2023 Austrian GP

Keshav · Aug 25, 2023

PRS717 said:
Not sure to whom you are referring but Simon Crafar is one of the most linguistically gifted gentlemen in all of sports broadcasting..................................ya know?

From my point of view, that just doesn't speak well of those who are still less interesting to listen to. I find his observations to be trite and dull as hell. And the questions he asks the various team bosses are the same basic questions a high schooler kid would ask for the school newspaper. They're the equivalent of the worst kind of banal small talk. I find him tedious in the extreme. What to do? Different strokes for different folks.

Mrpurple · Aug 25, 2023

Try the Yankee broadcast sometime...that Greg something?

Ill take the Brits and their bias any day.

#22 · Aug 25, 2023

mylexicon said:
I think most of GP's challenges can be solved by unraveling the compounding effects created by aero and ride height. Those systems working together are fundamentally changing the sport.

If you get rid of aero, acceleration and trap speeds will come down a bit because the wings aren't holding down the front wheel. Braking distances will increase (further reducing top trap speed) because the wings are not dragging in the braking zone. Those changes would significantly improve the racing by giving riders more control over corner entry lines and acceleration on exit. However, I think the ride height device may be more important. The ride height can basically lower the CoG of the bike, and put substantially all of the weight on the rear tire, with the help of wheelie control. All of the bikes have the same min weight so the riders are basically just fighting to preserve tire life and get exactly the right lean angle to optimize the contact patch. The ride height can stall the wings and reduce coefficient of drag on the straight, which makes slipstreaming impossible with the current 1000cc engines. The ride height also works to lessen the stoppie characteristics of the bike in the braking zone, which pitches the wings downward, increasing drag in the braking zone.

Excellent point. They brought in 800's to slow things down and made the issues worse because 1. 800's could corner faster and 2. They weren't much slower in terms of top speed but the increased corner speed made that even less so.

I guess which is more influentual depends on the track. Mugello? PI? I'd say aero. Especially when you consider that Simon Crafar rode the 2022 Aprilia there this season and said it was ab-so-lut-ely pinned over the crest into T1, whereas non aero bikes had to feather the throttle.

Regarding you last line. I agree. I cannot attest to any evidence of it in GP at the moment, is that ride height devices can also be used as anti-squat, which like AS under acceleration helps mitigate the CoG movement under braking as you noted.

mylexicon said:
The ride height device is increasing acceleration out of the corner, increasing the acceleration again by reducing drag coefficient, and then increasing the top trap speed by reducing braking distances allowing for longer acceleration. Obviously, there is a rubber band effect because increasing the top trap speed moves the braking marker backward; however, it still seems like halting all of the additional kinetic energy unleashed by the ride height device is ultimately responsible for baking the front tire.

Rubber band effect, exactly what happened to Bezzechi in Silverstone. He reported that he hit the brakes and it felt like he was accelerating towards Bagnaia. As I sais in the race thread, this is showing you the reliance the bikes are now having on aero.

mylexicon said:
Aero and ride height. Which is the symptom and which is the disease? Personally, I think they should get rid of both, but I think ride height is the disease. It's probably possible to make a case that aero is the real disease since it arrived first on the scene. Or did it? The 500s of the early 90s were actually playing around with ride height. But what about dustbin fairings nearly killing the sport in the 50s? Have fun trying to unravel this century-old ball of yarn!

Can't fault your logic but I agree. Get rid of both.

Interesting words from Marc and Jorge Martin too:

Marc Marquez: MotoGP ‘going the opposite way to F1’ on aero

Keshav said:
From my point of view, that just doesn't speak well of those who are still less interesting to listen to. I find his observations to be trite and dull as hell. And the questions he asks the various team bosses are the same basic questions a high schooler kid would ask for the school newspaper. They're the equivalent of the worst kind of banal small talk. I find him tedious in the extreme. What to do? Different strokes for different folks.

