One way to resolve the perceived "midget problem"

Go back to LeMans starts.

 

Le Mans Start:

Bikes in a line down one side of the start-finish straigth, riders in
a line down the other side of the start finish straight.

Flag drops, riders sprint across track, leap on bikes, fire 'em up and
start race.

It works for grids of 60+ in World Endurance. Most of the time..

 

What's the problem you're trying to solve?

 

midgets have short legs and cant run fast and probably less able to
man-handle a bike.

slower to get to their bikes and probably have a tougher time bump-
starting them.

i like the idea, but it'll never happen.

 

Not enough riders eating pizza and beer.

 

How much harder would it be than kickstarting a 450cc MX'er? They're running
a claimed 12.3 compression, stock.

 

Sure, but they also have quite fancy engine management and even engine
braking systems. So it'd keep the throttle plate fully open and fuel
injectors off until you pushed it up to ten miles an hour, you jump on
top, it ramps the throttle closed and gives it some gas and off you
go.

It's not the 80s any more.

-jake

 

Maybe, short of doing a bike/rider minimum weight rule instead of bike-
only minimum weight, we could have minimum rider weight and girth
measurements in WSBK (real world-based racing) and anything goes in
Moto GP...

 

Virtually all automobiles now come with electric window lifts, but it's not
because the passengers can't turn the crank.

 

Heh! I wonder what the weights were for next year's racers back when
they were all 21?

 

Mark, what's the problem you're trying to solve? That rider weight is
becoming more of an issue? It used to be an issue before too, just
not to the same extent perhaps. So what? Physical attributes
(fitness, weight, height, etc.) are a major factor in virtually any
form of athleticism on a professional level and certainly motorcycle
racing is quite physical. Just because different racing series are
currently resulting in different average physiology of their riders
doesn't mean that one is more unfair or worse than the other. They're
just different. Superbike and GP racing have demanded different
attributes for a long time. If I'm not mistaken, this large cross-
over trend of riders going between the series is a fairly recent
thing. Look at Rich Oliver -- the guy dominated 250's all his life,
but could never quite jell with a production bike.

I don't quite get your earlier point about racial divide or
favoritism. Not all Europeans are smaller than Americans. And even
if they are smaller on average and that happens to be a good thing for
a racer, so what? Being small doesn't guarantee success. On a bike,
one has to also be strong. So while you can be light and compact, if
you don't step up your physical fitness program more than your bigger
oppenents, you won't last 5 laps at that pace.

 

I don't think its about that at all. I think that's a symptom for what
he sees as an artificial career path based on 125->250->MotoGP rather
than Superports->Superbike->MotoGP. One which is biased towards 125,250
for all sorts of reasons.

Let's imagine for a moment there were 24 seats on the MotoGP grid.
(Honda 6, Ducati, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki 4, Roberts 2). Who in the
current crop would you leave out, who else would you give a shot?

De Angelis is the only one I'd leave out. Possibly Nakano. I'd add
Spies. I have a real hard time thinking who else to add in. And finding
5 is really hard. I think it's actually easier with WSB and WSS. There's
a whole bunch of riders currently in national championships that ought
to get a shot at those championships. But that road is now being blocked
by ex-MotoGP riders.

 

Not remotely as much. As I've said repeatedly, this is an entirely new
phenomenon, as far as I know there's never been a premier class
champion below about 65kg / 145lbs, until now with Stoner at 128lbs.
And about two-thirds of next year's grid will be made up of riders
lighter than that historical cutoff.

So what? Physical attributes

That depends on what is driving the boat, and it's not at all clear
that what has happened here is that the bikes developed to a point
where smaller, lighter riders were at some fundamental advantage, so
they moved to the top of the class and teams responded by hiring more
of them. In fact that's not at all what's happened here. What I see
happening is that historically (meaning going back only 10-15 years)
the teams hired from 250; in fact, in 2002 only one of the top 14
riders in points didn't come from 250 (Abe). There was in retrospect a
very short period at the start of MotoGP that teams also hired from
SB, but now that's reverting back to the way it was before. In the
meantime, 250 started hiring from 125 almost exclusively, which wasn't
really the case historically.

