WSBK Monza 2012

A crazy day. The crowd looked like it was going to riot. Nice race by Sykes. Sick of rain this year. Next race at Donnington. Hey... it doesn't rain much in England - does it?

cliché guevara said:

+1



thanks for the info rocket ,didn't find anything on the web right away!



i feel so bad for hopkins,theres hardly a guy in the world of motorcycle racing that i'd be more happy for if he scored a win ,let alone a championship.

the guy is hugely talented (put him on a yam/honda and hes batteling for a podium in gps, put him on a factory duc/aprilia and he wins wsbk ), insanely dedicated to riding and just sadly plagued by bad ,bad luck

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+1 I feel the same Man.

Truely if it wern't for bad luck Hopper would have none.

Anyone who has met me may sacrifice me for this one!!!

Suzuki is no good for Hopper!

FFS John wake up and smell the coffee!!!

Breath! Ahh!

Jumkie said:

What about AMA you communist heathen.





Its one of those rare weekends where divorce is actually on the table.

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I know all about that ! I been running the divorce gauntlet since laguna last year ! Oulton park all day yesterday. Come home, watch all the GP, wsbk and BSB coverage in tv. Back to Oulton today, then Donington next weekend !



You got a spare room I can move into Jum ?

Why can't Pirrelli provide good tires so that they can race...I remember they were racing when the rain was worst than this..

V5Stroker said:

Why can't Pirrelli provide good tires so that they can race...I remember they were racing when the rain was worst than this..

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i'm also a bit frustrated with pirelli tyres in both wsbk and f1 , but i can understand that when the track is dry enough to let those 230hp bikes hit more than 300kph 3 times per lap it will tear any tyre apart sooner or later.

i love monza but to be honest, that circuit should not host wsbks races anyway,let alone in the wet. so i'm glad they called the race off and shortened the second one, i don't want to see another rider hurt

I could barely get myself to post here. Ive followed Johns career as much as i have Nickys. I know the dude is talented but just hasnt been able to show it. Last year i felt almost vindicated, then it wasnt a crash that kept him from winning a prestigious title, it was a ....... mechanical. Even after his GP Suzuki days, he took on a Kawasaki that promised change. They lied. Again he found himself over riding a bike that almost killed him at Assen (watch the video, he came within inches of sure death). After BSB and the couple of wildcards, i thought, well Cresent Suzuki look serious for Wsbk. They lied. Their effort is full of ..... Seriously, my advice to Hopper would be to hang up the boots. I 'd like to tell him, dude, can u please quit already with Suzuki, it gonna kill u. Im over it, just wish the dude can find something else that will fulfill him. Dumb bastard only thinks of getting back on a bike after his many hospital stays.



Monza is a death trap. They should rename the track Armconza. Some described it as a series of straights connected by a few chicanes. Sure its a pretty place. So are cemeteries. The riders didnt want to start race two, and who could blame them. The most unnerving thing for me was to watch the rider hands go up before the start. I love the riding as much as anybody but it these guy's life and limb on the line. The audience was understandable upset. But last week i was shocked to see so many young riders in Moto3 crash violently in poor conditions while race direction stood silently. As far as tires, come on, wtf.



Ok, rant over.



As far as race. Congrats to Sykes. Great performance. Untouchable. But one thing completely bothered me. He didnt have the presence of mind to dedicate the win to his injured teammate Joan Lascorz. I was thinking the entire time, i will hear him mention this at the winners interview. But nothing.



Haslam. The only bright ray of sunshine for my entire race weekend. .... GP, .... AMA, so Haslams podium was a bit of consolation.



Sux for Ginters.



The race itself was good. Lots of brave dicing. Then God ended the misery by pissing on the track.

This Monza track is an old track not suitable for Superbike racing..

Jumkie, V5Stroke:



They have been racing SBK for 25 years at Monza, and the racing has generally been great. There are many fast tracks around the world, and Monza isn't particularly more dangerous than others. What exactly does it make a death trap, Jumkie? The last serious injury there has been Max Neukirchner who had his femur broken when another rider's bike T-boned him in the first chicane, right at the start. Can happen at any track, in particular when it's narrow and a slow corner follows a fast straight. So what's the alternative? Racing only at ......' Tilkedroms? Well, besides that Sic died on such a track, one of their key characteristics is that their are wide, yes, and another one is long straights leading towards slow corners - designed to allow F1 cars to overtake. Plus lots of tarmac run off and astroturf. Great. But Monza sucks, oh yeah..



Cliché Guevara:



Bridgestone can build wet tires that can last on 240+hp bikes on 320+kph straights, so could Michelin. Pirelli simply brought rubber that was miles too soft. And for sure, they are able to build hard compound rain tires. They simply failed to bring them to Monza, and screwed up big time.





