Yooperbikemike's 2013 MotoGP Thread

A little.

Surtees, Hocking, Ago, Hailwood were early 20s, as were Stoner, Lorenzo, and Rossi. Lawson, Gardner, Doohan, Rainey Schwantz were all late 20s, early 30s.

Freddie Spencer belongs in this group as well.

Correct. Sorry I missed him, I rate him and Stoner as the two most naturally talented riders ever.

I don't know much about Spencer, I'd love to hear why you think so.

Spencer was a 500cc world champion at 21, which was the youngest at the time (early 80's?) and in 85 I think it was he won both the 500 and the 250 world championships, both in the same year. I don't know if anyone has done that besides him?

I knew Fast Freddie was something special the first time I saw him. I didn't know who he was but, knew to keep an eye on him as he flowed past other riders like they were moving chicanes.
Brilliant, and scary fast for a mere mortal to watch, then try to imagine himself at that pace.

Pretty much what Skowinski and bk brkr baker said. He did things that he just wasn't supposed to be able to, like jumping off a 250 and going straight on to win a 500cc race. Dennis Noyes tells a story about Erv Kanemoto, his crew chief at the time. Erv would send Spencer out with a set up, Spencer would go out, ride around for a bit, hit lap record pace, and come back in again. Erv would ask "So, how did it feel?" and Freddie would say "Pretty good, I guess." So Erv would make some changes, send Spencer out again, and Spencer would hit the lap record, come back in and tell Erv that that was "Pretty good." There was almost no way of knowing whether the bike was better or worse, Spencer was lapping at the same pace, it would sometimes take him a couple of laps extra, but there was no difference in times. These were the days before datalogging, of course.

So Erv figured out that Spencer would wear a fresh helmet every time he went out on a new run. Erv then started checking Spencer's helmet for sweat: if the helmet was drenched, Spencer had worked hard to make the lap time. If the helmet was not too sweaty, Kanemoto knew he was pretty close with his set up.

What's amazing about this is that Spencer was capable of running lap record pace despite the bike set up, not because of it. He always rode to the limit of the tires, it just took him a little longer sometimes to figure out how to reach the limit of those tires.

To me, Stoner was capable of achieving the same, with the key difference that he could also put into words what was working or not. Look at his time on the Ducati, and you see he could find a way of reaching the limit of the tires, where other riders on the bike could only ride to the limit of the bike. That's a pretty remarkable achievement.

Anybody see the rumor that Stoner with ride PI and a couple other GPs as a wild card this year?!? :eek1

I always thought that story said as much about Erv as it did about Freddie.

Freddie....Still doing it, sorta.

I first became aware of Freddie Spencer at Daytona back in the 70's. I was working with a friend and fellow club racer, we had built up a Suzuki GS1000 for the Super Bike event the true 200 miler !.
We had put all our money into the project over the winter , special head work, super special carburetors etc.
( must have spent at least $2k )

So my bud is out in practice and I am filming him with an 8mm sound camera , you can hear me say; wow look at Johnny he is faster than we have ever gone, WTF was that ???

Some 16 year old kid past us like we were backing up ??

Started crawling around the garage area ( we were stuck in the cheap semi covered area sharing space with two other riders). Low and behold there were all these Japanese engineers around his garage. They closed the door as we got too close. Then we spied the semi trailer with whole spare bikes and motors .
Mr Spencer and factory $$ had arrived .
We were still able to make the show, but knew in our hearts that any chance of a decent finish was beyond us since we had to start in the second wave.
We still loved every minute and cherish the memories, and yes I do have stories !!

Page 93 in this thread, and the season is still two months away!

I thought it was amazing when he beat Roberts and Sheene at the Trans-Atlantic races in 1980 as a nobody. I know KR never got over it.

Remember when racers would stick their knee out sidewards to get around a corner?

Now MM and others are folding their knees back in towards the bike since it would keep them from leaning the bike over far enough. Knee sliders, elbow sliders- what's next? Hip sliders, shoulder sliders, helmet sliders :eek1

Bikes and their suspension plus STICKY tires may soon allow the rider to be looking even more like a sidecar monkey than the rig driver.

Speaking of Freddie, I've always loved this video:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=OAMm0GMghN8&desktop_uri=/watch?v=OAMm0GMghN8

Yes I remember the days before traction control and all the electronics. MM is very impressive on any bike.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=GC-8Mwp-rTc&feature=endscreen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtD_U187zv0

Embedded:

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAMm0GMghN8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Yes. And there have been heavy denials. Which in Stoner's case usually means it is a done deal.

interesting.

The great Kevin Cameron on Casey the Ducati and Freddie Spencer at the end