What that means is riders coming into MotoGP today mostly have started
in 125, and it seems to succeeed in that class you have to be very
small, even with the bike-rider weight minimum. And 250 doesn't have
that minimum, so size/weight continues to matter there. In theory it
may not matter as much in MotoGP, but that almost doesn't matter if
the only guys who can get in the door are under 60 kgs.

Superbike and GP racing have demanded different

Not that long - if you look at the American-Australian dominance era
from '78 through '98, most of the premier class championships were won
by ex-SB riders, and only one was won by a guy from 250, Franco Uncini
in '82. The flow from 250 to 500/MotoGP is a fairly recent phenomenon,
and from 125 to 250 to MotoGP even more recent. And I think a large
part of that is political - MotoGP and its teams want riders from the
countries who support the sport the most, for financial reasons, and
that has meant trying to find a way to get Spanish, Italian and
Japanese riders into those seats. That way has mostly been through
250, which has been dominated by EuroMed and Japanese factories and
teams, and 250 riders have a leg up when it comes to experience in the
series.

What these trends inevitably lead to are bikes that are shaped around
the guys that ride them. So MotoGP bikes have been and will be
developed with smaller riders with 125/250 skills in mind. Now we have
bikes that have to be ridden with wheels in line and with high corner
speed, and all that sliding around sems to be history. So who does
that favor? And the racing has become relatively boring - do we blame
that on electronics and 800cc bikes and the advanced state of the
tires, or should we also be blaming that on the guys riding and
developing the bikes? It's chicken-and-egg stuff, I think.

That as a general position makes sense, but it really doesn''t play in
this real world. If you look at the AMA, it's fairly clear that these
things matter, and we see guys at 145-170 pounds at the front, while
the smallest guy, DiSalvo, can't seem to do much more than the odd
fast lap and has been a big disappointment. But in GP today you don't
see anything like that, and the average MotoGP rider in 2008 may well
be smaller than the average rider in 250 only 8-10 years ago. Back
then Harada and Capirossi were the midgets in 250; today they would be
just part of the crowd, if not on the larger end.

And as I agrued with Kveck the last couple weeks, I think when size
starts to matter that much, we inevitably lose talent, the kind of
talent that generated championships for the last 50-60 years, the kind
of talent that comes in a 145-165 pound body. So the midgets roll in,
but 160-pound Spies remains outside looking in, and it's not at all
certain that he won't remain there forever. Probably not, because he
rides for Suzuki and Dorna wants some Americans. Americans to create
interest in the US that is, and perhaps to win the occasional GP here,
but not to dominate they way they did in the '80s - the winning in
Europe and the championships are to go to their home boys, because
that's what pays off for them. It's not personal, it's business...

 

I think when you write that, you're accepting an awful lot of staus
quo in the process. For instance, you don't reject West, but would you
have slected him had he spent the rest of the year in WSS? I doubt it.
So what about Sofluoglu? What about Rog Hayden? And for that matter,
what about Mladin? Sure, he's 35 or will be shortly, but there's no
question that this sort of bias and thinking is why he's not in MotoGP
today, and, if so, I think he'd likely be running as close to the
front as his tires and bike would allow him. What about Hodgson? His
one shot was on a crappy year-old bike on crappy tires on an
underfunded team that didn't test much and which favored his teammate
- doesn't get much worse than that. Or what about Bayliss, a MotoGP
race winner less than a year ago, or Haga?

So why does Divizioso get a shot? He's on a top bike and assumedly top
tires, yet he's only won very occasionally and hasn't seriously
challenged for a championship. And what winning he's done is only
because everyone else with any real talent has already left the class
for MotoGP, so he's fighting kids like himself. There's almost no good
way to make any sort of realistic judgment of anyone in 250 these
days, becaues there's no standard at all to measure them against. But
because he's a young guy who has the right passport to get a good
ride, finishes on the podium and occasionally wins, he's converted
into a hot prospect.

Think about guys having gone another route. If Stoner had gotten
frustrated in GP early on and then was offered a ride in the AMA, he
might be one of those guys getting beaten all the time by Spies and
Mladin in SB, or even less, maybe fighting the guys at the front in
the support classes. I don't think one can assume he'd kick ass there
and make his way out, rather his experience might well have been more
like Hodgson's. Or Mladin's a decade earlier. Or what Bayliss' might
have been, had Fogarty not gone down in 2000, Bostrom not stumbled out
of the gate, Bayliss not crashed at Daytona, Sears not been cancelled
and Kocinski not been available. Davies has this opportunity at
D'Antin because of his freak opportunity at Laguna earlier, but what
if Yamaha had let B-Boz ride that bike instead? He may well be back
here anyway, and how long might that last? West got really lucky, just
as McCoy did eight years ago, but for every unfavored guy like that
there must be several who don't get that break. The cream does't
always rise to the top.

