Honda's new Moto-3 customer race bike

[James Deuce]

The 'brands' are the riders not the machines. End of the day, I guess it depends what you enjoy about racing, but for me, having 40+ bikes on a grid where the depth of a teams pockets won't dictate who will be up the pointy end = some of the best racing from the GP paddock over the past 2 years.

It's Supersport racing populated by MotoGP has-beens you mean. The only reason it's gone four-stroke is so that the Tristans and Christians with huge amounts of cash can be competitive. Riding a two-stroke at the limit, even a 125, takes talent of a different order than a National level four-stroke race series. Prototype chassis with sealed customer engines is a cop out to the power of a big purse.

[tigertim20]

GP racing isn't there to improve the road breed, it's a technology showcase for the manufacturers. Superbike and Supersport is there to improve the road breed.

GP racing is not some sort of proddy class but it will turn into that when the claiming rule bikes turn up next year.

There are already plenty of examples of technology filtering through from GP bikes, to road bikes, especially so the litre sportsbikes, but that technology also filters down to other bikes as well. The superbikes get the tech a few years after the GP bikes, and so does the end customer, so how can you say that it has nothing to do with improving the road breed?
Motive power shouldn't be relevant at all and the cc limits were arbitrary but a necessary class divider.

The 4-stroke "revolution" is driven by Honda and to a lesser extent the desire to "appeal" to the environ-mentals. I think the environ-mentals would be horrified to know that a big chunk of the world's produce gets shipped and trucked by clean, incredibly powerful, direct-injection two-stroke engines.

Then add in an organising body that doesn't give one flying fuck for motorcycles and looks over at Superbike to see exciting racing and big fields and wants that, so it changes prototype racing into some pointless pseudo-proddy cul-de-sac in a series of increasingly desperate knee-jerk reactions. Bit like Formula 1 which just looks like British Formula 3 from the early '90s on fast forward.

Organisers don't want innovation, they want money and ratings in that order. Spectacle comes a very distant third when you prioritise those two ahead of competition, but always bear in mind that in prototype racing, cars or bikes, the rule is for boring processional racing as innovative technologies leapfrog the competition and then rules are changed to exclude huge advantages and then the new rules are exploited by some genius and so on. Sometimes you get a confluence of technologies that provide epic racing for a few years at a time. What's happened in present-day racing in the top levels of motorsport is draconian regulation that gives the haves a huge advantage and the have-nots an insurmountable mountain to climb, leaving little scope for dramatic changes of fortune for innovative teams.

seems to me that past of that last paragraph is contradictory. surely more people will watch, which will generate more income, when the racing is closer, and surely the axing of certain technologies that provide advantages assists in making the racing a little closer?
Cerainly some teams will have deep enough pockets that they can still pull an advantage, like the difference between direct factory supported, and sattelite teams, but the effort is there to close the gap up.
Id have thought that a spectacle, money making, and ratings were mutually inclusive terms whn it comes to motorsport, make a better spectacle, more people will watch, rider profiles will be increased = more money.

Am I missing something?

[James Deuce]

Am I missing something?

Yes. They've been proven to mutually exclusive. F1 being the prime example.

What examples are you talking about re. technology given that the technologies you are not doubt thinking of are common to both Superbike and MotoGP and appeared in both classes around the same time? You'll find that the road bikes comparable systems have more in common with the Superbike implementation than the MotoGP implementation.

I personally think that MotoGP is on the verge of being irrelevant, something that reducing grids and TV ratings would tend to back up, as well as the sharp decline in available sponsorship funds dating back prior to the GFC. The Flamminis are doing it right. Dorna are not.

[slowpoke]

Yes. They've been proven to mutually exclusive. F1 being the prime example.

What examples are you talking about re. technology given that the technologies you are not doubt thinking of are common to both Superbike and MotoGP and appeared in both classes around the same time? You'll find that the road bikes comparable systems have more in common with the Superbike implementation than the MotoGP implementation.

I personally think that MotoGP is on the verge of being irrelevant, something that reducing grids and TV ratings would tend to back up, as well as the sharp decline in available sponsorship funds dating back prior to the GFC. The Flamminis are doing it right. Dorna are not.

You need to head over to Europe Jim. Out here in the colonies we may enjoy the erroneous impression of "production" bikes/WSB being in the same ballpark as MotoGP but in Europe MotoGP is absolutely king and WSB is a poor bastard child in comparison. The Flammini's may be doing it right, and Dorna are worried about market share but they are still streets ahead in the quality of brand stakes.

(Come to think of it I'm not sure how bikes with under seat fuel tanks, gear driven cams, fabricated swing arms, data processing/telemetry that NASA would have loved a few years back, magnesium, titanium or unobtainium every thing yada yada qualify as "production" bikes. If you bought a an Aprilia RSV4 and stripped off all the bits that aren't used in a WSB machine I don't think you'd have a hell of a lot left. But that's a different issue......)

