Ducati claimed another victim

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

moto vudu said:
It's you that doesn't know .... about MotoGP. Marc didn't win last year's championship on a bad bike... not by a long shot. Marc rides for the most dominate team on the most dominate bike. Comparing Marc to Pedrosa isn't quite fair since the bike has been developed away from Pedrosa to better suit Marquez (like what HRC did to Hayden).

Riders that had a "bad bike" last year would be:
Danilo Petrucci
Scott Redding
Yonny Hernadez
Eugene Laverty
Hector Barbera
Loris Baz
Tito Rabat
Jack Miller
Cal Crutchlow
Aleix Espargaro
Maverick Vinales
Andrea Dovizioso
Andrea Iannone

Obviously the bike was good enough for MM to win on.

I think JPS has a point though. There is a difference between a bike which is good in general for any rider, and a bike which a particular rider can get to go fast enough to win but has significant flaws. Pretty much everyone else was crashing that bike frequently, Crutchlow particularly before the chassis change, and Pedrosa who is usually competitive when healthy was nowhere much of the season.

If Honda always had the best bike because of their resources or were truly historically dominant, Yamaha riders wouldn't have won a close to equivalent number of titles. Honda, and Yamaha for that matter, can and do stuff up their bikes from time to time, cf the year 2000 when your boy started in the premier class and the "factory" factory bike with Alex Criville as the lead rider and defending champion went backwards at a rate of knots. Yamaha in 1993 came up with a rather bad bike, so much so that Rainey had to switch to a customer frame.

Whether MM is partly to blame for the bike being bad is another question.

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

Segfault said:
Riding style.

Trouble with armchair racers and internet wannabe pundits is someone somewhere tells something, then it is recited all over the place until everybody starts believing this is the truth.

All, yes ALL MotoGP riders practice motocross. This is important to develop skills to keep sliding bike under control. Stating they ride MotoGP bike "motocross style" is ridiculous.

Rider A can drive smoothly and keep the corner speed, but loses out on brakes. It is fair to say he has his own riding style.
Rider B can outbrake anyone, but can't get it right exiting the corner, losing out on the straights as a result. He has his own style, I agree.
Rider C has all skills in his bag. He can do whatever the bike needs to go fast. He has no riding style, he is too good to be limited just one style.

I'm an old fart who didn't ride a bike for 35 years. Then I moved to Deep South and got myself a Harley. The first day I went out on it I got some rain. I touched the brake and locked up the front at about 50 MPH. It was complete surprise to me, I didn't know the stock Dunlop is such a crap tire. 999 Harley riders out of 1000 could have dropped the bike. My right hand knew what to do even before I became conscious of lockup, the skill I learned when racing, it released the brake and I kept the bike upright.

Now, according to armchair pundits I ride my Harley "sportbike style"?
What a nonsense.

I took your point on your initial post.

I am not so big on the ex-racer thing though.

If you are Kevin Schwantz, sure, although being an ex-rider of his calibre doesn't seem to preclude bias, and of course you yourself have a perspective which someone who has never raced at all doesn't have. I think what these guys, particularly the very top riders, do is quite far away from say club racing though, and I also think that it is possible for people in general to make valid observations of many phenomena regardless of whether they have experienced said phenomena personally.

moto vudu · Mar 31, 2017

michaelm said:
Obviously the bike was good enough for MM to win on.

I think JPS has a point though. There is a difference between a bike which is good in general for any rider, and a bike which a particular rider can get to go fast enough to win but has significant flaws. Pretty much everyone else was crashing that bike frequently, Crutchlow particularly before the chassis change, and Pedrosa who is usually competitive when healthy was nowhere much of the season.

If Honda always had the best bike because of their resources or were truly historically dominant, Yamaha riders wouldn't have won a close to equivalent number of titles. Honda, and Yamaha for that matter, can and do stuff up their bikes from time to time, with the year 2000 when your boy started in the premier class and the "factory" factory bike with Alex Criville as the lead rider and defending champion went backwards at a rate of knots. Yamaha in 1993 came up with a rather bad bike, so much so that Rainey had to switch to a customer frame.

Whether MM is partly to blame for the bike being bad is another question.

No Honda rider received the same level of support from HRC as Marquez.

Like I said in another thread, if you want to make a case for last year's RCV being bad, I'll make the case for last year's M1 also being bad since it struggled at all the races with cool & wet conditions (not to mention 2 blown engines).

danski · Mar 31, 2017

moto vudu said:
No Honda rider received the same level of support from HRC as Marquez.

Like I said in another thread, if you want to make a case for last year's RCV being bad, I'll make the case for last year's M1 also being bad since it struggled at all the races with cool & wet conditions (not to mention 2 blown engines).

Last years RCV won half of all races, really not such a bad bike then.

p4p1 · Mar 31, 2017

Daniboy said:
Last years RCV won half of all races, really not such a bad bike then.

Look at the conditions of some of those races won.