So to me it's the bigger picture of the structural aspects of the
whole deal, which shape who might and might not appear to be
deserving. As you say, WSB is jammed up with old guys and GP rejects,
and the AMA has some of the same going on. But if that wasn't
happening, which is happening in part because MotoGP has reversed the
flow that began a few years ago, there might be other younger guys in
good SB seats who could look like deserving candidates. It's really
hard to say, there is very little that's absolute in this world.

 

Mark N muses:

You really don't understand how racing works, do you?

Wow that's quite a list of 'what-if's' to get to some demon dream of
yours.

For the record, I think there's a fine list of guys that deserve a
chance
in MotoGP. To bad there aren't many spots open.


Go fast. Take chances.
Mike S.

 

Mark N asks:

Sofuoglu, Charpentier, Kallio, Spies, Dovisioso, Lorenzo. RL Hayden,
Pitt, Rea. Those are the first ones that come to mind without
really studying the issue. I'm sure there are others hiding in
National series for instance that I'm unaware of. Guys that
follow the Hopkins model and need somebody to take a big
honking chance on them. But that's not going to happen this
year - deserving a ride and having a ride available are two
different things.

Mark N's wishful dreaming notwithstanding.

Not what I claimed. I contend, and the ruling body and teams
seem to agree with me, that in MotoGP class, smaller riders
have advantages and disadvantages that in general even out
so that larger (not Large but larger) riders are not at a
disadvantage.
No rule change is necessary as in this class, it's a non-issue.
In other classes and forms of racing, maybe and maybe not an
issue. In 125 roadracing, almost certainly an issue. In MX1,
certainly not. MX2 probably not.

Too bad there's not a game programmer handy. I guarantee this
is all modeled, or could be, in some of the games my kid is playing
these days.


Go fast. Take chances.
Mike S.

 

- Sofuoglu Will get his chance, but he's got to do Superbike first
- Charpentier has not looked like a winner for a while now. And he's
getting old
- Kallio. Hmmm. Perhaps.
- Spies, Yes. Go and race at world level as soon as possible.
- Dovizioso. I'm not sure he quite has the killer instinct of the others
but he's so far ahead of any other Honda rider that there's something
there. He looks to be close to Dani P's ability.
- Lorenzo Looks to be at least as good as the other 250 champion
graduates in MotoGP were at the same stage.
- RL Hayden. If there's a place, give him a shot. Or at least more wild
cards and testing.
- Pitt. He was just showing his potential when he got knifed in the
back. Then he tries a no hope team. Like RLH, wildcards, testing, and a
ride if there's room.
- Chaz Davies. Wild cards, testing, a ride if there's room.
- Rea. Not yet. He should have got a World Supers ride next year.
- Kiyonari. Go and win or come second in World Supers. Then let's talk.
- The Bostroms. Lovely guys, but. Ben was good once, but he hasn't shown
if for years and he's not getting younger. Same goes for Eric.
- Haslam. Get to World Supers. You're not going anywhere in BSB. But
you're not good enough to race in MotoGP and you've already had your one
shot. Like Hodgson you really have to prove it the second time around.
And you're not doing that.

- Checa, Barros Go home. We're bored of you.
- Haga, Bayliss, Corser, Biaggi, Mladin, Lavilla, Hodgson. Sorry guys
but you got your one shot and it didn't work out. It may not have even
been your fault, but you're all getting old. We'd rather have new blood.

- Sykes, Crutchlow, Camier, Hill. Get into WSB or WSS as soon as
possible. Keep moving up.
- Are there any AMA riders not mentioned that should go to MotoGP or WSB
now? I don't know.
- I can't see any other 250 riders that should move up. Bautista has to
win the championship first. Barbera is an idiot. Aoyama (Hiroshi) looks
to be very close to Kallio but is perhaps too nice. Both of them are a
bit stuck because the KTM doesn't quite give them enough to show what
they're capable of.

