Yooperbikemike's 2012 MotoGP Thread

Unlimited budgets don't work as well as you might think. Just look at Ducati in '11.

I like the shiny bits as much as the racing.

And you obviously don't understand what I was referring at.

I think it was more a matter of less change in feel. I would think water would cool a tire, making it harder. Or maybe Ben just flicked the f#ckit switch and went for it Kinda like Dovi did in turn one lap one, only without skittling a bunch of people.

You really think Ducati has an unlimited budget on par with Honda?

I don't know. That's what the Ducati bosses said. Making a trillion different frames is not cheap.

If what I heard in the beginning of the season was true, Ducati had at least 30-40 million to blow (before they realized Rossi won't win anything with the bike he had) and Honda had 50-70 to win an 800 championship and save face. According to Nakamoto San, Honda is cutting back at least 30% for '12.

I don't know about anyone else, but I still can't believe he's fugging GONE. Shit. I know, wrong thread.

Uh, I do. I believe you were referring to the quality of the GORGEOUS HRC exhaust vs. the welding 101 job on the CRT bike. Right?

Doesn't matter too much. What matters more is the tuned length of the pipe. The Honda needs to curl around to get the tuned length correct for the rpm range where they want to make power. For the CRT bike, their engine is different and they have room elsewhere to control the pipe length.

So yeah, I don't see the big deal. But that welding job on the Honda is quite nice.

Honda and Yamaha bikes are basically "alpha" bikes, and they seem to be running quite well. Even the CRT teams are doing pretty well. Ducati still being 2+ seconds off the pace, even in testing mode, is another failure. Hayden being injured is a big loss for the team, not being able to use his input for testing.

I take it you haven't read Krop's article on the new twin-spar frame Ducati, then?

They've changed nothing in terms of weight distribution with this machine, as they are trying to understand what happens with essentially the same bike built with a different frame design. There was apparently no intention nor expectation that this bike would be quicker than the old one. That's for another iteration to come.

http://www.motomatters.com/analysis/2011/11/07/ducati_s_future_direction_filippo_prezio.html

I'm not sure if they still use the bloke, but somewhere in Japan is a true old-fashioned "sensei" dude who makes these things out of Ti. And a true master of the art, coz he uses flame to heat and bend and flare small sections, then uses a torch to join them up.

Think a Samurai sword maker of the highest order, with HRC, Yamaha, Suzuki, etc, all lining up for a set of pipes.

No, I've read it. I think its cover for a poorly performing bike. New frame, engine, tires, blah blah blah. Doesn't matter. They're still where they were at the beginning of the 2011 season, 2+ seconds back, with Rossi claiming he has no feel from the front end.

I do hope they turn it around, but things don't look too cheery.

Or maybe its our production database servers that keep crashing that are responsible for my gloomy outlooks on the tobacco machines.

True, but again Ducati has changed A LOT of things. Them still being 2 seconds back is ok I would think for now because everything is new. Honda/Yamaha pretty much put a new engine in a frame that already worked. Ducati's frame hasn't worked and they are swapping everything. Also you're looking at a brand new frame that they will have to take time to figure out. With this new frame it's the first time I've read that Rossi is finally looking like Rossi again on a bike.

So we'll see what happens, but apples to oranges right now comparing the ducks to the honda's or yamaha's.

Its naive to think that Honda and Yamaha just strapped a bigger motor into existing frames. Sure, the designs are similar, but very different engine and tires characteristics cause rather big changes.

Sure, not as big as going from a carbon frame to an aluminum perimeter frame, but still.

Yes. I was not talking about the engineering solution. The Honda pipe is pure art (Kropotkin had a shot for his calendar with some flames coming out of one, IIRC).
Parts like those tell the stories behind the bikes. The Honda is the closest thing to perfection right now. You can see that just by looking at the motorcycle. The CRT is underfunded, probably understaffed and under a lot of deadline pressure. You can see that just by looking at the motorcycle.

Some don't care about these details. I like them a lot.

Pretty sure Akropovic makes all the exhausts for the top GP teams. I guess you could call them Slovenian Samurais.

Actually, the 2011 Repsol bikes used Termignoni pipes, so Italian Samurais!

Ant West has reportedly signed with the Speedmaster team to ride a CRT bike...

Onya Westy!
If it drizzles lightly all year, he's in!

Speaking of rain.....
So last week in Valencia and at other wet races throughout the year I am always amazed at how the riders are able to hold their lines while cornering, braking, and, accelerating over the painted areas of the track since I always thought the paint would be slick as hell when wet.

Well, I was at the Chris Peris riding school earlier this week at Inde Motorsports Ranch (Jake Zemke was also there) and learned that FIM approved tracks (Miller and Laguna in the US) are required to use a special paint for any painted track surfaces. This paint has some sort of gritty (sand?) mixture in it which I was told gives you basically the same amount of traction as the non-painted surface.

I also learned something else at the school, I am too slow!

There's not that much grip. Spies' crash during practice came when he braked on the paint...