Miller won because many others crashed out and he had nothing to lose and went for the victory.
Crutchlow won his first race because he gambled on tyres and it paid off. He won his second race because the leader crashed out with a 4.5 second lead.
Pedrosa won because his size allowed him to be the only guy who could make the soft option work at the end of the race so he could run a pace that no one could match.

Now the satellite guys do well in wet/difficult conditions because they can take more races. The difference between the Miller/Crutchlow and Pol/Smith on the satellite Yamaha is a huge gap in talent. Ask Tito who's Pols and Smiths equal how great the Honda is.

Everyone who rode the bike said it was terrible, other riders said that the bike wasn't good and Marquez was the difference. It was being out dragged by the Suzuki FFS which meant everyone on the Honda had to take chances by braking deeper than anyone else needed to to make up time.

As for the m1 yes, Lorenzo struggled in cooler conditions when he couldn't get heat into the front tyre. Rossi didn't struggle anywhere near as much. The blown engines were one weekend where the factory stupidly decided to raise the rpm ceiling and paid the price for it. It's very possible though that if they hadn't Marquez would've beat Lorenzo to the line at Mugello.

JPSLotus · Mar 31, 2017

Daniboy said:
Last years RCV won half of all races, really not such a bad bike then.

Do you believe the GP7 was not a bad bike?

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

moto vudu said:
No Honda rider received the same level of support from HRC as Marquez.

Like I said in another thread, if you want to make a case for last year's RCV being bad, I'll make the case for last year's M1 also being bad since it struggled at all the races with cool & wet conditions (not to mention 2 blown engines).

We do know what happens when MM has a better/truly dominant bike, cf 2014, 10 wins on the bounce, a record 13 in total.

imunderandoverit · Mar 31, 2017

1st race on it does not prove .... anyway.

BarryMachine · Mar 31, 2017

imunderandoverit said:
1st race on it does not prove .... anyway.

No ........ it proves the boppers are going to make something of it lololol.

p4p1 · Mar 31, 2017

BarryMachine said:
No ........ it proves the boppers are going to make something of it lololol.

They're clinging very hard to Vinaeles because they know that he's the only hope to stop Marquez stringing a few titles together. I'm sure deep down they know that Marquez winning 5 or 6 titles, without the help of SNS, with the control tyre, now a few with the unified software and he's already done it on a worse bike than Rossi ever won a championship on that it would eclipse Rossis perceived GOATness.

BarryMachine · Mar 31, 2017

p4p1 said:
They're clinging very hard to Vinaeles because they know that he's the only hope to stop Marquez stringing a few titles together. I'm sure deep down they know that Marquez winning 5 or 6 titles, without the help of SNS, with the control tyre, now a few with the unified software and he's already done it on a worse bike than Rossi ever won a championship on that it would eclipse Rossis perceived GOATness.

I'm just wondering when Vinales will become the new focus on boppersooking. It has to happen.

Keshav · Mar 31, 2017

Daniboy said:
Last years RCV won half of all races, really not such a bad bike then.

Some things never change. We've been pummeled over and over again for years with the eternal Bopper meme. When Rossi wins a race - it's because He's THE GOAT!

But anybody else... the bike won the race.

#22 · Mar 31, 2017

Daniboy said:
Last years RCV won half of all races, really not such a bad bike then.

In 2002, the RCV won 14 of 16 races. 11 of which were Rossi except they weren't as it was the bike. Same applies to 2003 when Honda won 15 of 16 races.

In 2004: Yamaha won 9 of 16 races. So why was it considered a bad bike compared to the Honda? Oh wait, Rossi was riding it.

In 2005: Yamaha won 11 of 16 races. So why was it again considered a bad bike?

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

There is usually an element of both imo.

Amusing that while decrying other posters a certain someone calls Honda the historically dominant bike; by my calculation the current relative number of riders' championships is Honda 18 - Yamaha 17, with the number 15 - 16 prior to MM.

moto vudu · Mar 31, 2017

I started my count when GP500 ended and MotoGP started (2002). Honda has 7 championships and Yamaha has 5. My main point is Marc is riding for the most dominate team and it amuses me that some here are trying to act like he's not in a very privileged position. Sure, the man has no shortage of talent... but it's impossible to say that he can ride around the issues of another bike right now. I need to see it to believe it and claiming that his RCV is ....... thus he can ride anything is a very flawed argument.

Edit: Honda and Yamaha had 5 championships each (counting from 2002) prior to Marquez joining HRC in 2013.

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

moto vudu said:
I started my count when GP500 ended and MotoGP started (2002). Honda has 7 championships and Yamaha has 5. My main point is Marc is riding for the most dominate team and it amuses me that some here are trying to act like he's not in a very privileged position. Sure, the man has no shortage of talent... but it's not impossible to say that he can ride around the issues of another bike right now. I need to see it to believe it and claiming that his RCV is ....... thus he can ride anything is a very flawed argument.

Edit: Honda and Yamaha had 5 championships each (counting from 2002) prior to Marquez joining HRC in 2013.

