Qatar GP

well, this is starting in a few hours. thus far everything very
predictable - QP saw stoner firmly entrenched up front, rossi behind,
lorenzo follows. hayden's QP was cut short by a highside, and
hopefully he is not too sore for the race.

 

it is raining cats and dogs in qatar... lookis like no motogp race
today, fun 250cc race, though.

 

I guess the rain wasn't predictable.


--
Andrew
00 Daytona
00 Speed Triple
71 Kawi H1
05 Squiddo

 

But cancelling the race if it rained was. And so was everyone running
round like headless chickens when it happened.

They're now saying a re-run on Monday. Which will screw with all the TV
schedules, force the teams to spend a load more money and runs the risk
of it all happening again. So will Qatar pick up the tab?

Sometimes it looks like Dorna (and the BBC) couldn't run a trolley race
in a Tesco's car park.

 

It seems to have come off as a success.
I just watched the BBCi broadcast.


--
Andrew
00 Daytona
00 Speed Triple
71 Kawi H1
05 Squiddo

 

the race was quite boring - stoner gone from the start, the usual
procession behind. only exciting bit was the pedrosa vs de angelis
controversy, they show a video that shows DA coming out real hard and
totally knocking pedrosa damn near out of the track, which looks
uttterly dick-head-ish, but what is not clear is why DA was acrrying
so much more speed out of the turn than pedrosa.

 

Normal service has clearly been resumed.
- Rossi can match Stoner just about but has to go with him on that first
lap. If there's any flaw in Rossi's riding it's that he's always a
little cautious on the first lap.
- The field is too thin and too spread out.
- Some riders like Toseland, Melandri, Capirossi always seem to find a
way of screwing up.
- Dovizioso will do well this year but Honda have to find a way to use
Ducati's tyres. Just as Yamaha had to.
- Satellite Hondas with their 1k rpm less rev limit don't seem really
any slower than the Repsol and Elias bikes.
- Mika Kallio is a star.
- Gibernau and Hayden will struggle.
- Takahashi has dropped straight into the role of "Token Japanese rider,
completely out of their depth." Just like Canepa in his role of "Junior
test rider, rewarded with a ride but completely out of his depth"

The bright spot in the whole weekend was 250s. Let's hope the days of 1
or 2 riders disappearing into the distance are over.

Roll on the next WSB.

Meanwhile, Guintoli was really fun to watch in BSB. He's clearly got no
fear and doesn't know or care what the traditional lines are. We stood
at the exit of Druids, looking down Graham Hill and he was stuffing it
up the inside, riding round the outside, spinning up the tyre, getting
sideways, using the Gobert line into Graham Hill bend. Big respect to
Plater as well doing BSB and BSS and running up at the front in all 3
races. Camier also looked awesome while Ellison and Walker were pretty
forgettable. And the gruff Yamaha exhaust note didn't make up for the
complete lack of Ducatis. The recession is biting. Way too many bikes
out there all day with flat paint schemes and no obvious sponsorship.
They're not going to last out the season.

And finally, no WSB at Brands makes me sad.

 

Yeah those BSB and BSS races were fun to watch. Some crazy passing.
Guintoli looked really good.
The SS race was pretty amazing too.



--
Andrew
00 Daytona
00 Speed Triple
71 Kawi H1
05 Squiddo

 

You oughta see the AMA conduct a race...

-Dirt-

 

Yeah, like Qatar '04?

That spec tire change sure has helped, hasn't it?

Or they were pushing too hard on bikes not quite up to snuff. Well,
execpt for Toseland. And what do these guys have to lose? Except for
their health, that is.

The assumption being that the Honda doesn't work well with the
Bridgestones out of the box. Which seems unlikely, given how Pedrosa
did last year after the switch.

On this track, maybe. But too many variables at the moment; in the end
the Repsol boys will do much better than the others, and Elias will
have one or two races that folks will use to justify the equipment he
gets.

Good one, Julian...

Yes and no...

So what can we cull from the start of the season? Stoner was great as
usual at Qatar, but on Champ's point, we have to remember that in the
races after Qatar last year it became clear Stoner was having problems
with the bike that didn't get resolved until the electronics got
tweaked a third of the way through the year and he went on a tear. So
maybe that's the difference.

On spec tires, the top two clearly are Rossi and Stoner, both of whom
prefer a stiff tire and also who are the guys who have had the most
developmental input over the last year and are likely the two guys
Bridgestone would want to reward (Stoner for winning them a lot of
races and a championship, Rossi because he's Rossi and can sell their
product). So does a spec tire equalize the field? No more than rain
does, and maybe less.

Last year the notable things in the Qatar results were the lightest
podium and top four (Stoner, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Dovizioso) in GP
premier class history, and an indication that the Yamaha/Michelin
combination was the best deal. This year Pedrosa's injury hurt the
midgets and Rossi's familiarity with the 'stones stepped him up a bit,
but otherwise it's really not that different. Yamaha looks like the
best overall machine again; Edwards moved from 7th to 4th but was much
farther behind Stoner. And Honda looks about the same, Suzuki perhaps
a bit better (Capirossi finished 8th last year, 32 seconds back; this
year Vermeulen finished 7th, 34 seconds back, but Caprossi ran better
while it lasted).