I really hope Airwaves Ducati move to WSB and another team takes on the
Ducati factory role in the UK. And I hope MV find a way of racing WSB.

There is a problem here with old racers who are still fast on the way
down blocking the younger racers on the way up. There's only so many
good rides in the lower championships. It will be a shame if WSB is so
full of ex-MotoGP riders that there's no room for new riders to make an
impression as second rider in a top team.

 

Julian Bond lists:

He's been hurt but you're right, he's getting old.

Both nice guys but Ben especially needs to find another profession
and give some kids a chance.

I'd add Tamada.

These BSB guys?

Maybe, not immediately though. Herrin is getting there. Hayes but
he's getting old. Why he doesn't have an AMA superbike ride is
beyond me. I would have said Danny Eslick a year ago but he's done
nothing to prove himself ready. There's a couple flat trackers, Mees
being one, that I'd like to see on a superbike but don't expect it
to happen.

There's a few AMA riders that should go home. Besides BBostrom
there's T Hayden and the punk (DiSalvo).

Isn't that the way it's always been? At least since the money got
really good - good enough even top 10 guys are looking
at never working for a living after retiring from racing.



Go fast. Take chances.
Mike S.

 

The reason why rider weight is becoming more important is because
technology is allowing it. If a bunch of peopel are racing, being
limited by chassis and tire technology, cornerspeed will be more
important than getting a good drive out. If cornerspeed is more
important, generally it's more of a function of chassis and suspension
development. If drive is important, but the electronics aren't up to
it (superbike), then overall skill and adaptability to the bike are
more important. But if you've got electronics, chassis, and tires
more or less taken care of, rider mass is going to matter more with
respect to acceleration and braking capabilities. Remember MotoGP's
hiring frency of superbike riders when 4-strokes appeared? That's
because everyone expected there to be a period of time when tire and
electronics were going to be behind the horsepower, so they needed
riders with experience with bikes with similar charecteristics. Now
electronics and to some degree tires have allowed bikes to be more
like 250's again. So you hire 250 rides. I don't think there's
anything unreasonable about that.

Just because 250's aren't popular in the US, doesn't mean that Dorna
should adapt to this particular market. And yet, they are. My
understanding is that they are seeking a way to restructure the 2
support classes, most likely with introduction or switch to 4-stroke
technology. They're understandably taking their time with it. But
the primary motivators for doing so have to do with their desire to
expand to new markets, such as US, Asia, and elsewhere.

Exactly. There's a reason why it's reverted back to hiring from 250's
and while you may think it's because of a vast conspiracy against
globalization, I disagree. You're assigning attributes to business
that business generally rejects, which is adhering to principles of
nationalism in the face of a prospect of making more money globally.
Even NASCAR is searching for a way to go international (they're
already in Mexico and Canada for crying outloud).

As I said, I think it's the other way around. Sliding around with a
barely tamable overpowered bike is going to be slower than riding the
same power with better engine management systems. It may not look as
good on TV, but it's more competitive. So when the bike becomes more
like a 250 again, as was mentioned by lots of people in the paddock at
the time 800's came about, as well as when the 990's were becoming
more refined, you hire riders from that class.

Superbikes are vastly different from GP bikes because the teams are
constrained by the chassis baseline and much more restrictive
electronics rules. It's completely logical that being small as an
advantage will play second fiddle in superbike series to being an
adaptive rider.

You might say we always lose talent because no matter what the
rulebook says, we will always have less grid spots available, than
there may be worthy candidates. But that's not the point of a
prototype series. If you want a spec series, where everything is
equalized as much as possible, MotoGP is not it. MotoGP is about
constructing a total package out of a rider, chassis, engine, tires,
electronics, and yes, marketability. Praise whatever lord you believe
in, though, that due to the nature of motorcycle racing, marketability
is still a very long way behind the other qualities, at least as
compared to car racing.