Perhaps Honda should be the historically dominant team given the resources they have and are apparently prepared to expend, but the fact is that this is not so whatever way you want to slice it, and it has mostly been fairly even between Honda and Yamaha for riders' titles (credit to Yamaha for that), and it seems that significant swings have occurred on the basis of the then current riding talent.

I have given you two unambiguous previous examples of both Honda and Yamaha coming up with dud bikes, and there are arguably more, many would and have put Rossi not winning in 2006 down to a suboptimal bike with chatter problems for instance. Exactly why is it impossible for a Honda premier class GP bike to be problematic in a given year? As I previously posted, we have already seen what MM can do on a really good bike, like Valentino and others before him.

Why the need to restrict your sample size to other than the "modern" era which began when the Japanese manufacturers joined or re-joined the fray, since which time Honda and Yamaha have been the only constant participants, btw?

moto vudu · Mar 31, 2017

michaelm said:
Perhaps Honda should be the historically dominant team given the resources they have and are apparently prepared to expend, but the fact is that this is not so whatever way you want to slice it, and it has mostly been fairly even between Honda and Yamaha for riders' titles (credit to Yamaha for that), and it seems that significant swings have occurred on the basis of the then current riding talent.

I have given you two unambiguous previous examples of both Honda and Yamaha coming up with dud bikes, and there are arguably more, many would and have put Rossi not winning in 2006 down to a suboptimal bike with chatter problems for instance. Exactly why is it impossible for a Honda premier class GP bike to be problematic in a given year? As I previously posted, we have already seen what MM can do on a really good bike, like Valentino and others before him.

Why the need to restrict your sample size to other than the "modern" era which began when the Japanese manufacturers joined or re-joined the fray, since which time Honda and Yamaha have been the only constant participants, btw?

I never said it was impossible for a Honda to be problematic. The issue is when you only pay attention to the problems Marc had to overcome while ignoring the flaws with the other bikes. The M1 isn't perfect and the bikes further down the grid have far more issues.

I started my sample size at 2002 because that was the first year for the RCV and M1.

povol · Mar 31, 2017

JPSLotus said:
Lorenzo's interview comments are fascinating, but worrisome. I can't understand how everyone on the outside could see the Ducati was going to be a problem for Lorenzo due to his style, while Lorenzo somehow remained oblivious? I wonder if the initial signing had something to do with the winglets and making a bet that they would still be on the bike for 2017 rather than gone.

Ditto on Marquez. He is the only rider who can give Ducati that second world title.

One of these days, fans of GP are going to have to admit that these guys sometimes make decisions based on money. Lorenzo could have taken a deep breath, singed with Yamaha and contended for titles year after year on what is arguably the best bike on a consistent basis.We like to fantasize about these guys being the last gladiators who's only motivation is to beat their enemies into the ground,while the truth is, they are wanting to get paid just like any other athlete. Like you said, most knowledgeable fans predicted Lorenzo would struggle, it was almost a given. When a team offers up life changing money, these guys are 2-0 leaving the best Nike on the grid for the sack of cash. Next will be Marquez, he will grow tired of Honda's dependence on him while they roll out mediocre bikes year after year and wait to see if his freakish talents can overcome them. It could be as early as 2019 but depends on what Lorenzo does, but at some point in the next 2-4 years, Ducati will offer Marquez 20 million and he will take it. The difference is going to be, he wins on it, concreting his status as the greatest of all time

michaelm · Mar 31, 2017

moto vudu said:
I never said it was impossible for a Honda to be problematic. The issue is when you only pay attention to the problems Marc had to overcome while ignoring the flaws with the other bikes. The M1 isn't perfect and the bikes further down the grid have far more issues.

I started my sample size at 2002 because that was the first year for the RCV and M1.

You can argue whatever you like and choose whatever time period you like, my point is more that you and JKant in particular are very prone to being selective yourselves or taking others to task for speculation while doing exactly the same yourselves, although JKant is imo more at fault than you for assigning speculations the status of "reasonable inferences" where his own arguments are concerned, while requiring a forensic level of evidence from his opponents.

MM obviously had a very good/the best bike in 2014, and I suspect he also did in 2013, his performance in that year being impressive because he was a rookie rather than because he overcame equipment disadvantages. The 2016 bike was clearly problematic for every other Honda rider, as numerous crashes and generally poor performances prior to the introduction of the new chassis other than in unusual circumstances in wet races demonstrated. Whether that was because MM asked Honda for the wrong characteristics in the bike is a different question. The Yamaha appeared to me at least to be a better overall bike, let down on a number of occasions by substandard Michelin tyres which imo introduced a lottery element to the whole 2016 season. Perhaps the only virtue of Michelin's control tyre last year is that MM had to overcome exactly the same tyres as every other rider.

danski · Apr 1, 2017

JPSLotus said:
Do you believe the GP7 was not a bad bike?

4 different riders won on the RCV, only CS could tame the gp7, apples and oranges.

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Ducati claimed another victim

michaelm

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michaelm

imunderandoverit

BarryMachine

p4p1

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