Great post. I won’t be surprised if Gigi engineered some flex into it, because that’s not explicitly banned in the rule book.
www.cycleworld.com
Don’t need to homologate it according to the current rulebook. Things that connect to the swing arm and the forks are not part of the homologated aero bodywork.
Michael my Dude, what gives? Its uncharacteristic of you to repeatedly misconstrue the meaning of my posts. It’s a given that MM is not a mid-pack rider. I thought it surely clear that my point was that it wasn’t only Marquez who rode to much better than usual results that weekend, hence the “all boats” reference, to say that others benefited from track conditions as well. Marc moreso than others - sure. Me call Marc a mid-pack rider??? C’mon. I know you for having a LONG memory, and know that you know, I’ve been a huge admirer of his since the day he first threw a leg over the seat of the Repsol bike. When the majority of the members here were lambasting him left and right, referring to him as Murder Marc, I was one of his staunchest defenders. I was the guy who was laughed at when I predicted he would mature and outgrow his more egregious behavior patterns.
He hasn’t been Murder Marc in a while and thank .... for that.
I was a fan of Chris Vermeulen as well. I just found it incongruous to compare his sole win in a flag to flag race to MM’s 60th win after more than 1000 days and many vicissitudes and which involved dominating an entire weekend, and for my money showing he can still make a difference with riding talent even on an aero bike. Gigi has been saying he is outperforming the GP23 in more usual conditions for some time as well. Sure it doesn’t mean he is going to win consistently for the rest of the season. If AM had finished on the podium I would see that as more akin to Vermeulen’s feat as you also said, although even that would perhaps have been partly related to MM related setting up of the Gresini GP23s.
You persist in the belief that the salient point of the post was a comparison between Vermulen and Marc. That would be, on my part totally ridiculous. I've made it clear years ago, that I viewed Vermulen as a lesser player in the game. A nice guy for sure, good in the rain, but not a world beater. I refuse to be drawn into a debate about what I meant.
I bet the current Honda lot would take Vermeulen’s XRE0 with a wet setting over the RCV with a bow tie on it.
That is along the lines I was thinking, Vermeulen’s bike was more competitive than the Hondas of recent seasons, and he was good in the wet. MM is good in the wet, but there were basically no track or weather conditions which allowed him to be competitive on a Honda in recent seasons. It encouraged me that MM was still able to employ his riding talent in sketchy conditions to dominate the field even on an aero bike. It may not be possible to ride a GP24 better or even as well as Pecco in normal grip conditions though, let alone a GP23, which may be what Keshav was driving at. He was competitive with Martin the race before Aragon and so far at Misano, and has perhaps found away some of his native riding style on a Ducati aero bike. He is no longer struggling to get into FP2 at least.
I guess the logic is that the aero on the swing arm puts load on the rear tyre without loading the suspension but it could be a way of getting around the rules.