Haha, it takes a clever bloke but somehow you've managed to exaggerate and understate at the same time. MotoGP rejects populating Moto2? Er, who would that be? The grand total of 2 last year (Elias and Ant West) and lemme see, 2 again this year (Kallio and West) in a field of what, 35 bikes?. Not much of a population.

Nope, last year the cream was Elias, Simon, Iannone, Luthi, Corsi, Talmasci, pretty much the same guys who shone in their GP250 days. Kinda knocks on the head your idea of "Tristan and Christian with huge amounts of cash" being competitive too eh? As usual the cream rises to the top and the mainland European racing scene provides unrivalled competition to blood/improve young talent. On the other hand it's provided a platform where any engineering team can make a name for themselves if they're good enough, something that could not be said about the previous 2 stroke platform. No manufacturer could step in and hope to compete against the might of Piaggio (Aprilia/Derbi) Honda or KTM, and no rider had a hope in hell unless they had one of the few factory bikes...privateers where doomed before they began. The "power of the big purse" you speak of was the GP250 era not the Moto2 bikes.

Come to think of it even if they could why would any engineering team want to get involved in development of bikes and technology that had no realistic marketable application outside of the Grand Prix scene? Nup, I reckon the engineering on display now is a far greater and more interesting drawcard than the one or two manufacturers who displayed their wares in the past. Kalex, Moriwaki, Suter, Bimota, Harris etc involvement is a huge improvement over the 90% Aprilia's vs the occasional Honda or KTM.....all of which were dead end engineering exercises.

And calling a Moto2 bike a supersport machine? How is a field of similarly powered protypes any worse than a field of 90% identical Aprilia's? Under the old regime it was a race between the half a dozen factory bikes with the also rans battling over the scraps. It was a glorified version of our old 250 proddy racing. All of a sudden we've got a clean sheet of paper for the egg heads and an equal chance for every team if they're clever enough. And riders who used to turn up and ride a bike that had been developed down to a microscopic level now have to come up with some genuine development skills/feedback.

And how does changing from 4 stroke to 2 stroke all of a sudden make the racing any less skillful? There may be slightly different skills involved but there is no lessening of the talent required to come out on top. With development a key requirement now it's probably widened the array of talents the riders must display if they are going to go forward. And the requirement for riders to be built like a racing sardine is no longer quite so paramount.

Arguing that 2 strokes are better than 4 strokes is like arguing apples are better than oranges: pointless, 'cos they are simply different. But, arguing that the pure engineering has gone out of Moto2 in comparison to 250GP is a furphy when the clean sheet development opportunities available to the many teams involved in Moto2 are boundless in comparison to the miniscule incremental improvements contemplated by the comparatively tiny number of engineers in 1 or 2 manufacturers involved in manufacturing 250GP bikes. Personally, I love the fact that any big brained motorcycling Stephen Hawking-type could build a wacky racer to the Moto2 rules and do well, 2 years ago that scenario was simply impossible.

[eelracing]

Priceless Slowpoke,your a funny guy.You don't write press releases for Dorna do you?Because you can sure polish a turd.

Basically the proof is in the pudding,ie your mate Elias currently languishing in the basement section of the MotoGP grid.Thats got to be a case of having your scalpel blunted if ever I saw it.
So please don't talk up moto2 as some techno breakthrough or somesuch pshycobabble, it is what it is...a lukewarmed production engine in an oversized 250gp chassis.Nothing clever about that.Nor a 250cc 4 stroke single with it's balls cut off in a 125gp chassis.
As for comparing apples with oranges I think a better comparison would be donkeys with thoroughbreds.

[RobGassit]

Maybe more chances to get a Kiwi started over there in the sport of chequebooks though?

[wharfy]

Priceless Slowpoke,your a funny guy.You don't write press releases for Dorna do you?Because you can sure polish a turd.

Basically the proof is in the pudding,.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating"


Well I like to watch moto2,

[slowpoke]

Priceless Slowpoke,your a funny guy.You don't write press releases for Dorna do you?Because you can sure polish a turd.

Basically the proof is in the pudding,ie your mate Elias currently languishing in the basement section of the MotoGP grid.Thats got to be a case of having your scalpel blunted if ever I saw it.
So please don't talk up moto2 as some techno breakthrough or somesuch pshycobabble, it is what it is...a lukewarmed production engine in an oversized 250gp chassis.Nothing clever about that.Nor a 250cc 4 stroke single with it's balls cut off in a 125gp chassis.
As for comparing apples with oranges I think a better comparison would be donkeys with thoroughbreds.

