The Jerez spoiler thread

First Practice. Rossi does a Stoner. 1/2 second quicker than anyone. But
not like Stoner because he wacked in a whole series of laps that were
all really close to that time.

Nice to see a familiar, dry, warm, sunny European race track for a
change with a big crowd even for Friday lunchtime.

 

On a track that is still a b*tch to get to and back from. A friend
texted telling me he spend 2 hours getting out of there after the Q
session... Things will be the usual utter mess tomorrow, and
people complain here in Laguna Seca... Still, wish I was there.

It will be interesting to see whether Lorenzo can keep some momentum
going or, like last year, he'll fade as the season progresses and
expectations build and mistakes mount... the pressure of the home
crowd will be a good indication, and the fact that the Dan-bot will
try to be in the mix. is it me or does it seem that Danbot enjoys
racing even less this year? I mean come on dude, can you every once in
a while show some passion for the sport? I somehow feel Pedrosa would
pull a Criville if he ever won a title, but I don't think he'll even
get that far. He just doesn't seem to have the spark for racing
anymore. I would not be surprised if by end season Dovizioso displaces
him as top Repsol rider. In fact, it would not be a shocking thing if
Lorenzo and Pedrosa both end up on the floor tomorrow.

I also hope Elias mixes it up tomorrow.

Other than that, damn, Hayden must be feeling the pressure. His season
thus far is even worse than Melandri's utter trainwreck season on the
Duc. Please turn it around some.

 

I think we might be seeing the effect of limited tyre availability.
- FP1. Everyone tries softs and hards
- FP2. Some, but not all teams decide they need hard for the race. Those
teams concentrate on race pace and save the softs for qualifying. And
they run one set of hard tyres for the whole session to avoid using them
up
- QP1. The teams using hards are using old tyres to save some for warm
up and the race. The teams using softs are running out because they need
one set for the qualifying run and warmup and one for the race. In the
last 15 minutes, people with enough softs left can get 2 or 3 runs at a
good time.

Or something like that.

The other factor in QP1 was apparently high winds. Several people had a
good lap with one bad sector. That could easily be a wind induced
bobble. Which would then mean that the top 6 or more actually had
potential to be closer together but they didn't manage to get a single
clear lap at just the right moment.

 

When I was there for the pre-season test a couple of years ago and
camping at the circuit, we had no trouble getting a taxi in and out of
town even at the end of the Sunday test. Sunday morning, the traffic was
backed up out of the circuit and back down the road into town. But
that's with 25k people not 125k. It's really too far to walk from the
town to the circuit. So I reckon the only option is an old dirt bike so
you can ride on the pavements and verges or across the fields. If you
flew in have a hire car then stay up all night and do it at 4am.

One of the best bits for me of Jerez is to be in a town where the first
roundabout on the edge has a giant stone statue of a racing motorcycle.
I can't imagine anywhere else in the world that would have that. So I
think it's about time that the IoM commissioned a giant sculpture to sit
either on the Douglas main drag or up on top of the hill. "The Angel of
the Island"?

 

wow, no one has spoiled anything yet.

so lorenzon lost it again (oh the surprise) and rossi won it. without
much of a contest.

pedrosa looked cool early, and then was content enough to log silver,
stoner was smart and went for bronze.

the rest of it.... predictable, too much so, but i would have thought
hayden would do better without falling off.

the big news to me ...bradley finally logged a win. guy's got talent,
who's willing to bet on him being the next big thing?

 

I'm beginning to agree with Mark. Something's fundamentally off
balance with the Ducati, something that only Stoner seems to be able
to get his head around. Hayden and Melandri may not be the 2nd coming
(or even close to it), but they're both far better than they are
(were) showing on the Duc.

