Doubt it. Vinales and Quartaro smashed Morbidelli until half way through the season. Frankie wins in Misano, then Vinales wins the next round with Quartararo also finishing ahead of him of Frankie. Fabio wins the next round at Catalunya and is top Yamaha in France. Vinales is top Yamaha at the first Aragon round by a lot, Morbidelli wins the next race though. IIRC Fabio had great pace after he crashed last week as well. Last years bike being better than this years seems to be based on the last 3 races. Why is it with Yamaha it’s always the bike and never the rider despite the bike performing better than any other bike on the grid?
Doubt it. Vinales and Quartaro smashed Morbidelli until half way through the season. Frankie wins in Misano, then Vinales wins the next round with Quartararo also finishing ahead of him of Frankie. Fabio wins the next round at Catalunya and is top Yamaha in France. Vinales is top Yamaha at the first Aragon round by a lot, Morbidelli wins the next race though. IIRC Fabio had great pace after he crashed last week as well. Last years bike being better than this years seems to be based on the last 3 races. Why is it with Yamaha it’s always the bike and never the rider despite the bike performing better than any other bike on the grid?
Undeniable that Morbidelli has better race craft than either of the factory guys, as the last lap in the recent race showed.
Encouraging from Jack, I am a fan but thought he had just about reached his potential. Not really a track suited to the Ducati, and he finally appeared to get the tires to last till the end of a race.
Joined May 2019
607 Posts | 459+
Where I am.
A HUGE congrats to Mir and the Suzuki team. :1a:
Oh Franko.... oh Miller ...:clapping: What a final lap. Loved it!
Fabio and Nakagami ... both lost it. Gotta keep the head together guys. If they both don't watch it, they'll crash themselves into needing some psycho assistance.
I'm quietly impressed by Pol. I had given up on him and am now apologising.
Joined May 2019
607 Posts | 459+
Where I am.
Rossi finished just 0.7sec behind Vinales. That was surprising and creditable from Rossi. Quartararo was clearly asking too much of his bike. There's something about the 2020 bike that makes it a handful at times, especially in race trim. What a tumultuous year for them!
Miller was amazing. Pecco's mojo with the bike vanished. You've got to hand it to Miller. He has been the only rider at Ducati able to consistently get decent performance out of the bike over the season. All the other riders shone during one part and lost it for the rest of the season. Dovi never really shone at all.
With no engine development for next year, that's what they said on BT Sport, I wonder what shape Yamaha will be in and what they'll be able to do to improve on this year.
Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I maintain that Fabio came to the season in high spirits after great results in 2019, but over the course of the season, as other teams were improving, the 2020 M1s were less and less competitive and Fabio over time got mentally burned out from trying to ride around the 2020 bike's deficiencies. Sure Vinales had a moment or two, but then he always seems to have a few good days every season, while OTH - Fabio was pretty damned consistent last year on the 2019 bike. The thing that Morbidelli surely has over Fabio, is passing and dicing. Fabio is more a run away at the front kind of guy in the vein of Pedrosa.
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Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I didn’t do too badly with my predictions. Didn’t account for Nakagami crashing or Miller doing so well but I got the rest of the top 7 right, just not in the right order. Knew Morbidelli would win and no Suzukis on the podium. Well done to Mir, I was emotional watching his celebrations. Shame to see Nakagami crash, that’s twice now whilst going for podium positions.
Joined Mar 2016
2K Posts | 2K+
FNQ
Lorenzo bike vs Vinales bike perhaps, can’t blame Rossi for this bike; he said they weren’t listening to his preferences, while Maverick asked for and was given the keys to the kingdom, although he is apparently now saying the 2020 bike was flawed from the getgo.
I think this has been borne out to its conclusion. Next year is going to be where Fabs has to get stronger or he will be just another mid pack guy. Or crash trying to do better than that.
Yamaha, what a year. They really lost their way, what a shame really. Who’s head is going to roll?
It does seem their biggest issue was the attempt to cheat in Jerez. If not for that I wonder if they would be in a better position? I still don't think all is lost. They've won more races by far than anyone else. Everyone seems very doom and gloom despite their bikes performing better than anyone else's. We heard last night on the broadcast it proclaimed that Suzuki had the best bike on the grid, I think it's a great bike but I don't think it's clearly the best. Rins was more or less as consistent or inconsistent as everyone else. Perhaps Mir is just really ....... good, his moto3 championship season was astounding.