Duuuuude, how the fuck can you go from a 1 cylinder wide 2 stroke to a 4 cylinder wide 4 stroke and call it "just an oversized 250GP chassis"? Fuck me, thats worse than calling a GSXR600 an oversided RGV250........chalk and cheese brutha. Best you go and have a read about some of the varying frame/packaging solutions in Moto2 rather than endlessly perving on a field of Aprilia's only separated by a Resene calalogue.

Elias has definitely been a disappointment this year, but I reckon that just shows how much of a team sport bike racing at that level is. I seem to remember he handed Valentino his arse a few years back, (on a privateer bike too) and has 17 GP wins to his credit in all classes. He's no mug scoring several MotoGP podiums as well, and was right in the hunt for a GP250 world championship until the last race of the season a few years back. If he's the munter you seem to think he is what does that say about the more recent GP250 graduates and the benefits/skill gained from riding a GP bike? Now that they have to set up a bike from scratch rather than relying on umpteen years of data with the same machine it's not so easy eh?

Hey, I liked the GP250's too, and would love to ride one, but the lack of manufacturers was a disappointing aspect that was detracting from the spectacle. Fact is they are gone, aren't coming back, and the racing that is just as fast to the naked eye is closer than ever.

So which frame below is most like your "oversized 250GP frame" (alloy beam)? The composite cast alloy/chromoly tube Bimota.......or the alloy oval tube RSV? Good luck seeing a similarity there..............

[RobGassit]

[QUOTE=slowpoke;1130079845]
((Elias has definitely been a disappointment this year, but I reckon that just shows how much of a team sport bike racing at that level is. I seem to remember he handed Valentino his arse a few years back, (on a privateer bike too) and has 17 GP wins to his credit in all classes. He's no mug scoring several MotoGP podiums as well, and was right in the hunt for a GP250 world championship until the last race of the season a few years back. ))


Couldn't agree more with this post. Elias is a master and is awesome to watch, specially mid corner. May need to change his style to get the feel back he obviously hasn't found yet.
I love the 2 strokes too but what can you do? Moto3 will loosen up the factory monopoly of chosen riders.Having said that though, after seeing Criville riding the new 250 in Spain, I was bloody underwhelmed. Sounded like a Hyosung.

[nudemetalz]

Shitty, overly complicated, expensive four-stroke rubbish.

Weren't you doing an NZ-250 four stroke single 250 cafe racer, Jim?

[Brian d marge]

Come to think of it even if they could why would any engineering team want to get involved in development of bikes and technology that had no realistic marketable application outside of the Grand Prix scene?

A.

I can answer this bit, because the market is bigger and SOME parts of motorcycle racing have wider applications. Data management , design so for example , data logging the companies that provide data logging also have contributed to keeping your greenhouse at the right temp
I notice F1 really at the front of "engineering " and working with other disciplines such as airlines and government agencies ....
Also 7 million Italians watched the motogp last week .... thats a lot of exposure ....

Stephen


and that honda ....lets hope the A kit is a goer !!

[Ivan]

The 'brands' are the riders not the machines. End of the day, I guess it depends what you enjoy about racing, but for me, having 40+ bikes on a grid where the depth of a teams pockets won't dictate who will be up the pointy end = some of the best racing from the GP paddock over the past 2 years.

Fully agree I love the fact at one round a rider might be in 1st next round hes down in 31st, and someone new is there,

its fabulous racing ok they might be slower than the 250's but the racing is more entertaining than watching Aspar racing 1 2 3 4 5 like 250s were

[Crasherfromwayback]

its fabulous racing ok they might be slower than the 250's but the racing is more entertaining than watching Aspar racing 1 2 3 4 5 like 250s were

Weird. I found watching Aoyama on his HONDA dicing with Simoncelli and his APRILLIA incredibly exciting. Some of the best racing I've seen in years. Then they canned it.

[Ivan]

Weird. I found watching Aoyama on his HONDA dicing with Simoncelli and his APRILLIA incredibly exciting. Some of the best racing I've seen in years. Then they canned it.

Yes Aoyama was there I should have said that he did bloody well consdering the bike he is riding is realisticly 8 years old!

But I got bored of a large group running away as they had more dollers,

at least Moto2 has closed that up and you can still see some fairly large groups dicing it up, ok the best guys are going to run off into the distance but thats because they are the fastest out there,

[Crasherfromwayback]

Yes Aoyama was there I should have said that he did bloody well consdering the bike he is riding is realisticly 8 years old!

But I got bored of a large group running away as they had more dollers,

at least Moto2 has closed that up and you can still see some fairly large groups dicing it up, ok the best guys are going to run off into the distance but thats because they are the fastest out there,

I know what you're saying, and we all like close racing. It's just that to me, they're simply noisy 600SS bikes, and Im don't go to GP's to see that. I'd go to a World Supers meet.