-Dirt-

 

the fact the Duc is a very competitive bike with Stinwer can not be
underestimated. so the bike can not be *that* fundamentally wrong,
sorry. what may be wrong is the team structure and its ability to take
care and integrate secondary input. obviously, and for very valid
reasons, it is an all Stoner geared team. can't really blame them for
that for now. it's like they only pay out a few mill to other guys so
they are around as standbys in case Stoner starts to lay low (wasnt
his wrist injury potentially career ending?)... but not yet. before
anyone crys foul, it is the way racong teams have always worked when a
very succesful rider is around, only a fool would assume that it is
supposed to be an equal opportunity environment, and those guys aren't
fools.

 

also - melandri showed today again he is a very good rider, and note
that all the difference is a team structure that is 100% behind him,
even with a bike that has not been developed at all. in most cases,
second riders in teams know that they will not get full attention.
perhaps hayden will now appreciate the fact that repsol, despite its
limitations, treats riders with higher priority than ducati does. for
all the trash talking about it being a pedrosa house, hey, dovizioso
is doing better than hayden was last year, and duscati was an even
worse choice when it came to his needs being prioritized; or at least
that is how it looks thus far. perhaps hayden (like melandri) would
have been better off in a so called second tier team, but with main
rider status for said team. he is looking a far worse rider than he is.

 

and this is not an anti hayden post, so shut the hell up mark.

hayden is a top rider, very methodical and very competent.

the problem thus far is clearly with confidence, and that is based on
team priorities which no one should be all that surprised about;
because if they were managing ducatio mgp budget they'd make the same
choice. serious -mwould you spend the budget on Stoner winning the
championship, or on another guy coming in third?? it is a rethorical
question. just like the whole midget question is... come on,
morotcycle racing has never favored big guys, and now we are just
witnessing the sport becoming -like every other top sport- becoming
more selective around naturally advantageous physical attributes (how
much did Roberts, Mamola and Rainey weigh anyhow, and is Mark going to
attack Rainey's career because he had a midget advantage on Schwantz?
I didn't think so...)

we are facing a motorcycle racing crossroads.... should the prototype
approach, which with available materials and technology is always
going to favor an *equally* talented smaller rider over a bigger one,
be abandoned in favor of a class with way higher weight limits? and
with euqal material, isnt the smaller rider with talent always going
to have an advantage anyhow? i had passio nfor the sport but was
always way too huge for it, so i have little sympathy for the whole
size argument... why should a guy that weighs 160 lbs get breaks i
never got at 200? screw that, every highly competitive sport hqas its
physical selection process, and we are we we naturally knew we'd
arrive in motorcycle racong unless we enforce higher weigh limits that
curb down possible speed. do we really want the margin between street
machines and top racing series disappear...? the concept has pros and
cons....

 

You'll note that I said, "fundamentally off balance," and not wrong.
I think Stoner probably has some peculiar element to his style that
the bike has been developed around and that no other rider to date has
been able to come to grips with. What I don't necessarily agree with
is that Stoner just whacks the throttle open mid-corner and rides the
traction control out of the corner because he doesn't know any better
and trusts the software as has been mentioned in here. There's
undoubtedly a grain or two of truth to that, but I doubt it's that
simple. I think there's a combination of that, Stoner's 250 style
which works the front, his additional non-250 background that makes
him comfortable sliding the bike and simply his great skill. Add that
together with some sort of specific setup quirk that he likes and it
makes riders with both 250 only and dirt track only backgrounds
nervous on the bike. Melandri came from 250s, right? I don't
remember well but I don't think he's comfortable on the front wheel
and doesn't throttle steer much. Hayden came from dirt tracking and
slides the bejeezus out of the thing when given the chance.

Hayden said post-race that the medium tire wouldn't work for him and
even with the soft front tire he couldn't get heat into it easily. I
recall that Hayden has always tended towards the softer fronts and
assumed that he could get away with it because dirt track derived
style didn't stress the front the way a 250 rider's style would.
Obviously with the current generation 800s this style is no longer the
quickest way around a track and it also feeds into the notion that the
series is ever more 250 centered. It sounds like the front has to be
worked quite hard to come up to working temperature and deliver the
goods.