Their 3 riders at the moment though are as Kesh pointed out reminiscent of Pedrosa, untouchable on their day but things need to be perfect. Fabio is still young so I think he's a good chance to turn things around. I expect that the next 2 seasons will be Vinales' last on a factory Yamaha. Mixture of good talent coming through and it being more or less proven that he will never have the consistency to push for a championship. I wouldn't consider it good practice to consistently throw your factory under the bus.
Mir and Rins are really good riders imo, and the Suzuki a good all round bike, but tire durability was perhaps their largest advantage. This may be significantly related to the aforementioned high quality riders and good all round bike, but whether the Michelin tire lottery favours them as much next year remains to be seen.
Suzuki does appear to be excellent on tyres but I don't think that takes away from Mir's ability to stick to his strategy of the late come on in many of the rounds. I don't know if Quartarao or Marquez for example would have been able to stick to that strategy so successfully. So while he and Suzuki have an advantage late in the race it did often come at an expense to the earlier part of the race and also qualifying. Maximising the Suzuki's strengths is something he did brilliantly this year, while others failed to do the same often enough on their bikes.
If the tyre lottery was a main culprit of the inconsistency it didn't make for an exciting or interesting championship battle. I don't think we saw championship rivals fighting each other for a win, podium or even a position during the entire season.
I am not alleging any conspiracy, or intending to detract from Mir or Suzuki, both of whom I was very happy to see win, and in particular not from Mir’s racecraft. I am just of the opinion that the Michelin tires are difficult to anticipate and plan for, although having a good all round bike and an excellent rider who is strategically excellent in particular is not a bad way to go on this year’s evidence.
(EDIT My poorly expressed point such as it is was that I am not sure that Suzuki can have fully designed their bike ahead of time to suit what are imo bad tires. Obviously their entire operation used the tires everyone was given the best. The Yamaha bike/rider combinations seem to operate in a much narrower window, and I am not sure there was much the riders could do about it when conditions didn’t suit).
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I realised this morning that when this season is finished, out of 14 races the title was won by less than seven race wins worth of points.
If Marquez comes back from the injury as strong as before and the rest of the field have a season like this, they'll all be racing for second place next year.
If Marquez comes back from the injury as strong as before and the rest of the field have a season like this, they'll all be racing for second place next year.
I think the two conclusions you can draw from Michelin are that A) The tyres are relatively .... and inconsistent by design in an attempt to make the racing closer, harder to predict and "better" or B) Michelin are incompetent. I'm not sure which way to lean tbh.
For me a huge red flag was in 2017 when Michelin worked on the tyre that was rejected by everyone bar Rossi. IIRC they actually did say that after the testing they worked on the rejected tyre.
It leads me to believe it is a little from column A and a little from column B or it was at one point but now its just column B.
You've got this backwards.
Rossi was very vocal about the front tyre construction they started 2017 with saying that it wasn't stable/consistent enough (too soft) when pushed to the limit and he preferred one of the other options with a harder construction.
Michelin confirmed that they thought 'well, everyone but Rossi is happy with it, so that's the construction we will use'
Then after the first few races we had an ungodly amount of front end crashes which prompted the riders to vote on whether to force Michelin to change the front tyre construction for one Rossi originally preferred on 'safety' grounds.
They voted overwhelmingly in favour of of switching the front tyre construction (only Pol and Jorge voted against it as I remember and Rossi abstained)
Vinales also, who had done rather well on the first tire in the early season.
I never had a problem with them making the previously rejected tire available, they just need to keep the tire originally voted for going as well. Dorna themselves have subsequently recognised this, there is a rule now.
Your perception was perhaps not the general one, there were even comments from other riders about Michelin making Rossi his own tires. MM was fine with the change of course, I think he may have even said, correctly, that a tire which suited Rossi was also a tire which suited him.
Perhaps Valentino learnt from experience having voted for the less durable tire in the previous rider tire vote which conveniently removed the tire on which Stoner was prospering early that season; Stoner predicted the tire voted for on that occasion would prove insufficiently durable under race conditions, very definitely correctly, with subsequent delaminations of the tire concerned including on Rossi’s bike in one race.
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