estoril: thank you michelin, yamaha, honda...and kudos to stoner!

michelin a good tire (finally).
yamaha for a good motor (finally).
honda for a hayden-friendly setup (finally).
and stoner for a good fight on a dodgy bike.

if the 800s continue with this sort of racing, i can live with this
motogp formula!

 

stoner's comments suggested it was the clutch. he said it took most
of the race to figure out how to ride with it, and that's when he
started closing up on rossi & pedrosa.

 

and stoner for a good fight on a dodgy bike.

Yes he said the clutch stopped dragging under braking after lap five
and it was like being in neutral or having the clutch pulled in
everytime he braked. A pity really as it would have been good to see
the 3 of them really going for it.

Paul

 

another thing that gave me more insight to stoner's class was seeing
the telemtry of him and pedrosa during their fight early on.

stoner's acceleration and braking metrics were far smoother and less
extreme than pedrosas, yet he was able to fight quite impressively.
such smoothness, as if his telemetry was on slow-motion, while
pedrosas was on fast-forward.

granted, he's boring as a stick of wood in the post-race interviews.
for that, rossi is tremendous and i welcomed him back. the
interviewer basically does a 1 sentence introduction, and rossie gives
an insightful and entertainign recount of the race and his effort w/o
further prompting.

you could see the weariness on rossi...both as he cross the finish
line, and during the post-race.

i really enjoyied the racing @ the front for a change. reminded me of
the 990s.. mebbe next round hayden will stay in the fight!

-w

 

yamaha for a good motor (finally).

Would Rossi's motor really be any different than Edwards'? I could
understand the factory Yamahas running newer / different parts than
Tech 3 Yamaha, But wouldn't Edwards have the same equipment as Rossi
on race weekend?

Maybe not... I remember Hayden complaining at the beginning of the
season about Pedrosa having new parts and none for him. Is that
correct? or was I misunderstanding something

- Kyle

 

This is the team that takes 6 months to do a new fairing and then
doesn't give it to Edwards.

I don't remember Hayden saying that. But I do remember a lot of people
here claiming it was true.

 

Doohan wasn't the chattiest of people either but he was a biking god god to
me when I was a bit younger. The guy was a cripple and he still rode like
nobody else did, that was all that counted. Rossi's antics may have won him
lots of half-clueless fans, but I believe that his true supporters onle see
a great rider and nothing else (I personally respect his talent and ability,
but don't really support him).


Geo

 

Congragulations to Hayden for a good ride. It is the first time in
two years I have seen him race hard though.

 

Oh yeah! I remember when Rossi got the new fairing I was trying to see
if Edwards had it also, but he never got enough TV coverage to see...

How about that new motor though? Rossi and Pedrosa BOTH looked very
fast on the straights. I think i remember Pedrosa passing Stoner on
the straight. It must have been when he started having clutch issues.

- Kyle

 

Rossi got it one race earlier. Edwards was using it last weekend.

It looks like the Repsol Hondas can stay in the slipstream and just pass
the Ducati. And the Yamaha can stay in the stream of the Honda but not
get passed. But all of that is very confused by how well either gets out
of the previous corner. The main thing is the Honda no longer looks
slow. And the Yamaha doesn't look as slow as it did.

 

Mark,

Have you ever considered writing filibuster speeches?

 

You mean like when I ask you why an archaic 20-25 year old model of an
optimal rider should still be considered optimal and you dance around the
question?

Too bad your skin isn't thicker as your head.

 

Two points to note here. Burgess commented on the Hondas that it looked
like they had their (centralised) mass too high. This caused too much
pitching as the riders got on the brakes making it hard to control and
out brake people. This would explain Dani's braking problems in
particular early in the year. The latest frame seems to have helped this
as both Dani and Nicky have been much better on corner entry in recent
races.

The other point is about fairings. Ducati had some problems earlier with
changes of direction and side winds. Much wind tunnel work led to subtle
changes that have resolved that. They've managed to get the best of both
worlds of good streamlining without too much downside from an aero
design that just wants to go straight.[1]

Which just suggests that Honda tried to have too much of a good thing
initially following their design route. But R&D has now largely solved
the problems that brought.

[1] The Ducati Desmosedici launch showed the bike next to last year's
race bike. Funny to see a bigger screen and bigger fairing on the race
bike. I guess one is designed to work at circuits and the other to look
good on a stand in the sitting room.

 

HAHAHA