Excellent take. It's like politics. Most people have a position, and sometimes even with facts, you won't change their position.
Well, he wrote a book called 'If I did it', so technically he still is
Sure, but the whole engineering direction is still led by Gigi from what I can tell, and not necessarily for the good of the sport, I hate the aero stuff which I am fairly sure is his idea. You mostly have to be an obsessive madman to be great though.
Yes, but what I was talking about was the old situation of one clever engineer having a clever individual technical idea. Gigi is, I think the best team leader and team builder around, and I would expect him to be hands on in hiring the talent that Ducati have. But, that's a different thing.
I remember watching a video of the KTM squad a couple of years prior to their on track debut. They had a fully functional engine on a test bench, running a race simulation. (Ie they feed track and rider data into it, the engine accelerates, shifts, closes throttle etc as if it’s inside a motorcycle someone is riding). The rest of the bike was nowhere near completion.
Probably why KTM is developing the Batcycle with an all new engine at frantic pace.
It could be worse. Luca Marini might have one less point than he does currently.
Absolutely miss that mad bark!
I honestly think all of the Gen1 MotoGP bikes sounded great with an edge to the RCV of course.
Isn't this what Toyota did in the automotive world years ago? Lean Six Sigma approach....more or less? Good strategy, obviously.
I guess they are trying to protect the teams from themselves/stop them bankrupting themselves to some extent, I am not sure it would be a good idea for Aprilia to invest large amounts of money in the dying days of the current formula given their financial situations, and even VW Audi seems to have their problems financially at the moment as well. Dorna/Liberty also may think there is enough interest from internal Ducati competition to last the next 2 years, with large numbers of followers of the sport wanting to see MM succeed, and also large numbers wanting to see Bagnaia beat him. Even if MM was dominant that would probably be good for the box office, casual fans are not necessarily put off by a lack of close racing.
As I recall Yamaha came up with their first real MotoGP engine led by Furusawa in fairly short order for Rossi's advent, and I suspect they can come up with a good engine, even if they switch to a V4, fairly quickly again.
IIRC Toyota farmed out the engineering of the 1jz head to Yamaha for their expertise rather than carrying out the work internally. I would certainly back them to have the expertise to come up with an excellent v4.
Yamaha is working with Dallara, who has done a lot of single seater aero. They also hired Marco Nicotra from Ducati, who was Gigi’s go-to aero man. It shows in their current aero package which looks a lot more integrated and closer to the Europeans.
Not only that, Yamaha have done entire engines in F1.
Lean was Toyota, and at its core it was a waste management too.
