Stoner: Red Bull Ring run-off areas "dangerous"

Gaz said:

Same JPS and if true, it is somewhat of a prick of a move by Petrucci to make the comment given it should be up to CS and Ducati to make announcements

But, I did find “I saw him riding at Sepang, he was riding fast and wasn’t pushing. He quick over the flying lap, we need to see over a race distance,” to be of interest, particularly the highlighted section given the times posted.

Click to expand...

I don't know why Petrucci would even make the comment as it was so ill-advised from a PR standpoint. Once people get wind of it, the press is going to be bugging the .... out of him, and if he seriously was considering running at Austria, he won't now because my guess is they would announce the wild card entry as late as possible. I bet you Petrucci gets ripped a new one by Ducati for opening his mouth like that.

That said, it does offer some insight into why Stoner would rather do tests. It allows him to just ride the bike without all of the stupid .... as mentioned. I can actually sympathize with him on that to some degree because I can guess at how demoralizing it must be to just want to race and nothing more, yet you are a slave to the endless ........ surrounding GP.

He's improved since the Sepang test. J4rn0 said he was around the unofficial lap record at Misano a couple of weeks ago. My guess is he is much closer to full riding condition now than he was 6 months ago. My prediction for Austria's test is you will see him at the top of the time sheets.

JPSLotus said:

He's improved since the Sepang test. J4rn0 said he was around the unofficial lap record at Misano a couple of weeks ago. My guess is he is much closer to full riding condition now than he was 6 months ago. My prediction for Austria's test is you will see him at the top of the time sheets.

Click to expand...

Agreed

6 months back he was still recovering somewhat from Suzuka and since then he has been doing a large amount of offroad MX and Enduro type riding, including with Oz's man of the moment in offroad terms Toby Price (for some reason, I would not be surprised to see him try the Finke classic in years ahead).

I suspect that his fitness is as close as possible without riding as at the last tests it was said that he did runs of 10 - 12 laps in a hit which would require fitness given the unofficial reporting of times

Richy56 said:

I don't see what pleasure stoner gets out of track days. Once you've raced, track days are .....

Click to expand...

But surely its a test day. And test days are even better than race days, they are like practise days ... sometimes. Heres the track go out and ride as fast as you can ..... no pressure ....... thats pretty good.

Track days are just full of wannabe yobs arent they?

JPSLotus said:

I have to agree with him on this. The tarmac runoff areas are .... for bikes, and have nothing to do with safety. They were dressed up as a safety exercise, but it was always about letting guys rejoin the circuit without finding their cars beached and having their day ended.

Click to expand...

I just watched a half dozen on boards, and the track is much more dangerous than Laguna Seca, which Rossi never considered safe. He just helped make it safer with Yamaha money.

Richy56 said:

The race track will never be completely safe. Agree the Tarmac run off areas aren't good for bikes other than that if riders run on at high speed, they are more likely to stay up right on Tarmac than gravel, so there is a case for it.......
Gravel also makes cars and bikes flip out of control more instead of sliding like on Tarmac. .........

Click to expand...

Richy56 said:

im aware cars are different, my point being that in some scenarios Tarmac run off has some advantages, in others it does not.

There is no easy answer, and it's not Black and white IMO. If I had the choice of having a massive run off area of Tarmac, or a small one with gravel and a wall, I would take Tarmac. It depends on many factors as most circuits are space restricted.

Click to expand...

I don't think you have seen much on track crashing. Tarmac sucks for bikes in a serious mistake. Just watch how far the riders slide down the hill this weekend at Germany. It is very, very rare for a bike or car to flip all the way to the FENCE, which keeps it from the fans. The tarmac does nothing to protect fans. That's a red bull (herring) argument.

We have Sears Point here in California, where there is little/no run-off, and the place is dangerous as hell. The MotoGP gravel at Laguna has saved my ass a couple of times. While it is nice to be able to ride out of a mistake, the trade-off between keeping a racer going from a minor mistake and a racer getting killed/maimed because of lack of gravel, is not a good trade off. I am surprised this is not obvious after the recent death in MotoGP.

BarryMachine said:

But surely its a test day. And test days are even better than race days, they are like practise days ... sometimes. Heres the track go out and ride as fast as you can ..... no pressure ....... thats pretty good.

Track days are just full of wannabe yobs arent they?

Click to expand...

Depends which track day you go on. Yeah some are full of idiots who don't know how to ride. If you go on a club track day I.e a test day, like stoner is doing, they are pretty dull if you have had the thrill of racing. But if he wants no pressure, that fair enough

Iamapony said:

I just watched a half dozen on boards, and the track is much more dangerous than Laguna Seca, which Rossi never considered safe. He just helped make it safer with Yamaha money.


I don't think you have seen much on track crashing. Tarmac sucks for bikes in a serious mistake. Just watch how far the riders slide down the hill this weekend at Germany. It is very, very rare for a bike or car to flip all the way to the FENCE, which keeps it from the fans. The tarmac does nothing to protect fans. That's a red bull (herring) argument.

We have Sears Point here in California, where there is little/no run-off, and the place is dangerous as hell. The MotoGP gravel at Laguna has saved my ass a couple of times. While it is nice to be able to ride out of a mistake, the trade-off between keeping a racer going from a minor mistake and a racer getting killed/maimed because of lack of gravel, is not a good trade off. I am surprised this is not obvious after the recent death in MotoGP.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree entirely, I'm just saying there are some corners where I think Tarmac has advantages for bikes.

When a Rider gets seriously hurt because of a bike flipping in gravel, they will want more Tarmac. I've seen it happen

Richy56 said:

I don't disagree entirely, I'm just saying there are some corners where I think Tarmac has advantages for bikes.

When a Rider gets seriously hurt because of a bike flipping in gravel, they will want more Tarmac. I've seen it happen

Click to expand...

I tend to agree in some ways as to the relative merits of tarmac in some situations as opposed to gravel, or a mic of both, but then I also agree with the likes of Stoner who in the past has stated that tarmac areas provide no deterrent to a rider taking the corner to slow as there is no punishment for entering the corner to fast.

Certainly for me, there should be no place for tarmac all the way to a wall in a corner but then, no doubt there will be situations where it may be a safer option than gravel which makes a riders fall from a slide (tarmac) into an end-over-end.

Opinion is that it will never be 100% and as such with the sharing of circuits between cars and bikes, as well as in some cases trucks (more a club level issue) it becomes one of risk management and a need to find additional technology solutions that suit the user of the track. We must recall that it is not that long ago that air fences were unheard of but (in Australia at least) became mandatory for tracks hosting bike racing and so on, what we need is these enhancements to be sped up as best possible.

BarryMachine said:

Track days are just full of wannabe yobs arent they?

Click to expand...

Very often yes - I agree, which on a smaller circuit such as Mallory Park near me can present a real issue trying to avoid them. It infuriates me.

I like to find some space and progressively build up speed. The main issue is road riders that for some reason think that they are racers on very fast one litre sports bikes, but have no clue about positioning and cornering. I often get the latest missiles rocket past on the straight then park it in the corner entry because they've no idea how to carry that speed through a turn. A friend of mine used to routinely castrate these crotch rockets for fun around Mallory on his RS250.

If there are no professionals or club racers testing, late in the year when it's not busy, I can just about hold my own in the fast group around Donington, which I know well, but always used to book intermediate elsewhere. Now, I make a point of going in the novice group everywhere - Absolutely zero pretence, and if I go out first I get some space and my own tracktime for a portion of the session. What I have observed is that there are often a handful of better riders in novice than intermediate that are either learning the circuit, concentrating on improving their laptimes or simply working on improving technique.