 

I don't think you can place a metric to determine which matters more.
All I was saying is that rider weight is more of a factor than it used
to be. In some sense, everything is becoming more important because
the stakes are higher and the costs of mistakes are greater. In the
old days, people could walk past the GP bikes sitting outside next to
the truck with no one tending to them or shooing away the hordes of
reporters trying to get a glimpse of a used rear slick. It's just a
different world. You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

You can look at it in another light. Lightweight classes are
excellent for developing talent on the cheap. They are a great way
for kids to get into road racing. At the moment, this country is
lacking this kind of entry system sorely. Road racers here get into
the sport much later in life on average than in many other countries,
Europe included, in large part because kids get mostly steered into
motocross, karting, or stick-and-ball sports. The idea of 125's and
250's or their respective future replacements is not to have 25 year
old guys and girls jumping on them trying to show everyone what they
can do. The idea is to have 15 and 16 year olds doing it, after
they've achieved something in a similar national series. It's an
excellent system. Blame the marketing, blame the culture, blame
whatever, but I don't think the idea of this kind of progression is
poor. The US is starting to catch up of course. Red Bull has
organized the cup and they've invited a number of American kids to try
out, many of whom did not have direct road racing background or
significant accomplishments. Red Bull were after potential, which is
more important than national points accrued at that age. We have 13
year old Elena Myers, who has been kicking ass in 125's in USGPRU and
is now at a crossroads -- go overseas or jump on a 600 in the States
and focus on an AMA career path.

I agree that 2-strokes may not be marketable and not the future. But
the lesson can be applied to 4-strokes as well. We don't need more
production 600 classes. We need more interesting and marketable
lightweight classes. Be they prototype-based or production-based;
that may not matter that much. If you were at this year's USGP, you
may have seen proposed prototypes for small 4-stroke racers (custom GP
chassis + 450 motocross motor). I can't wait until we make that
jump. If the American market continues developing the way it has
been, there will be sufficient interest in small displacement road
racing in the future and you'll be getting your American GP racers in
the more natural route than we are now.

I think that's a faulty assumption. There are other ways of making it
both technologically interesting and affordable than just shoving an
hot-rodded SV650 motor in there. It could be motocross single based.
It could be a spec motor class.

You're operating on a big assumption and I just don't agree with it.

More of the same conspiracy theory. Rossi is popular and he brings a
ton of money to the series, yes. Of course he'll have some clout with
the organizers. Ever been to a club race and seen who advises the
organizers when it comes to scheduling and safety -- the top running
experts, that's who. It's not a democracy and never has been. While
there are certainly politics involved (there always are, when money's
part of the equation), you need to look at all the facts, including
the fact that the show's just added another American stop and they've
been adjusting their schedule to work with AMA and not bring the 125's
and 250's because -- get this -- they thought 125's and 250's would be
less popular here than the AMA racing. Believe it or not, there are
people in Dorna that don't have wet dreams of Dani Pedrosa being the
king of the universe.

You're forgetting Honda hiring Chris Walker straight from British
superbike to ride a 500, most likely as an attempt to acclimate a
superbike rider to the series and the tracks before having him kick
butt on a 4-stroke. It didn't work out, but that was most likely
their intention, so it wasn't just the new and second-tier teams that
were looking at superbike riders.

They did encourage them... by allowing 4-strokes. What more
enouragement does one need to start looking at other series to hire
riders familiar with 4-strokes from? I'm not sure there needs to be
some other sinister explanation to it and I'm not sure how it relates
to the discussion.

Uh, Rossi isn't tiny. And he stayed on top during the 4-stroke switch
in large measure because he adapted his riding style. Now he's had to
adapt his style back to the no-sliding kind of way. All the while top
runners have been changing because most others have not had as easy of
a time with the changes. And of course Hayden's not small and he won
the championship. Meanwhile, Pedrosa is tiny, but he hasn't had
nearly the success one would expect given how much weight (no pun
intended) you give to the issue. And of course, this year turned out
to be the year of Stoner, something almost no one would have predicted
this past winter. And it's not due to any one thing. It's due to the
total package Ducati-Stoner-Bridgestones-electronics proved to be.
That's what the series is about, as I said time and time again. It's
becoming nearly impossible to win on one strong attribute alone. You
have to have everything. I don't care that these guys are small.
Remember when Haga was penalized when he failed a drug test due to a
diet supplement? That was in WSBK and Haga wasn't a big guy ever.
The faster the racing gets, the more scrupulous everyone will get
about their training, rider choice, technology and so on. And it
won't always be the same thing. Who knows, maybe 5 years from now,
aerodynamic elbows will become the hot new thing.

If you're a hammer, everything is a nail.