Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
"I've gone from trick bows to a long bow - no sights, no nothing, completely old-school. I like to bow hunt because it's more of a challenge than gun hunting."
Pov will approve. He goes out in the woods by himself hunting wild boar with just a straight long bow - and some folks think he's a .....?
According to Matt Oxley: He's now won more GPs than Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, and Freddie Spencer.
I've always dreamed of being in the Repsol Honda team, following in Mick's footsteps."
"Back in those days (Doohan era) it was just racing - Doohan, Rainey, Schwantz, Gardiner, Lawson - not half as much ........ as now. That was the life."
"The Honda turns so much better that my lines are now totally different. There's a couple of points where the Ducati feels better than the Honday but there's a lot of points where the Honda feels a lot better than the Ducati."
"You hear all these stories that Honda is such a robot company, that they care more about the bike than the rider. A few months back I went to the Honda factory for a visit and it was just unbelievable. To go there and see it's just a normal workshop, it's not computers everywhere, they still do a lot with their hands. It's still a human factory. and it was amazing to meet the geniuses behind so many bikes and cars."
"Everything on the Hondas and Yamahas is better finished. :Look at the fairings, they put them on: click click click. With Ducati they're frickin' squeezing, slamming it, because the fairing doesn't match up perfect. With Ducati it's all about getting it going fast, they really don't care how it looks."
"With Ducati we had a lot of failures, I lost a lot of time in practice sessions with sensors failing and things like that, though for some reason we hardly had any failures during races.
With the Ducati you go out there and you push hard, quite quickly, and you know from the beginning if that setting will work or not. People always criticized me for not doing enough laps with the Ducati, but that was only because as soon as you go out there, you realize, nope, this ain't right, so you come back in, change, go back out, change it (etc etc).
It's such a small sweet spot on the Ducati - it's so hard to get it just right."
"When I first rode the Honda we used the other guy's settings during the first exits and for me the engine was way too dull, way too smooth. It would just slowly come on, so we reduced that over the next runs, then we went too far and the thing was really aggressive so we whacked it back one step and we've been happy with it since.
Oxley: Stoner doesn't feel he's got some kind of unique talent for throttle control, he just tries to combine different kinds of throttle skills.
Stoner: "You see how Nicky slide and wheelspin and it looks like he's got extremely good throttle control, but he can't find good traction with that style of throttle control."
"Danny is very good at finding traction but he can't slide like other people."
"I try to find a balance so I can ride like Dani when I want to - to pick the bike up and find the grip - but I can also ride like Nick and do what he does. So it all depends on what's best on what day and at what track; even corner by corner it's all different."
"I think we'll see less crashes with the 1000s. All the crashes now are front-end because you have to run that much corner speed. I think with the 1000s going faster down the straights there may be more overtaking because more people will be on the brakes for longer and there's more time to set up for corners. I'm not sure what to expect from them in terms of acceleration, maybe we'll be able to slow them down in the middle of the corner and squirt them out, so maybe electronics won't play such a big part."
Pov will approve. He goes out in the woods by himself hunting wild boar with just a straight long bow - and some folks think he's a .....?
According to Matt Oxley: He's now won more GPs than Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, and Freddie Spencer.
I've always dreamed of being in the Repsol Honda team, following in Mick's footsteps."
"Back in those days (Doohan era) it was just racing - Doohan, Rainey, Schwantz, Gardiner, Lawson - not half as much ........ as now. That was the life."
"The Honda turns so much better that my lines are now totally different. There's a couple of points where the Ducati feels better than the Honday but there's a lot of points where the Honda feels a lot better than the Ducati."
"You hear all these stories that Honda is such a robot company, that they care more about the bike than the rider. A few months back I went to the Honda factory for a visit and it was just unbelievable. To go there and see it's just a normal workshop, it's not computers everywhere, they still do a lot with their hands. It's still a human factory. and it was amazing to meet the geniuses behind so many bikes and cars."
"Everything on the Hondas and Yamahas is better finished. :Look at the fairings, they put them on: click click click. With Ducati they're frickin' squeezing, slamming it, because the fairing doesn't match up perfect. With Ducati it's all about getting it going fast, they really don't care how it looks."
"With Ducati we had a lot of failures, I lost a lot of time in practice sessions with sensors failing and things like that, though for some reason we hardly had any failures during races.
With the Ducati you go out there and you push hard, quite quickly, and you know from the beginning if that setting will work or not. People always criticized me for not doing enough laps with the Ducati, but that was only because as soon as you go out there, you realize, nope, this ain't right, so you come back in, change, go back out, change it (etc etc).
It's such a small sweet spot on the Ducati - it's so hard to get it just right."
"When I first rode the Honda we used the other guy's settings during the first exits and for me the engine was way too dull, way too smooth. It would just slowly come on, so we reduced that over the next runs, then we went too far and the thing was really aggressive so we whacked it back one step and we've been happy with it since.
Oxley: Stoner doesn't feel he's got some kind of unique talent for throttle control, he just tries to combine different kinds of throttle skills.
Stoner: "You see how Nicky slide and wheelspin and it looks like he's got extremely good throttle control, but he can't find good traction with that style of throttle control."
"Danny is very good at finding traction but he can't slide like other people."
"I try to find a balance so I can ride like Dani when I want to - to pick the bike up and find the grip - but I can also ride like Nick and do what he does. So it all depends on what's best on what day and at what track; even corner by corner it's all different."
"I think we'll see less crashes with the 1000s. All the crashes now are front-end because you have to run that much corner speed. I think with the 1000s going faster down the straights there may be more overtaking because more people will be on the brakes for longer and there's more time to set up for corners. I'm not sure what to expect from them in terms of acceleration, maybe we'll be able to slow them down in the middle of the corner and squirt them out, so maybe electronics won't play such a big part."
