Bahaha.
Annyywayysss back on topic.
Marquez saying everyone is a threat next year, which comes as no surprise as if the tyres change who knows what could happen.
As it stands though I only see MM and the two Ducati's as the bike and riders with the tyre/bike combo bang on.
Unless every race is in 30 degree heat Dani won't be able to contend week in week out, Zarco will be on a 2017 Yamaha which, sorry, but if VR and MV can't get it to work then I can't see him doing any better. That and a satelite bike contending for a championship won't happen as they don't have the resources to battle with the big boys.
Main wildcard is whether Yamaha can deliver a bike good enough for every track and every condition. If they can't then its a 3 horse race IMO.
Buttt I'm generally wrong so the only constant I see is MM being in the running. All bets are off from there.
Speaking of bets are we going to do the $100 challenge again? I might be able to spare another hundy to turn into more money .
Mat Oxley - The Yamaha MotoGP bike you never knew existed
Submitted by Mat Oxley on Wed, 2017-12-13 10:53
MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine (link is external), where he is MotoGP correspondent. We are featuring sections from Oxley's blogs, which are posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website.
The Yamaha MotoGP bike you never knew existed
Almost two decades ago Yamaha built a single-crank new YZR500 to beat Honda and Valentino Rossi to the final 500cc title. The bike remained a secret, until now…
Yamaha has won plenty of MotoGP titles since the four-strokes arrived 16 years ago, but the factory had a miserable time in the final years of the 500cc World Championship. Yamaha was defeated nine years in a row, mostly by Honda, which is why its engineers built an all-new bike for the final 2001 season of 500s, when Honda and Valentino Rossi would be their greatest rivals.
This bike was tested in Europe in the summer of 2000 by Marlboro Yamaha riders Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa, less than 18 months before the final 500 GP, but never raced. And somehow, Yamaha managed to keep the project secret. Until now.
Yamaha engineers were so desperate to win again that they cribbed the bike’s most vital performance feature from Honda’s NSR500, winner of seven of the last nine 500 championships.
The battle for supremacy between Yamaha and Honda V4s had been the big deal in the premier class since the mid-1980s. The two machines were similar, but for one crucial difference: the NSR500 used a single crankshaft, while Yamaha’s YZ500 used two contra-rotating cranks.
During the first decade of this technology duel, Yamaha’s twin-crank engine seemed the better solution. The two cranks rotated in opposite directions, cancelling out torque reaction and crankshaft inertia for friendlier handling and power delivery. So much so, that Honda built a twin-crank engine in the late 1980s but never raced it because HRC hated copying rivals. After all, a twin-crank NSR would’ve been like Yamaha building a V4 MotoGP bike for 2018, or Ducati building an inline-four.
By the late 1990s, it was Yamaha doing the copying. Biaggi and Checa, who had both joined from Honda in 1999, became convinced they needed a single-crank YZR500 if they were to win the historic final 500cc crown.
Read the rest of Mat Oxley's blog on the Motor Sport Magazine website (link is external).
You'd never go hungry with Nigella Gaz.
If it weren't for flashbacks...I'd have no memory at all..
Ther shit that teams will try eh!
I recall Team Roberts with the KR3 did a set up where they were able to within one practice session convert the gear primary drive to chain, so they could run the crank forward and backwards to test a theory on crank rotation on the same bike in the same conditions and the same rider....
Also Suzuki tried big bang in the 80's with the square 4 RG500. But I think they only ever ran it on the dyno, saw no real difference so abandoned it....lol!
Not actually as super secret as Oxley makes out, Mike Webb talked about it a couple of years ago when doing a talk at the Hamilton Motorcycle Club. He and Mike Sinclair were the Marlboro Yamaha crew chiefs at the time and the bike was a creation of their ideas. Apparently it was a lot more radical than just being single crank.
2019 could be a shocking season......
Moto-e
Drippy Triples, too.
Not sure those e-bikes will electrify the crowd, though.. heh.
Manopausal.
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