Ben, Ben, Ben

Well, according to the numbers, Ben Spies pretty much trounced the Super
Pole field today. On top of Biaggi by .34s.

That ain't hay.

Kudos to the kid in his first run.

Mind, I don't expect him to win the race. Ideally he'll be in the front
pack and competitive, but I fear, at least at this point, that it's a
DiSalvo gesture where he wins the pole but can't stay in the race.

But then again, it IS .34s.

Should be an interesting race.

Regards,

Will Hartung

 

It is a great way to start if nothing else. It could be said he is
"mostly unproven" (in terms of WSB) but I think he has a great track
record and has talent that has been proven time and time again. I am
currently ignoring the spoilers and waiting for the race on the dish
later today. The field may not resemble what it has in the past but
these are still world class racers. I remember a time not so long ago
that the outgoing dominating WSB champ was called mostly unproven so
maybe we will see a repeat from this latest newcomer.

 

Spies indeed did very well. But Haslam did really surprise me.

Great start. Amazing how many great names did not make it into the top
10!

Haga... is this *his* year!?

 

It's crazy how Laconi set the fastest time of qualifying but does not get
the pole: They need to give three Q tires to everyone. He made the final
group but was 2.5s behind pole.

But congrats to Ben - he beat the rest in the final Q when it counted.

 

i still think the race counts more tha the Q?

 

Or give Qs to no-one. I'm undecided about all this. My favourite is a
one hour final session with 45 minutes of setup and then 15 minutes of
banzai riding on qualifiers. But then we won't even have that in MotoGP
now. The new format is quite exciting but it's pretty hard to follow.

 

To be honest, I haven't seen the new format described. I don't even know
how they qualify in WSB now beyond "it's more exciting", it's some kind
of "knockout" system, and it's not the Superpole of yore.

Regards,

Will Hartung

 

It seems to be modeled on the F1 qualifying.



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

 

i was going to say the same but don't know if Will knows F1 qual.

At least it has one thing better than F1: none of that junk about qualifying
on "full" fuel tanks.

 

If I remember right they all go out for 12 mins and the top 16 riders moved
on to the next session. Another 12 mins and the top 8 riders moved on to the
last session, which is another 12 mins. The tricky bit is you only get two
qual tire sets for the whole thing, so in one of the three sessions you have
to do your best on race tires. As it was Ben Spies almost did not make the
final Q session - he got bumped down to 7th when a whole bunch of guys did
fast laps on Q's at the end of the second session. I'm guessing he did not
use Q tires for the 1st session but maybe it was the 2nd. At least in the
case of Laconi, the Q tires were 2.5s faster than the race tires.

Please correct me if I got any of this wrong!

 

I'm not so sure about the new format either. I knew about the
knock-out sessions (which I'm in favor of), but watching the
qualifying on TV was the first I'd heard about the 2 Q-tire limit. In
some ways it adds uncertainty and strategy, but in reality it's all
just manufactured drama and the ones who pay the price are the
potential championship candidates who get caught out earlier than they
should have. They should either go with 3 Q's, or eliminate them
altogether. Given the cost-saving measures they'll be meeting about
soon they probably ought to ditch them.

 

AGREED!

Ditch the qualifiers altogether. It makes sense from a $ standpoint.

A qualifying session would be JUST as exciting and accomplish the same
thing on race tires. Or, just remove the Q session altogether and use
the fastest practice time from a session or a rider's fastest
aggregate practice time from all sessions to order the field. Wouldn't
that make perfect sense also?

 

BETTER YET....!!

Run qualifier tires and keep the qualifying session, only run the
session as a 2 or 3 lap race. Now THAT would be exciting! haha

I can't see anyone signing off on that idea in the riders' safety
meeting though...