- Joined
- Feb 26, 2007
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- 10,518
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http://www.motomatters.com/
Away from the racetrack, the teams and Infront have been talking about rule changes for next year, and the switch to a single bike is drawing ever closer. The single-bike format forces WSBK to drop the flag-to-flag racing concept adopted first by MotoGP in an attempt to ensure the races fit inside their scheduled TV windows, but the estimated savings of 400,000 euros for a two-bike team is not to be sniffed at. To ensure that riders can be back on track quickly after an off, teams will be allowed to have a spare rolling chassis at the back of the garage needing only an engine fitted for it to be ready to roll. Exactly how what is in effect a second bike without the motor is so much cheaper than a fully-ready second bike is not immediately obvious, but the teams have been convinced by the arguments so who are we to argue?
But the real bone of contention remains the handicapping system for the V-twins and the thorny question of air restrictors. The battle is basically between the two Italian factories, Aprilia pushing for the tightest possible restrictions on the Ducati - especially in light of their new oversquare Superbike expected to be presented at this year's EICMA in November - while Ducati are wary of finding themselves fighting the fours with one hand tied behind their backs, though a better metaphor might be with tight-weave facemask over their mouths.
The problem remains a fascinating one, and the solution previously employed - taking the results of the two best twins and the two best four-cylinders and testing the gap between them - had a lot to say in its favor. The situation is ripe for analysis by students of game theory, with so many elements making balancing between the 1200cc twins and the 1000cc fours immensely tricky. The point is to make the engine formula irrelevant, yet looking at this year's championship it would be easy to say that the twins have an advantage. That would not do justice to the situation, however, as Carlos Checa is having an astonishing year, while his opponents collectively stumble. Checa's huge advantage in the championship is as much down to the compendium of errors that Max Biaggi has accrued during 2011 as it is to Checa's flawless riding.
The problem is further confused by the fact that there is only one factory competing with a twin. Ducati could easily game the system, handicapping any second rider to artificially keep the average performance of its new Superbike low, while pouring resources into a single rider with the sole aim of winning the title. With six other manufacturers producing four-cylinder bikes, no single manufacturer can manipulate the results without damaging its own competitiveness with respect to the other fours, and potentially risking a failure of its own bike while allowing the twin - that is, the Ducati - to go completely unhandicapped.
At the core of the problem lies a single question: how do you equalize performance without thwarting the success of outliers, with Carlos Checa being a case in point. Debate could continue for some time on this point, and will make an interesting subject for analysis at a later date. Racing should be as fair as possible, but life and reality tends to have a nasty tendency to intervene.
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When the WSBK tech regs came out a couple of years ago regarding weight and air restriction rules, the first thing that popped into my head was the ability for Ducati to sandbag [game] the system. I suggested in one of our performance indexing debates that by simply doing the math, they could finish where they needed to finish to maintain any advantage they had to keep from getting hit with a weight penalty. The theory was generally dismissed as a conspiratorial thinking. It was so obvious at the time how this system could be manipulated, im surprised it took this long for someone to suggest it may be happening, or at the very least , a probability . The fact that its being talked about tells me that it has been breathed into conversations without a full blown allegation being made, but the suspicion is there.
Away from the racetrack, the teams and Infront have been talking about rule changes for next year, and the switch to a single bike is drawing ever closer. The single-bike format forces WSBK to drop the flag-to-flag racing concept adopted first by MotoGP in an attempt to ensure the races fit inside their scheduled TV windows, but the estimated savings of 400,000 euros for a two-bike team is not to be sniffed at. To ensure that riders can be back on track quickly after an off, teams will be allowed to have a spare rolling chassis at the back of the garage needing only an engine fitted for it to be ready to roll. Exactly how what is in effect a second bike without the motor is so much cheaper than a fully-ready second bike is not immediately obvious, but the teams have been convinced by the arguments so who are we to argue?
But the real bone of contention remains the handicapping system for the V-twins and the thorny question of air restrictors. The battle is basically between the two Italian factories, Aprilia pushing for the tightest possible restrictions on the Ducati - especially in light of their new oversquare Superbike expected to be presented at this year's EICMA in November - while Ducati are wary of finding themselves fighting the fours with one hand tied behind their backs, though a better metaphor might be with tight-weave facemask over their mouths.
The problem remains a fascinating one, and the solution previously employed - taking the results of the two best twins and the two best four-cylinders and testing the gap between them - had a lot to say in its favor. The situation is ripe for analysis by students of game theory, with so many elements making balancing between the 1200cc twins and the 1000cc fours immensely tricky. The point is to make the engine formula irrelevant, yet looking at this year's championship it would be easy to say that the twins have an advantage. That would not do justice to the situation, however, as Carlos Checa is having an astonishing year, while his opponents collectively stumble. Checa's huge advantage in the championship is as much down to the compendium of errors that Max Biaggi has accrued during 2011 as it is to Checa's flawless riding.
The problem is further confused by the fact that there is only one factory competing with a twin. Ducati could easily game the system, handicapping any second rider to artificially keep the average performance of its new Superbike low, while pouring resources into a single rider with the sole aim of winning the title. With six other manufacturers producing four-cylinder bikes, no single manufacturer can manipulate the results without damaging its own competitiveness with respect to the other fours, and potentially risking a failure of its own bike while allowing the twin - that is, the Ducati - to go completely unhandicapped.
At the core of the problem lies a single question: how do you equalize performance without thwarting the success of outliers, with Carlos Checa being a case in point. Debate could continue for some time on this point, and will make an interesting subject for analysis at a later date. Racing should be as fair as possible, but life and reality tends to have a nasty tendency to intervene.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When the WSBK tech regs came out a couple of years ago regarding weight and air restriction rules, the first thing that popped into my head was the ability for Ducati to sandbag [game] the system. I suggested in one of our performance indexing debates that by simply doing the math, they could finish where they needed to finish to maintain any advantage they had to keep from getting hit with a weight penalty. The theory was generally dismissed as a conspiratorial thinking. It was so obvious at the time how this system could be manipulated, im surprised it took this long for someone to suggest it may be happening, or at the very least , a probability . The fact that its being talked about tells me that it has been breathed into conversations without a full blown allegation being made, but the suspicion is there.