The race in general was a farce. The whole situation was ridiculous. Pirelli should have brought decent tires, and then they should have raced. The race two thing was a joke. They got two warm up laps, and finally, when everybody was on the grid and ready to start, those in mid-field decided that they didn't want to race. They should have made their intentions clearer after the first warm up lap, or even earlier.



And the damage this whole .... has done to the series is enormous: Made huge idiots of themselves at one of the most classic and popular races, in front of their home crowd (Pirelli), and now Effenbert is damn close to pulling the plug. It's just the biggest private team, fielding 3-4 riders, sponsored by a non-motorcycle-related brand.. ...., ...., .....



As for damage and .... as ...... idiot: Hopper is simply retarded, and I don't even feel sorry for him anymore. He's always been a faller, and right, in some instances it wasn't even his fault. But in dozen others it was. He broke his hand at the PI test by falling off on the FOURTH LAP! Since then I just wrote him off. It's ridiculous to blame Suzuki for his plain stupidity. They can be blamed for signing an idiot like him, but that's all.

The spectators have paid to enjoy the race. Unless there are other reasons : terrorist attack,nuclear radiation from disfunctional nuclear plant, death of a rider, earthquake, fire, hurricane,blabla, I think the race should proceeed - rain or shine. I think it's a joke for Monza race last weekend to stop mid way during the race 2 and the cancellation of race 1.



I love Monza track and all the race tracks around the world, but If it's raining , do racing at reduced speed.

good post sewarion, things i disagree with though :

have a look at pariculary the ascari chicane and think how fast those riders are and how close to the guard rails.i'm very worried something will happen there sooner than later, just like the last chicane in imola . i'm aware that bridgestone/michelin would probably have done a better job, hence my frustraion with pirelli everything they produce goes off very quick, no wonder these extreme conditions were too much for them



effenbert pulling out?that would suck,where did you hear that?





and concerning hopkins, i don't know if he really falls that much , most of the big crashes that injured him in the past that i can remember have not been solely rider error.

it was very stupid of him ,or anyone else, to think that crescent would do better than battas team. i guess he will always be on inferior machinery if he does not learn to decline bad offers

Effenbert pulling out: http://www.crash.net..._effenbert.html

And related to this: http://www.crash.net...slams_wsbk.html



What scares me a bit at Ascari is the exit, because there is enough run off to hold you back when you crash mid-corner, but when you fall off when applying the throttle you might hit the barrier quite fast as it narrows towards the track like a bottleneck. I think Morais in WSS had a nasty looking (albeit harmless) crash. Look here, (at 29:00): [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSkXSxFQ-n4[/media]



So yeah, it's surely not the safest place in the world, Monza. But it's not a death trap, either. It's in the same range as many other WSBK tracks, and miles ahead of Imola. I just think that the track wasn't the problem last weekend.



As for Hopkins: It's not so much about having crashes that are not your fault - it's about avoiding them. Just take a look at the current MotoGP field and show me one rider (ok, we might leave RdP out of this ) who just had half as many crashes as Hopper had. You won't find one. It's the same even with WSBK. You just can't afford to fall off that often. You simply can't. But hopper does, always has done, and I can't see him getting it under control.



The problem with Crescent, as with Suzuki MotoGP, can be reduced to one name: Paul Denning. I don't consider him competent enough by any means to lead a racing effort on a world championship stage. It's somewhat ironical that he ended up with Hopper again - two losers losing out together once again.

agreed ,last weekends race was of course cancelled because of tyres.



i was talking about that exit of ascari,something needs to be changed there.i don't want to see a rider highsiding himself on corner exit straight into the guard rail there

you have a point with hopper,but then again if he didnt ride over the limit so often he maybe would not be even relevant today so i can't really blame him given the crappy bikes he spent his entire international career on!



don't know too much about denning but given the fact that rizla was a major sponsor (without paying them anything worth mentioning) i tend to agree

Yeah, I was referring to the exit of Ascari too. When you look at the Morais crash you see that the barrier itself isn't the problem. It's well done with airfence. There is simply not enough runoff to make sure that rider and bike get seperated while rolling.

Sounds like either a typical skewed crash.net article OR a little Liberty/Effenbert posturing. If Effenbert pull out over Monza then they shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Well, I know that crash isn't the best of sources. But in both cases they quote actual press releases from Effenbert/Liberty. I agree with the posturing thing, though. I think that Effenbert want to feel recognized - and in my opinion they should be. They are fielding a number of bikes, are competitive, and invest quite a lot of money into the sport. So Infront should at least (privately) apologize.

sewarion said:

So yeah, it's surely not the safest place in the world, Monza. But it's not a death trap, either. It's in the same range as many other WSBK tracks, and miles ahead of Imola. I just think that the track wasn't the problem last weekend.