Which leaves Ducati and the biggest question in MotoGP - wtf? Last
year Melandri finished 11th and 42 seconds behind Stoner, this year
Hayden, hurting and having a terrible weekend overall, finished 12th
and 49 seconds back; Capirossi DNFed in '07 but wasn't running at
Stoner's pace. This year the lease team riders finished 8th, 13th and
last, with Kallio 35 seconds behind Stoner; in '08 they were 14th and
15th, and in '07 9th and 11th. In practice Hayden was often running a
couple seconds off Stoner's times, which matches his preseason testing
and Melandri last year. Nicky's best race lap, the last one, was
slower than every Stoner lap except his first and last and was 2.4
seconds slower than Casey's best.

So what's going on here? We now have three guys, Capirossi, Melandri
and Hayden, who just can't get along with the factory Ducati. These
guys are the guys who finished 2nd, 3rd and 6th in '05 and 1st, 3rd
and 4th in '06, won 12 of the 17 races Rossi didn't win those last two
years of the 990s and took a total of 43 podiums. But Stoner, who was
in 250 in '05 and finished 7th, didn't win a race and had only one
podium in '06, dominates on this machine - and the discrepancy is
getting worse. And we see much the same with the lease bike guys, who
for the most part have looked like they're on Kawasakis or Suzukis or
worse the last couple years. Up to their exits, Capirossi and Melandri
looked a hell of a lot better on their 2nd-tier machines this
weekend.

Clearly the machine has fundamental problems. I doubt anyone seriously
would claim Stoner is so good that he simply can overcome all those
problems that these others couldn't or can't, given what the margin is
between them compared to the margin between Rossi, the "Greatest
Ever", and the other Yamahas. That would be absurd. So it somehow
works for him, matches his style, and one wonders if his development
input is actually making it worse for others. Kallio a "star"? Seeming
impossible to tell until he gets on another machine, since it may be
nothing but random luck that determines if this machine works for
someone or not. Certainly finishing 35 seconds behind the winner on
basically the same machine and tires doesn't establish it. Ducati has
a problem that must be getting increasingly more perplexing and
embarrassing - the Great Star Maker and Career Destroyer that even
they can't explain...

You're not the only one. WSB may play it as a necessary change for
safety reasons or whatever, but it's a huge loss to the series. And
too bad Spies never got to run there.

 

Question. Who is the race engineer for the second rider? Has it been the
same guy for all three? And was he race engineer for Bayliss and Checa
as well? The one that Bayliss avoided by bringing his WSB team in for
*that* race at Valencia.

Really? Or. Clearly the machine is hard to set up. Or. Clearly the
machine suits a certain riding style. Or. Stoner can dominate the
machine where others try to "fix" it. Or. Stoner just rides harder than
anyone else out there at the moment.[1]

An Ice Man who has got really close to two championships over-riding a
machine built in a shed in Austria now finds himself in one of the more
difficult garages in the paddock on one of the more difficult machines
and is consistently getting faster each time he goes out. 2nd Ducati of
5 every time.

BTW. It took Hayden 4 years to win the championship for Honda. looks
like it's going to take Dani Pedro Delarosa more than 4.

[1] Check out the on-board shots of Stoner in final qualifying. And can
we please have a camera in the traditional road youtube position. On the
top of the headstock looking at the instruments and though the screen.

 

or worse yet, DMG!

Bruce

 

No idea, I just know Nick didn't bring anyone with him. Didn't Sete
have the same guy he had at Gresini, Martinez or whatever? Seems like
the crew chief probably means a bit less at Ducati, because of the
very direct connections to the factory.

The bottom line is that no one except Stoner has been what anyone
could call successful on their 800, and that includes guys who have
been quite successful elsewhere. If they didn't have Stoner, or he got
hurt, then we'd all be saying the Ducati is shit. And no one can make
up anywhere near 2 seconds a lap on riding alone, there simply isn't
that large of a margin between guys at this level. So it comes down to
a bike that works for a very particular type of rider or style, and
for anyone else it just doesn't work at all. Which means the machine
has fundamental problems - at this point we're a bit beyond blaming
all these riders, aren't we?

Or just another little guy coming out of 125/250 without experience
racing SBs, 500s or 990s, not having any experience controlling the
throttle on a bike that actually makes horsepower and totally trusting
in the machine's electronics and what the team is telling him to do.
So because of his size, 125-derived style and inexperience/ignorance
it works for him, and he doesn't have a clue why.

