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Round 5: 2024 Michelin Grand Prix de France - Le Mans Bugatti Circuit
- Thread starter JPSLotus
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I think ascent of aggression is just a the reality of our times. Manufacturers have been eschewing technical variety in favor of cost controls, and using rider aids to reduce the rider talent gap. The commercial rights holders compress the field further for TV viewers using homologations, tire contracts, etc. Part of compressing the field often includes manufacturing some sort of crisis whenever a rider or manufacturer gains too much of an advantage.
Prior to the digital age and the commercial age, grids were more spread out. Participants were competing for a wide variety of reasons. Their primary responsibility was to push the equipment to gather information, and to keep themselves alive. Today you need to be in the winner's circle, and you need to be dominating the TV coverage by keeping things interesting. Rossi was the master of this. Why win a race by 20 seconds, if you can win by 3 seconds and make a few hard overtakes in the later laps?
I don't know that it can be fixed. There have been so many decades of hero worship and lazy victory marketing, I'm not sure audiences can be convinced to watch for any other reason. The spectacle has become one dimensional.
Yeah it’s continental Europe. I’ve been to 4 500/MotoGP races there since the late 80’s. 2 of them have been complete washouts, including the edition of this one that I attended. At least it still has one of greatest high speed corners in racing up the hill under the Dunlop bridge that is in full view for spectators. Somebody, it may have been Bayliss who described feeling the bike start to slide in that corner in very colorful terms.
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Did not agree with MM being called "dirty" either. Aggressive, hard fighting yes. Dirty no.
I haven't seen him deliberately run people off the track in order to win a head to head battle.
Unlike that prima donna who is now retired but needs to fk off.
I haven't seen him deliberately run people off the track in order to win a head to head battle.
Unlike that prima donna who is now retired but needs to fk off.
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I've been thinking some more, Pecco's racecraft or lack thereof when it comes to Marc in particular seems to be right out of the general playbook VR deployed on Casey Stoner at Laguna 2008. If you know you aren't as quick, what's the next best option? Block as much as you can where you can or force the other rider to back off lest the both of you crash. Motegi 2010 against Jorge also comes to mind as well with regards to leaving it up to the other rider on whether you want to crash or not.
There is some guy called Jorge Martin who is actually leading the championship who just might profit if Pecco concentrates overly on MM.
One thing for sure, we definitely are concentrating on MM on this forum!
I am curious this weekend as to how Acosta, other KTMs and the Aprilias will do. Will Mav recover form? Will Acosta adroitly bounce back from a bad weekend? Will Brad prove me wrong and win another race?
Rain will favor MM, Brad and maybe Miller.
I am curious this weekend as to how Acosta, other KTMs and the Aprilias will do. Will Mav recover form? Will Acosta adroitly bounce back from a bad weekend? Will Brad prove me wrong and win another race?
Rain will favor MM, Brad and maybe Miller.
My view as well in regard to LS 08 although I wasn’t going to say so.
I do believe Rossi won all his titles by being the best rider though, mostly fairly overwhelmingly, and he was definitely the best rider over the whole season in 2008 as well, although LS 08 was pivotal that season and I likely have a similar view to you in regard to that race.
This is my point which I made to some extent earlier, why does VR think Pecco needs extreme tactics to combat the dastardly MM ?, who not only has never to my recollection wronged Pecco but also won all his premier class titles by being the best rider rather than any cheating as well. I still don’t consider the last corner pass on Lorenzo at Jerez 2013 which provided the eventual points margin that year to have been legitimate, but this was only important because of the total Donna SNAFU at PI, and even though I was a Lorenzo fan then I considered at the time it would have been unjust for MM to lose the title because of PI.
I am sorry Mick D is gone as appears to be the case, he was an excellent poster/member, but if I and others on here refuse to give up about 2015 this would seem to be even more so the case with Valentino himself based on recent pronouncements by him as well as more historical statements.
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So a bit like 2 stags fighting each other while the 3rd stag is getting a free run of the doe's?