I find Crafar to be good. He gives updates on what changes riders are making (for example if they are tuning front forks between runs etc) which I love. Of course his questions to team principles are generic because he has learned now that 1. Team bosses won;t answer technical questions and 2. A lot of fans enjoy the show and aren;t into the technical aspect, which goes for any sport.

JFM01 · Aug 25, 2023

mylexicon said:
I think most of GP's challenges can be solved by unraveling the compounding effects created by aero and ride height. Those systems working together are fundamentally changing the sport.

If you get rid of aero, acceleration and trap speeds will come down a bit because the wings aren't holding down the front wheel. Braking distances will increase (further reducing top trap speed) because the wings are not dragging in the braking zone. Those changes would significantly improve the racing by giving riders more control over corner entry lines and acceleration on exit. However, I think the ride height device may be more important. The ride height can basically lower the CoG of the bike, and put substantially all of the weight on the rear tire, with the help of wheelie control. All of the bikes have the same min weight so the riders are basically just fighting to preserve tire life and get exactly the right lean angle to optimize the contact patch. The ride height can stall the wings and reduce coefficient of drag on the straight, which makes slipstreaming impossible with the current 1000cc engines. The ride height also works to lessen the stoppie characteristics of the bike in the braking zone, which pitches the wings downward, increasing drag in the braking zone.

The ride height device is increasing acceleration out of the corner, increasing the acceleration again by reducing drag coefficient, and then increasing the top trap speed by reducing braking distances allowing for longer acceleration. Obviously, there is a rubber band effect because increasing the top trap speed moves the braking marker backward; however, it still seems like halting all of the additional kinetic energy unleashed by the ride height device is ultimately responsible for baking the front tire.

Aero and ride height. Which is the symptom and which is the disease? Personally, I think they should get rid of both, but I think ride height is the disease. It's probably possible to make a case that aero is the real disease since it arrived first on the scene. Or did it? The 500s of the early 90s were actually playing around with ride height. But what about dustbin fairings nearly killing the sport in the 50s? Have fun trying to unravel this century-old ball of yarn!

Great post, I think you're pretty much spot on.
They (and by they I mean Ducati) started putting wings on the bikes in 2016 and the other manufacturers followed in 2018-19 yet the racing continued to be awesome until 2020.
For me there is one defining moment that put an end to a great MotoGP era and that was the holeshot of the first Qatar race in 2021 when four Ducatis occupied the first four spots before turn one even though they started as low as 15th.

I'm not old enough to remember 500cc racing of the 90s (or even 2000s MotoGP) but there have been many examples in the world of motorsports in the last 10 years that prove that high df aero simply sucks.
F1 destroyed every track record between 2017 and 2020 but passing was nonexistent in many races.
IndyCar had these manufacturer aero kits from 2015 to 2017 which hurt the races and were also ugly af. Then they introduced the low df UAK in 2018 and the racing has been great ever since.
NASCAR was straight up terrible with the 550 package and even now their still struggling with too much drag on some tracks.

JFM01 · Aug 25, 2023

Mrpurple said:
Try the Yankee broadcast sometime...that Greg something?

Ill take the Brits and their bias any day.

I'll take these two... I'm even considering getting a VPN so I can continue to listen to them next year when Servus TV shuts down in Germany.

#22 · Aug 25, 2023

JFM01 said:
Great post, I think you're pretty much spot on.
They (and by they I mean Ducati) started putting wings on the bikes in 2016 and the other manufacturers followed in

Funny enough, Ducati debuted them in 2010, and they were mocked.

PRS717 · Aug 25, 2023

Keshav said:
From my point of view, that just doesn't speak well of those who are still less interesting to listen to. I find his observations to be trite and dull as hell. And the questions he asks the various team bosses are the same basic questions a high schooler kid would ask for the school newspaper. They're the equivalent of the worst kind of banal small talk. I find him tedious in the extreme. What to do? Different strokes for different folks.

