Casey Stoner (Honda) passed Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) half way through the race today and went on to take the win ahead of Lorenzo in second and his Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa in third. Lorenzo continues to lead the championship points.
For additional details, results and points visit the official MotoGP site here
Spies…
He’s done his fair share to mess up this season all on his own, but to have a failed swingarm take him out of an easy 4th place, and getting sent out on a cracked subframe at the opening round at Qatar really makes me wonder if his team is up to the task. We’ll just set his chunked tire aside, as I don’t think his team had anything to do with that… But if you recall his season in WSBK, he was also plagued with numerous equipment failures including running out of fuel and loose bolts in his rear-sets.
You could argue that it’s not the manufacturer, but the team… But Yamaha is a common thread here (interestingly, only the factory Yamaha team. His time with Tech 3 seemed uneventful equipment durability-wise). Bringing Woody into his WSBK team seemed to get his bike back on track, but he doesn’t seem to have helped him much this year.
In either case, I think it’s time he got rid of both.
My thoughts exactly, it seems like his team is really letting him down. Houseworth is a common thread, maybe he can’t handle the world stage?
Loos like Rossi is going back to Yamaha next year. Should be exciting!
Stoner owns Laguna.
Well, Dave, one bit of evidence is the simple fact that every rider to a man in Moto GP seems to despise the proliferation of engine-management electronics on the bikes. Whether it’s Rossi, Edwards, Hayden, etc., they all have been saying for many years that the excessive use of electronics has dumbed down the racing and made it much less fun for the riders. They’ve even been known to say things such as, “They’re making these things to where anyone can ride them!”
I do agree with you that the same basic group of guys would likely be winning regardless of the bike-spec, all things being relatively equal, but I have to think that one of the pure glories of the sport—guys backing it in dirt track-style, rear tire spinning—has been dulled by the overabundance of ‘rider aids’ removing a large portion of the human element of racing. I definitely believe that a guy like Nicky Hayden would be doing much better if they dumped all the electronics, and I know for a fact that he thinks so too.
Rossi has made his feelings very clear on this subject, dating back to the days when he was still winning titles for Yamaha. If THAT guys says the electronics need to go, then they need to go. If ditching them would also make for a more affordable sport, that’d just be icing on the cake.
Let the CRTs use two strokes of equal displacement and let them have weight minimums that reflect the actual weight differences in the engines plus any reduction in the chassis that they can demonstrate as a direct result of using a two stroke rather than a four stroke engine.
In other words. Let four strokes and pallets of money race against two strokes and real world money. The big money will still have the big money riders. But guys like me would care about GP again. Where’s the down side?
Where would those two-stroke engines come from?
Old time 500cc 2Ts were making a good 180hp I believe before they were canned. 1000cc should do it. Even a simple across the frame fours should make decent power. TZR1000?? NSR1000?
There is no evidence to indicate that electronics has had any effect on the racing at all. Back in the 500cc days the gaps were just the same and plenty of current Moto GP bikes get crashed every weekend, often high-sides which the electronics are supposed to prevent, no? The same guys and teams would be winning, by the same huge margins with or without the electronics. At the end of the day they’re racing bank accounts.
WSBK and AMA SBK both have electronics too. Same thing. The electronics are a band-aid for bikes that are too powerful to be ridden effectively by the best riders in the world. Moto 2 is all the evidence we need to see that.
CRT would’ve been the answer if it has become the single bike type. Attempting to mix them with protos and factory budgets was never going to work.
I guess it’s possible that the fact all MotoGP teams use electronics is incidental. Maybe they are all off base, and there is not advantage to traction electronics.
But I doubt it.
Don’t you?
Incidental? I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.
They all use traction control. Riding a GP bike competitively without it is impossible. Some feel that it takes the “man” off the bike and that the riders are just robots. I assert that the riders would finish in the same order no matter what the rules governing the equipment were.
To drive that point home, Josh Hayes won his first AMA superbike title without traction control against a field of riders that did have it. Not a GP bike but proof beyond a doubt that he is the best rider in that series beyond even technological intervention.
Hi Dave. I guess what threw me off was when you write:
“There is no evidence to indicate that electronics has had any effect on the racing at all.”
This is a much different statement from:
“riders would finish in the same order no matter what the rules governing the equipoment are.”
I disagree with the first statement but (sort of) agree with the second.
Cheers …
What percentage of the cost is attributed to electronics? To me it’s the electronics that are the big problem in GP in more ways than just potential cost. For all the advancement of the electronics, it’s that advancement that’s taken away from the racing. I’m waiting for the manufactures to add sensors to the front of the bikes to let the bike decide when to slow down in race traffic. Then they can add a complete gyroscopic system to let the bike balance itself and take the rider completely out of the equation. I know these advancements lead to better products for the consumer but this is getting out of hand.
Hayden’s comment a few weeks back was the total eye opener for me and my final rejection of GP. When he stated (and I don’t remember after which race) that the Ducati didn’t know where it was on the track with regards to it’s mapping. I’m sorry the bike didn’t know? This is why WSBK is better than GP nowadays. Less tech control, more man control.
How much more technological advancement before we completely remove the human element from racing? They’re essentially turning the riders into the little monkeys that used to ride around on the backs of greyhounds in dog races back in the day.
Comments by Stoner show the crt grid fillers aren’t the answer. gp must face economic realities that they can no longer carry on the show as if it was 1999. Even something radical as 2 strokes only should be on the table. The current gp bikes are 99% the same as wsb. What are they trying to prove? Even so, how big is the market for 300 kph road bikes? Clearly the ivory towers are behind the curve.
+1
Fair enough, but the last time a world championship in the premier class was won by a bike that bore a fair resemblance to a road bike would have been in Geoff Dukes day!!! The bikes have born no real connection to road bikes for more than 50 years, and NOW its a problem???
The whole justification of bike road racing is to attract customers to buy similar MCs for street use. Thus when 2 stroke street MCs were banned by govts., 2 stroke GP bikes didn’t make any sense any more. WSBK had become more popular than GP races. Thus GP 4 stroke prototype bikes became the norm. Now the series is too expensive to allow more manufacturers to participate in it. The demise of Moto GP racing is coming……….
Leasing an NSR500 2T GP bike used to cost $1m per year without suspension, wheels, or tires. 2T racing wasn’t inexpensive and it would probably cost just as much as the rules allowed for today (electronics R&D, etc.). It was just a different economic time and it’s tougher to come up with the money today.
While people identify with familiar equipment, F1 is popular despite these cars not bearing any resemblance to anything any of us have ever driven.