Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I think if Bridgestone hadn't changed the formulation to suit the Yamahas after Rossi got them, another Stoner/Ducati championship was likely.
I think if Bridgestone hadn't changed the formulation to suit the Yamahas after Rossi got them, another Stoner/Ducati championship was likely.
Joined May 2019
607 Posts | 459+
Where I am.
Even if they did, it still doesn't hold a candle to Honda's achievements. Yes, they've had great riders, but the riders surely needed bikes with genuine speed/performance (easy or difficult to unlock) to be winning multiple championships in a row. Who says that a championship winning bike has to be ridable to a championship by many riders? Marquez had the ability to have his priorities right with the Honda.... give me a fast bike and I'll tame it. However, give me a tame bike that's slow and I can't get any results with it.
I was agreeing with another previous post and intended to draw the Randy Mamola parallel rather than seriously suggest there was engineering incompetence. The riders who won the titles he didn’t were all great riders riding great seasons on good to great bikes themselves the years they won. I am guessing you mainly refer to the 800 formula which was devised with him in mind/ he was signed with that formula in mind, but it was still a tall order to provide a bike he could beat those guys on, while very good he wasn’t ever imo as good as those guys in their peak seasons, and Stoner for one was on the same bike as him in 2011 and immediately faster than him on the 2010 bike in the post season test. Then MM came to Honda.
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Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I wasn't making a comparison between the two. Honda has a multiple decades long heritage in the premiere class.
Honda and Yamaha were the two break-out companies which over time, invested money and research that produced bikes so superior, that running true privateer team became farcical endeavors.
My only point (and I thought it was crystal clear) was that riders like Stoner and Marquez have become necessary crutches for Honda in an age where there is greater technical parity between teams. Remember not so long ago when Dorna in desperation to fill a shrinking grid brought in the CRT teams that everyone saw as a joke? Nobody back then (certainly not Honda) imagined Suzuki would return as strong as they have or that KTM with their funky trellis frame would actually on a regular basis be on or near the podium with the legendary Hondas struggling to eat their dust week after week. The loss of MM's services illustrate the fact that Honda are over-reliant on freak riders to overcome the deficiency of a bike that is regularly proved to be painfully less rideable than the relative new kids on the block. They may have a golden past, but their present is pretty dim. They're just not the innovators they once were.
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They used their bespoke ECU to tame the bikes as well as the talent of the likes of MM and Stoner. They probably needed a whole new design philosophy with the control ECU and likely gave up a big advantage, which was the whole point of mandating a control ECU of course. They did threaten to leave at one stage over the ECU regulation if you recall, although their claim was that this was because electrickery research was the raison d'etre of their participation.
Maybe such small men aren't meant to go that fast
2012 was his year honestly but a couple of year end shenanigans with race starts and Barberá put a stop to that run.
I found a new respect for Dani that season when Stoner kinda gave up and Dani took lead of the situation, 6 wins in a row if i am not mistaken? 5?
Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
Well sure. I think I (and others) have pointed out that even more than the control tire, the spec ECU separated the boys from the men innovation-wise. HRC were said to be spending unfathomable amount of money on computer simulations and related electronics research; sums that other teams just could not match. Ducati's capacity to come up with little, relatively affordable innovations to make their bikes more competitive in spite of the nagging understeer issue have been something I've really admired. I love it when innovation is a product of inspired thinking, as opposed to "Lets see how much money we can throw at this problem."
Joined Aug 2008
6K Posts | 748+
Thailand
Cummon Gaz. Nobody says a rider is 100% responsible for development. Only an total ..... would think that in a team sport where engineers outnumber riders by 20 to 1. You are far to smart to try to glom on to that ..... The point peeps are trying to make is that, as always, Honda engineers seem to believe whatever they do Honda human resources will find a way to hire they guy to ride whatever the .... rocket they have built. When they tried to build a bike for one guy - the infamous 800cc pedrocycle - they totally cocked it up. Build a ....... winner for P.E. and a healthy MM will decimate the field.
The case was probably even worse than that with Honda and the 800 formula, as Lex iirc argued back in the day they pushed the 800 formula on the basis of some abstruse engineering philosophy (? mass centralisation wasn’t it) and might have actually designed the bike on the basis of that philosophy and then picked Dani as the best fit for the bike rather than necessarily building the bike for him. Maybe his injuries were substantially down to the difficulties of the bike although as I said then and now he didn’t bounce well, seeming to get injured every time he had a fall, although not so much on the 990 on which his size should theoretically at least have been a bigger disadvantage.
The counterpoint is that the riders who beat him were rather hard to beat, and while he might rank with or even surpass Randy Mamola as the best never to win a title he was beaten by highly elite riders every time from the start of the 800 formula going forward. As opposed to the 800 Honda the 990 he got to ride as a rookie was a mature design and a great bike which seemed generally suitable and unimpeachable engineering wise I would have thought.
The bike from 2015 on has no doubt been plain fractious, to the extent even MM couldn’t compensate that year, and no doubt flawed and reliant on him to be competitive since then. Others seem to have surpassed them in employing the control ECU and building bikes to suit the control tire; the latter would seem a large part of the current game. Concentration on the F1 effort has likely contributed as has been said.
I am grateful to Honda for providing the bikes for 7 premier class titles won by Australian riders, but am basically a Ducati man as far as marques go, altthough happy to see a Suzuki rider win as I was prior to that most recent title.
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Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I don’t BTW recall anybody ever... implying it should be the responsibility of the rider to develop a more rideable bike. Logically - that should be a priority of the HRC engineers in that if more riders can get it on the podium, HRC looks better and has more to be proud of. If the current iteration of the Honda were as rideable as the Yamaha or the Suzuki the creme would still rise to the top.
Think i'm not alone on this ... HRC needs first of all to get ride of all riders apart from MM.
- AM, if his surname was not M no way he would survive those 3 rubish years im moto2 and rise to motogp.
- TN, he is there mostly because he is JPN, but what good does that do to winning races and champs?!
- PE, as seen many times he struggles to keep the racing line and with his track record on motogp and age i don't think he'll get any better.
IMO, Morbidelli could be a good target because he as some experience to partner MM and he may bring a smooth way to ride and request changes to suit his style. And then i would chase the strongest moto2 riders to join LCR.
I say all this and HRC is not even my favourite brand, but these days with MM not fit enough it is a sorry site to see HRC.
Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
I did forget about that. A miscalculation on their part and hubris on his. Lorenzo was so burned out at that point. You'd think he'd have known better.
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Joined May 2019
607 Posts | 459+
Where I am.
Lorenzo must have felt that if he could tame the Ducati and ride it to wins, then he could tame the Honda.
Honda needs a rider that can adapt to their bikes and extract whatever potential there is in it. Not the other way around. I think Morbidelli would turn into a journeyman at Honda.
Mick, I am talking from reading many comments and forums ............... yes, some people genuinely believe that a rider should develop so that a bike is easier to ride for others - heck, it has happened in this place when the Ducati could only be ridden by 1 rider, has been said of MMarquez, was said of Rossi when he was at his indisputable best - that a rider should develop the bike to make it easier.
I call BS.
The rider is there to ride that which he/she is given to the limits of their human endurance and also to the limits that are mechanically possible whilst providing the basics of feedback to point a technician to the right data to use. The rinse and repeat until they get it right for that rider.
With regards to Honda, well there was a serious difference with Pedrosa vs today's state and that is that Pedrosa was untried and in so many ways no where near as credentialed as MMarquez.
With regards to Pol, yeah possibly that if they built a winner for him then MM would dominate but hey, 124 starts with little return does not make one a winner and does not mean that one does not have in themselves a unique riding style that will suit all.
History has shown many times, and will again in the future that a freak talent will always be at or near the top no matter the quality of their ride and in saying that I fully recognise that some cannot acclimatise to the skills necessary to find that point where the talent comes through.
I will call it again and piggy back on the whines of many across years, tyres.
We focus on the bikes but Michelin are playing games with tyres and until there is a consistent tyre to be used (and I believe open tyre competition is best) that we will keep seeing disparity in performance between riders on same machinery from week to week.
Lorenzo must have felt that if he could tame the Ducati and ride it to wins, then he could tame the Honda.
Shame is it took 1 year to get results at Ducati and he did not take that chance at HRC.
He also did not have Cristian Gabbarini at HRC to help him out
Totally.
It is about adapting to the tool or tools and not wholesale changes to those tools as we have seen al to often where you change 2 things and upset 20
Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
Lorenzo must have felt that if he could tame the Ducati and ride it to wins, then he could tame the Honda.
Honda needs a rider that can adapt to their bikes and extract whatever potential there is in it. Not the other way around. I think Morbidelli would turn into a journeyman at Honda.
I guess we'll just agree to disagree. Logically - IMHO - Honda should strive to build a bike that handles as well as those from the smaller, less well-financed companies to prove that they build a better bike. Their dependence on finding the next alien who can out-ride the handling deficiencies is short-sighted. This will be two seasons now where Honda has barely been on a podium, and if MM doesn't make a full recovery their fallow period can go on for some time.
Ducati had that short-sighted mentality for years, going so far as to send riders to see psychologists rather than owning up to their design issues. When they stopped blaming the victim and did the work and endlessly tried different permutation of of chassis etc, they got much more satisfying results. If MM had gone to Ducati he'd probably have at least two more championships.
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This silly trend started back in the day when you know who moved to Yamaha and won on it, then the fans started to say it and even the damn team started to believe it, in fact so much they thought they could fine tune the Ducati in 80 seconds or so.
6 out of 8 isn’t too bad. And it was mostly down to him the 2 seasons he didn’t win, if he had settled for his position before crashing out in all those races in 2015 arithmetically he would have been world champion, let alone had he raced as he did at PI 2015 rather than attempting to dominate every lap of every race, and if he hadn’t had the bike hit his arm in what wasn’t a very bad crash otherwise, and also a crash which was due to vanity/making an unnecessary point he very likely would have won that title as well, I didn’t see any other bike/rider combination which could carve through the field as he did before crashing out already in the best position he could possibly finish during the rest of last season either.