I was being facetious and/or sarcastic. I thought the "you know" at the end would illustrate that because Crafar uses it as one of his verbal crutches. To be fair, Crafar has gotten better but his starting point was really, really low. I do like Simon's points of view on things coming from a riders' perspective. I still kind of miss Dylan Gray? I think that was his name.

mikesbytes · Aug 25, 2023

What FI is doing is reducing downforce to reduce the dirty air allowing drivers to drive closer to each other and hopefully increase overtaking opportunities. F1 is replacing the lost downforce with ground effects.

In MotoGP the teams with the most powerful engines are adding more downforce, in particular the front while the teams with the less powerful engines are using less downforce to enable their bikes to keep up on the straights.

I find the ride height comments interesting: "by adjusting the ride height for the straights the downforce can be reduced and then added back again when its needed" Are any of the teams (or all of them) actually doing this? I can see the sense in it so I'm assuming this is correct, please let me know

mylexicon · Aug 26, 2023

mikesbytes said:
What FI is doing is reducing downforce to reduce the dirty air allowing drivers to drive closer to each other and hopefully increase overtaking opportunities. F1 is replacing the lost downforce with ground effects.

In MotoGP the teams with the most powerful engines are adding more downforce, in particular the front while the teams with the less powerful engines are using less downforce to enable their bikes to keep up on the straights.

I find the ride height comments interesting: "by adjusting the ride height for the straights the downforce can be reduced and then added back again when its needed" Are any of the teams (or all of them) actually doing this? I can see the sense in it so I'm assuming this is correct, please let me know

All of the teams are using this strategy.

When the bike squats out of the rear corner it extends the wheelbase by preventing the rear tire from accelerating towards the front tire. This keeps the CoG lower, improves the coefficient of drag, and it reduces the attack angle of the wings. The bike gets more power to the ground and has less drag down the straight.

In the braking zone the front forks compress, the wing attack angle increases. The bike drags to improve deceleration, and the ride height device is doing something. Ultimately, it seems the ride height should squat again to combat the rear wheel wanting to outrun the front as the rider drops the anchors, but I bet its more complicated than that.

That's basically the game these days. Trying to activate the ride height device at exactly the right lean angle during acceleration to maximize the coefficient of friction at the rear wheel over race distance while suppressing wheelie. In the braking zone, the ride height is used to optimize coefficient of friction at the front over race distance while combating stoppie. The more friction, the less spin or lock, and if you increase friction with downforce, it doesn't have the inertial drawbacks of weight.

In the old days, the riders were figuring this out during practice, honing their setup, and then executing in real time on race day. The riders are still a big part of the equation, but much of their turf has been captured by the engineers.

Keshav · Aug 26, 2023

PRS717 said:
I was being facetious and/or sarcastic. I thought the "you know" at the end would illustrate that because Crafar uses it as one of his verbal crutches. To be fair, Crafar has gotten better but his starting point was really, really low. I do like Simon's points of view on things coming from a riders' perspective. I still kind of miss Dylan Gray? I think that was his name.

Ahhh.... just now a lot of subtle and nuanced stuff is getting by me. Just came home from multiple fusion surgeries on my lower back, and kind of in a fog, sleeping a lot on the couch, as I'm trying to take as few pain killers as possible.

PRS717 · Aug 26, 2023

Keshav said:
Ahhh.... just now a lot of subtle and nuanced stuff is getting by me. Just came home from multiple fusion surgeries on my lower back, and kind of in a fog, sleeping a lot on the couch, as I'm trying to take as few pain killers as possible.

Oh man. I think I remember you mentioning this a while back. I hope you have a speedy and full recovery. I've had lumbar problems for many years but I've not gone under the knife. They wanted to do a diskectomy but no fusion. I had another doctor tell me to never let them cut me unless and until I really needed it. My quality of life is not all that bad. Anyway, Godspeed to your recovery.

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2023 Austrian GP

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