<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bikergirl @ May 24 2008, 11:30 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>At the end of the day Dorna is a business, out to make money. If the Doctor struggling for 2 seasons sees viewership/attendance down for the first time in years, someone's bound to sit up and take notice. If it IS Rossi bringing in the fans (and it would be short sighted to think otherwise for the majority of fans), and he's got 2 or 3 years left in him, then chances are that if they were in a position to get him what he wants, then they would have. It's business. You would do the same. In an ideal world the organisers would be neutral, yes, but they would be also a non-profit making organisation. Not the case here for sure.
I may be misrepresenting lex (to whom jumkie was referring), but I think this was actually his point. Dorna rather than a sporting body such as those which formerly ran top level motor sport are accountants and purveyors of multi-media product, and their motivation seems to be entirely commercial as you say. They had no problem with rossi being both the best rider and having the best equipment for his 3 hrc world championships. To be fair they probably preferred the 2 yamaha world championships where he had inferior equipment at least in 2004 but still won, but only because this played even better to the punters. I don't think it is all that out there to suggest that they would have preferred stoner not to win last year, given the effects on the tv ratings, even though if ducati and bridgestone did have an advantage whilst complying with the rules this should be no problem, and in fact theoretically should be laudable in a prototype formula.
The leap of faith is that dorna have conspired with the tyre manufacturers to take away ducati's advantage. As I have said before I believe this is unlikely, and I think lex actually concedes the point that as well as dorna being proveably incompetent too many people would have knowledge of such a conspiracy for it to remain secret. I also think that it is hard to draw conclusions about ducati/stoner's tyres this year, as conditions have been different except at estoril and jerez where mistakes and misadventure played a hand, and where stoner wasn't on top last year anyway; I think that they probably made mistakes with the chassis tuning at these venues in 2008 as well.
My working hypothesis is that the yamaha is better this year, and if they have produced a better bike under the same rules good luck to them and to rossi, who is obviously riding very well.
I wouldn't be so sanguine about saying that it would be understandable if they did favour rossi for commercial reasons though; at the end of that road sports entertainment and rock'n roll wrestling lie
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I may be misrepresenting lex (to whom jumkie was referring), but I think this was actually his point. Dorna rather than a sporting body such as those which formerly ran top level motor sport are accountants and purveyors of multi-media product, and their motivation seems to be entirely commercial as you say. They had no problem with rossi being both the best rider and having the best equipment for his 3 hrc world championships. To be fair they probably preferred the 2 yamaha world championships where he had inferior equipment at least in 2004 but still won, but only because this played even better to the punters. I don't think it is all that out there to suggest that they would have preferred stoner not to win last year, given the effects on the tv ratings, even though if ducati and bridgestone did have an advantage whilst complying with the rules this should be no problem, and in fact theoretically should be laudable in a prototype formula.
The leap of faith is that dorna have conspired with the tyre manufacturers to take away ducati's advantage. As I have said before I believe this is unlikely, and I think lex actually concedes the point that as well as dorna being proveably incompetent too many people would have knowledge of such a conspiracy for it to remain secret. I also think that it is hard to draw conclusions about ducati/stoner's tyres this year, as conditions have been different except at estoril and jerez where mistakes and misadventure played a hand, and where stoner wasn't on top last year anyway; I think that they probably made mistakes with the chassis tuning at these venues in 2008 as well.
My working hypothesis is that the yamaha is better this year, and if they have produced a better bike under the same rules good luck to them and to rossi, who is obviously riding very well.
I wouldn't be so sanguine about saying that it would be understandable if they did favour rossi for commercial reasons though; at the end of that road sports entertainment and rock'n roll wrestling lie
