2R:

And here’s how the new wings are going to look: