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What an absolute disgrace......all I kept thinking was, imagine if your an American motorsport fan who doesn't see Motogp often or ever and you turn on, or turn up to watch something which is for them, essentially a sprint race, only to witness a procession worse than what is seen over 100 laps in any nascar event, probably the most boring 40 minutes they've seen all year....with 1 pass for the lead, I guess we were lucky for that at least
I presume you were flamed for this post, but that's only because your reputation proceeds you, however, I think you made some valid points, this part above wasn't one of them. But wait, there is more below. But first, the race was not processional, there were plenty of riders going backwards, which means there was overtaking by default. With the exception of one of the riders, who was actually going forward, albeit after sinking like a brick in the first lap. So some of those riders falling back were overtaken by default in a hair raising manner. Btw, Nascar has plenty of passing, in fact, several changes can be made in one lap. Anyway, I don't think this was the most "boring" race of the season, though the race at the front was processional.
Not only that, you witness more than half of the field suffer from horrendous failure from their Rubber, which is apparently equally supplied to all teams by only the one manufacture.......from what I can see of this race...this is not the case at all. How is that Ducati managed to have 4 of their six riders fail to finish? And the other two struggle to even get the bike to turn at all? Now any reasonable motorsports fan would of course ask, shouldn't the rubber be at least good enough to let the riders finish the race?
Here is where you started to make more sense, though you combined it with a bit of what on the surface may look like a suggestion of conspiracy. I agree, there was a horrendous tire failure, but it was partly not picking the right choice in tire hampered by
not having a real tire choice to make. The fact that riders had to choose from "hard" to harder" doesn't make much sense if the "hard" tire is going to turn into cottage cheese. Its tantamount to giving a choice behind two hidden doors, behind one is some ....., behind the other is a prison rapist. Pick the wrong one and your .......
I don't think I would go down that rode that its a
tire conspiracy, especially YOU. But I do think that the tires choices certainly were not up to the task. I think Bstone got caught out a bit, and probably could have brought an asymmetrical tire. Usually, a tire choice is a bit of race strategy for minor differences in set up and riding style, in this case it seemed like your choices were the equivalent of rain tires in the dry if you picked the wrong one.
However, I will say that you may not have been the only one that thought the tire allocation (or what I think is a tire development issue) was a bit suspect. I forgot the name of the Ducati principal who said it needed to be "investigated".
How is it that the repsol Honda's looked absolutely incredible in comparison to anyone else? Both Stoner and Pedrosa didn't look like they ran wide once, even slightly....and Dovi put his fastest laps in at the end of the race and was unlucky not to get Jorge.....yet Sic looked like he was riding on standard road tyres for the majority of the race? Jorge looked as though he'd taken out the wrong bike and picked up Marco Melandri's R1 instead........except with worse rubber....and Rossi, well......why bother? You could actually understand it if there was a tyre war, and certain rubber didn't perform at certain tracks....but this is ridiculous.
It did remind me of the difference in tire wear among the participants when Michelin completely got it wrong at Laguna, and Bstone were perfect. It did seem like there were suddenly two specs of tires. And though it 'seemed' that way, and certainly at face value you are correct in saying it was odd, and anybody not seeing this is blind, it doesn't mean there was a conspiracy. It could actually be explained. I would explain it with Honda being very smooth coupled with the riding style of those riders who somehow preserved the tire. Simo was on a factory Honda, just like Pedro/Stoner, and he faded as bad as Nicky. This is a guy who's pace has matched the Honda Repsol guys all year. So its here where I think you have some basis to point out the tire deterioration being exceptionally odd, a dichotomy invoking further thought (and I disagree with anybody suggesting it was
ordinary tire degradation). It certainly was astonishingly unusual for there to be multiple rider retirements and not just on Ducati, but reports of unsual tire wear by Lorenzo
Yamaha and Simo
Honda as well. Perhaps those who flamed Crutchlow for coming in on previous occasion because of a bum tire may owe him an apology?
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Its not until you really think about it from another perspective, you realize what a state this series is in.......and this is coming from a long term fan.
In this case, I don't think your post was spawned by mindless Rossi worship, as the tires situation did appear extraordinary. But I'm not king on blaming the track, as some have done. The track is a fixture that must be negotiated. People complaining about the track (as even some of the riders did) is to me like saying, it has too many turns, or that turn bends too much, etc. Like Stoner and Lorenzo constantly complaining about the track. Even Casey saying the turns didn't open but continued to close, making it odd for him. The track is there as a challenge, isn't that what turns are for, to test the rider's ability to negotiate it? So to complain the turns are not to his liking is gay. And for other here to be blaming the track for the tire wear is just as ridiculous. I'm assuming Bstone had some time to figure out the characteristics of the new track surface. If they didn't, then they ...... up. And tire choice seemed like an exceptional enigma, on Ducati. Though it seems that Bstone brought out the Ducati-version-of-tires, that is--only usable in a very narrow band of setup/style.