What I think is funny and telling about all this is that Ducati not
only can't figure out what's wrong with their bike or how to fix it,
they can't even figure out who can actually ride the thing. So they
have Canepa testing it last year and decide he's worth running in the
series, and then with all that experience on the bike and tires he
goes out and finishes last at Qatar. A guy who's not a midget and came
from production racing, btw, and it remains the case that the only
Ducati 800 rider over 130 pounds to ever finish on the podium is
Barros (who was 3rd at Mugello in '07). And this year's non-midgets
finished 12th, 13th and 17th in Qatar.

Maybe, but I haven't quite given up on him yet. Stoner's hardly
invulnerable, and things could go wrong for Rossi, I suppose. I have
to believe the Honda is better than what one might draw from Qatar,
but then there's always the "spec" tires that are probably better for
Casey and Vale than Dani...

 

... And this year's non-midgets

So I guess Rossi and Edwards and Vermeulen now qualify as midgets.
Good one.

As to your comments on the spec tire, you seem to go for one of your
conspiracy theories saying Bridgestone wants Stoner and Rossi to win.
How can they? Everybody gets the same damn stuff. Bridgestone couldn't
care less. And neither Stoner nor Rossi are tire engineers. If
Bridgestone listens to them more than other, perhaps it's just ebcause
they happen to be the two fastest riders most consistently, and
perhaps it just means they are, somewhat sadly, quite a bit faster
than the rest on 800s. Not the best for show, just like when Doohan
was riding everybody into the ground, but to hold it against Stoner
and Rossi is silly.

I think Hayden will end up doing much better on the Duc than he showed
in Qatar. He had a very nasty get off and was riding injured. Hayden
is methodical, and he wasn't doing that badly prior to the high side.
The high side raises the question whether Hayden is trying to dial
down the electronics, it was a big one, the type of which I haven't
seen since Lorenzo's last year (who claims he was telling the
engineers to dial back electronics),

 

There's an engineering theory that goes something like this.
- The Ducati L Twin necessarily moves the Centre of Gravity (CoG) back
in the bike because they can't get the front cylinders far enough
forwards without touching the tyre.
- The Bridgestone development team of Ito and others built a front tyre
that works with less weight on it, and a back tyre that needs more
weight on it to dig in.
- Ducati put a lot of work into the electronics with Magnetti Marelli to
deal with the wheelie problem of a rearwards weight distribution.
- Stoner rides with three distinct phases in the corner. Very late
braking, trailing the front into the corner. As the brakes come off he
throws his body weight inside onto his knee and carries so much lean he
has levered the bike off the floor with the footrest. This only lasts
for a fraction of a second before he stands it up again and nails the
throttle. He's then relying on the traction control to avoid the high
side and just rides out the bucking and weaving as if he's on a speedway
bike. For someone with a two stroke background this is fairly
extraordinary except that way, way back when he was a kid he learnt to
ride off road.
- Because he spends so little time at full lean, frame flexibility and
chatter is less of a problem. The issues are stability under braking and
suspension pump/weaving under power. So Ducati go for chassis stiffness
again with the carbon frame, stressed engine and carbon swingarm. This
also reduces weight and lets them add weight forward on the bike to make
it a little less extreme.

So when everyone else started using the Ducati Bridgestones, they had to
produce an almost unnatural bike with a more rearwards weight bias
- Shorten the swing arm
- Move the headstock forwards
- Deal with the wheelie problem
- Mess with the front suspension to try and get some feel back into the
braking and first part of the corner
- And train the rider to trust the front tyre and TC
There's quite a lot of information around that this is what
Rossi-Burgess did. It would seem that Edwards has dug into his memory
and has discovered the feel he used to have on the old SP1. Suzuki have
had to redo their chassis and seem to have found something that works.

And then there's Honda. Is the latest chassis layout specifically
designed for Ducati Bridgestones? Did Pedrosa-Puig ask for the right
things as they went along? Or maybe, Pedrosa spent some time damaged,
Puig got in the way, they're race engineer didn't quite work it out. So
the demands back to Japan weren't quite right. And a bunch of faceless
engineers who are doing their two years in HRC, misunderstood. End
result is that Honda produce a "perfect" bike and it's all the rider's
fault that it doesn't work.

 

You mean just like Casey Stoner?
- Grew up riding off road
- (Ice) Speedway champion.
- National 125 champion (Finland vs UK)
- Some years on 125-250 on slightly less than perfect bikes but getting
2nd in championships
- Move to MotoGP

Remember Stoner's 1st year in MotoGP. He was fast but kept losing the
Michelin front. When was the last time a Ducati rider fell off through
losing the front?

 

but the discussio is about the ducks, and none of those guys
are on one.

Bruce

 

But you'll agree that the Rossi-developed 09 Yamaha has a headstock
further forwards and a shorter swing arm?

Damn, I'm going to have to find a cite now.

 

Stoner did it twice last year in the last 1/3 of the season while under
pressure from Rossi.


--
Andrew
00 Daytona
00 Speed Triple
71 Kawi H1
05 Squiddo

 

At least one of those was digging a footrest in. Laguna was running
wide.