There's a third thing which has also been mentioned here and that's
the crew chief. Does anyone believe Rossi would be an eight time
champion without Burgess in his garage? I think he'd be a multiple
champion but probably not eight. Julian Ryder's notes on Soup
suggested that Burgess pulled another setup miracle between Saturday
and Sunday that gave Rossi the confidence to ride hard enough to win.
I have no idea who Stoner's crew chief is but one can assume that they
get along together quite well and that the man really knows his way
around the Duc. I think that Hayden is suffering from not having a
stellar crew chief and that brings a whole lot of variables to the
party when the rider/chief can't communicate effectively and the chief
can't deliver a bike that the rider has any confidence in.

-Dirt-

 

Unfortunately, comparing last years times with this year isn't very
useful, because the track was completely re-surfaced over the winter.
After the pre-season test, most team estimated that it was around a
second a lap faster.

 

Except a completely new surface throws another factor into any
differences. Some riders/bikes would have been able to make use of
any extra grip, others wouldn't.

Are you really unable to discuss anything here without a barbed
comment? For the record, I completely agree with you that the Ducati
is a terrible bike for everyone except Stoner.

Now - tell me what you think of Melandri / Hayate this season?

 

Well, you're the one who made what I think is a completely fallacious
claim there, that comparing lap times of the various riders isn't
useful. And you cited a lap time difference that isn't supported by
what actually happened in the race at all. I would think that if one
is to claim that the resurfaced track is worth a second a lap you's
actually see if that worked out to be true. And then you'd see the
race fast lap only improved by 0.30 second - while last year the race
fast lap improved over '07 by 0.79 second. Furthermore, your claim
seemed to be dismissive of the point I was trying to make, an attempt
at undermining it. So do you think that wasn't a reasonably fair
reaction?

It's nice to see them getting decent results, and I hope this helps
convince Kawi that it's worth staying in GP. I'm not surprised by
Marco doing well, I don't believe last year was reflective of his
abilities at all. I do think the improvement is the result of finally
finding a solution to the chassis/traction problem that plagued them
last year, and otherwise the Kawi had shown a lot of promise under
lesser riders back in '07. I don't buy the notion floating around that
this solution arose out of the break with the factory, I think it's
something that would have happened even if Kawi had stayed the course.
Mostly I wonder what might be happening had Marco and Hopper had full
support of the factory this year. But I don't overrate what Marco is
doing, he still finished 33 seconds behind Rossi on Sunday, and he
still isn't competitive with the five "haves" in that paddock that I
think will dominate this year - Rossi, Stoner, Pedrosa, Lorenzo,
Dovizioso. Although unlikely (as much because of rain as anything),
they may take every podium spot all year. If you look at the fast laps
posted the last two rounds you really see the speed differencial. And
even in Qatar Edwards barely edged out injured Pedrosa in this aspect.
Beyond that you have the lease teams, the Suzukis and struggling
Nicky. So Marco beat them all, plus moved up because Whore-Gay crashed
and Dovi went farming. It's about as good as he can do, unfortunately.

 

on another note - what about bradley smith? it was such a long time
coming... he is a great talent, i hope this helps ground him and
become a steadier rider.

furthermore, on bikes and issues and tirnes... it seems we are at a
crucial new crossroads in motorcycle engineering that is not even
remotely only electronics related. the discussion on lateral srigidity
of a bike chassis has been going on *forever*, but it seems to have
reached another level right now. i wonder if it is always related to
some plateau tire technology hits, but we seem to get there again
regulalry, and that after optimizing for sheeer rigitdity chassis
engineers rediscover a certain judicious and optimized amount of flex
is best... and the reasons why sound like a bit of snake oil every
time... but there has to be validity to it, of course. it's a bit like
tire development moves on until it overwhelms the chassis, and then
chassis development reacts with optimized lateral "suspension" until
the next tire innovation -which calls for additional stiffness- comes
along.

 

Isn't it possible that it's the underdog factor. A team and rider who
are very highly motivated to make a point using equipment that shouldn't
be successful.

Mostly, though it's faster because it's black.

 

That can certainly be an element of it.

heh.