As for Hopkins: It's not so much about having crashes that are not your fault - it's about avoiding them. Just take a look at the current MotoGP field and show me one rider (ok, we might leave RdP out of this

) who just had half as many crashes as Hopper had. You won't find one. It's the same even with WSBK. You just can't afford to fall off that often. You simply can't. But hopper does, always has done, and I can't see him getting it under control.



The problem with Crescent, as with Suzuki MotoGP, can be reduced to one name: Paul Denning. I don't consider him competent enough by any means to lead a racing effort on a world championship stage. It's somewhat ironical that he ended up with Hopper again - two losers losing out together once again.

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Sewarion, its a death trap because under the conditions that you wanted them to race, somebody could have got killed. The commentators mention the lack of run off on the track, and how it would be especially a hazard under such condition. I must have not been the only one thinking the same things, as many of the riders, in dramatic fashion, refused to start the race. Not sure I'd take your opinion over these riders in this regard. How much more dramatic would you have wanted the race delays to continue for you to be convinced that race conditions coupled with the track features were hazardous enough that men, who in the best conditions put their lives on the line at every corner, refused to start? When a track becomes so hazardous that many of the riders refuse to start, what does that tell you about the track? You're simply wrong on this one.



About Hopkins, we can blame him for being a fool who overrides a subpar package in order to stay with the front runners, which unfortunately has caused him to go down too much and get hurt. However, the most serious accidents he has been in have been either mechanical malfunction or other riders running him over.



I agree with you regarding Paul Denning, but calling Hopkins a loser for trying to make an inferior machine look better than it is knowing that ignorant spectators will take his finishing position to be his doing rather than the ...... bike he's riding, is a bit much. Call him a fool for trying, but calling him a loser shows you are overreacting (giving you the benefit of the doubt here).

Jumkie, would you please elaborate on where exactly there is a lack of runoff? Cliché and I talked were discussing the exit at Ascari (the third, and fastest, chicane). But 'commentators mention' seems a bit vague. As I stated above, the Ascari situation needs to be addressed, but that's a different matter than deeming the whole track a death trap as a general statement.



Race one has been cancelled because of tire safety, not track safety. And the bizarre race two thing was triggered by one mid-pack rider/qualifier, and those behind got on the train. Those ahead, which means the complete first row, didn't do a thing - They did not see anyone who they thought they must follow and saw no reasons for acting on their own behalf. The reason why the riders refused to start was, again, fear of rain. If it had started to rain, they had been approaching the wet on slicks like in race one, the result of which we saw some hours earlier. So I can understand their concerns, but it made everything worse: The race was still started, albeit even later. It was a dry race which was abandoned mid-way. Had they started earlier, they could have finished easily in the dry.



So, of course, it's always easier to judge afterwards. But what could we see? Riders that after two sighting laps suddenly realized that after three days of practice, one canned race, and two warm up laps suddenly realized that this track might not be safe enough to race on? Riders that delayed the start because they feared that rain might come? Riders that still started the race later, when the arrival of the anticipated rain would be much closer? It was all just bizarre, and it all turned into a farce.



Considering all that above, I think it is truly appropriate to lead a discussion about whether Monza is a safe place to ride. But I think that this discussion should be led seperately from discussing the absolutely ridiculous situation as far as Pirelli as a tire supplier is concerned. And I still believe that it was the latter situation that led to the common insecurity among the riders that we could witness after the abandoned (first) start of race two.





Ok, I retract the 'loser'. But while you call him a fool, I would rather call him an idiot. So alright, he always has been on equipment that wasn't as good as that of others. It's easy to name a few dozen other riders who were/are in teh same situation without regularly binning it. So he's got to take the blame on that, at least a good portion of it. And it's one thing if you do it when you are young or a rookie. Hopper simply never matured it seems. And that's the difference. And your point of taking a piece of .... to the limit and above and, as a result, to crash, might give the whole thing a somewhat heroic touch. But this is surely not applicable when you look at the PI testing crash. On a new bike, while testing, you don't even think about the limit on lap 4, dammit! The fact that he is blessed with a truckload of bad luck probably explains a lot of his injuries, but he simply fell off too many times as one could find any reasonable explanation for his many crashes.

effenbert are taking this a bit far, no hospitality for donington. let me rephrase that, the big beer sponsor decides to not show up at the english round?

cliché guevara said:

effenbert are taking this a bit far, no hospitality for donington. let me rephrase that, the big beer sponsor decides to not show up at the english round?

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Did you read the article above or do you have new sources? I'm keen to learn how this thing unfolds..



I think it's legitimate for them to bark a bit and to voice their discomfort with the Monza situation. Like a wake up call to the organizers. But not to show up at Donington would be just harming themselves, and as a result Liberty, and as a result of it the diversity in the WSBK paddock.

motomatters , in kropo we trust