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As of now it looks like its gonna rain on sunday. So i would bet money its not gonna rain, knowing how precise the weather forecast is. They cant predict .... more than a day or two
Pretty annoyed about discussion of the events of 2015 and seemed to indicate he would follow all the various forms of bike racing without assistance from this forum. and has not posted since. He might return I guess, but sounds like Rossi might continue to be involved in discussions on the forum stemming from his own comments regarding current GP bike racing.
I’m not taking too much notice of what Rossi says as he’s just trying to relive his glory days by trying for a slipstream tow from Pecco efforts. It’s more important what Pecco thinks, says and does in the future that will determine his relationship with Marc, Jorge and Enea. At the moment I’m about 50 miles from Le Mans and weather is saying fine and sunny Friday and Sat but rain or thunderstorm Sunday afternoon so it’s going to be fun!
You don’t need my luck!I’ll be on the ferry back to U.K. when’s Sundays race is on and they don’t show race on French tv which the ferry has.
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It's just hard for me to not think of LS 08 when Rossi is making pronouncements to the media about how you have to race MM to beat him. I mean fair enough to Rossi he wasn't penalized for anything he did at Laguna 08, nor was Pecco for the last 2 moves he put on MM when clean overtakes were made.
That Rossi seems to be advocating for contact upon defense of a clean overtake, it's obvious he hasn't let go of any of the bad blood he created almost 9 years ago by my count. But he also seems to have forgotten that running his mouth to the media is what I feel helped contribute to MM going on that title-winning rampage thru 2019. I always felt in the sport I competed in for years that I didn't need to give my opponents any additional reason to beat me by running my mouth whether to others or them directly.
If MickD has really left, that's disappointing. Always enjoyed his posts, but frankly I also don't see how it's possible to discuss grand prix motorcycle racing without discussing Rossi because so much stems out of him for better or worse.
The LS 08 horse has been flogged after its demise to a similar degree to that other horse and is even more historically distant, but was pretty much the start of Stoner being pilloried to a significant degree, it had just been the bike that rode itself and had an unfair advantage up until then, not that I blamed Valentino for the behaviour of some of his fans at the time.
Rossi’s race was largely tactically brilliant and while it was true the Stoner/GP 08 combination had a 1 second or more per lap advantage over even Valentino Rossi riding a 2008 Yamaha, Valentino’s feat was perhaps less impressive than his partisans thought at the time given I doubt VR would have gotten within a second and a half of Stoner’s lap time riding the Ducati himself.
Stoner for once made a cogent reflection, and opined that VR had an advantage, both that he would do things he wouldn’t do and that he could get away with doing them, and also that he chose his dancing partners carefully. David Emmett wrote in a piece at a particular point in time that both Rossi and MM had over their careers been allowed more latitude than other riders, with which Joan Mir would doubtless agree in regard to MM. As I posted recently, box office considerations outweigh any notions of sporting fairness etc for Dorna imo.
I agree with your other point, MM is a don’t get mad get even guy, and further motivating him if he is on even halfway competitive equipment is probably not the best strategy.
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Perhaps Pecco fears having Marc as a teammate more than he does with Jorge? After all, Jorge on an up-to-date spec Ducati is a known quantity and Pecco probably feels he can best him over a season if both wear red. Marc might be another story...
I don't think Pecco would simply throw a championship to keep Marc away from the factory Duc but it's clear Marc gets his wires crossed in the heat of the moment in a way Jorge doesn't.
MotoGP is as much about money and contracts as results on the track, perhaps even more, riders come and go and are used to feed the beast, it is a business ultimately !
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I completely agree. I cannot find it now, but I remember distinctly seeing at the time during the immediate aftermath of the Sepang 2015 collision that the reason by race direction for allocating a penalty AFTER the race, rather than during was "We have to consider the position in the championship of the rider involved" or words to that effect.
Nowhere, in any sporting regulations, have I ever read that penalties are awarded on a sliding scale based on the competitiveness of the person involved. It was simply commercial, in that they wanted to championship to go to the wire.
As for Marc, I think he certainly got more leniency in his early days as he was being groomed as the next superstar, though I think he's been handed his fair share of punishments in latter years.
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