If you?ve been watching MotoGP recently, you?ll have heard the commentators talk about the rear ride height device, and you might have seen one in action too. Particularly now Suzuki have finally jumped on the bandwagon. But if you?re wondering what it is, where it?s come from and why the riders are all so desperate to have one, you?re not alone. Hopefully this?ll shed some light on it?

To understand why they work you have to understand a little bit about motorcycle geometry; but it really is only a little bit. The lower a bike?s centre of gravity is, the less likely it is to wheelie. And when you?ve got 250bhp, wheelies are fairly commonplace. And fairly annoying, when you?re trying to ride a MotoGP bike as fast as you can. But by lowering the bike with the rear ride height device, you can accelerate harder with less wheelie, and therefore go faster. Easy.
New tech"

No. People have been lowering bikes to avoid wheelies for years, it?s nothing new. You won?t see a drag bike with masses of suspension travel and motocross racers have been using ?holeshot? devices for years. The rear ride height device works on a very similar principal.

And that?s no coincidence. Because the rear ride height device is just a continuation of the holeshot devices that MotoGP riders have been using for years (and MX racers have been using for decades). They are quite simple really. All you have to do is compress the forks (usually by pulling the front brake on the warm-up...