MotoGP 2013

[Dave-]

Jeez, are tripping?
They didn't ask for a test.

As for gross negligence, what would you call the fact that they turned up to PI with no suitable tyres?

Bridgestone begged for the opportunity to go to Phillip Island and test.

[Oscar]

Bridgestone begged for the opportunity to go to Phillip Island and test.

When?


>>>

[Dave-]

When?


>>>

I dunno the exact date or time but dorna, honda, yamaha, ducati, and their sub teams each said they couldn't due to time or monetary requirements.

Dorna also predefined the test calendar making fitting another test in impossible as development schedules were organised months in advance.

They couldn't cancel a test to make way as arrangements had already been made with staff, facilities, teams, transport etc contracts etc etc

[onearmedbandit]

Bridgestone begged for the opportunity to go to Phillip Island and test.

Obviously their phones couldn't dial out to the company that laid the track then...

[Dave-]

Obviously their phones couldn't dial out to the company that laid the track then...

Yeah apparently they spoke with the supplier and manufacturer instead. To be honest I'd do the same, have you seen the state of Christchurch roads? what about all the new bumps at Ruapuna on the new seal? Do you really think the guy who can stuff that up knows what PAFV is?

They ran computer simulations based on last years data, the data came back at α = 0.05 that their hardest tyres should work at PI. Even they knew this might not be the case, but without empirical data to back it up they would effectively be taking shots in the dark. With a limited production capacity they couldn't build a tyre for every eventuality, so they stuck with what the data said and took the hardest.

You know what they say about mathematical models though....looks like they were right haha

[BMWST?]

Tyre Suppliers
Do you not watch Moto2?
Neither tyre supplier tested.

I don't recall MM complaining about his DSQ for breaking rules that he and his team agreed to in writing.
The poor decisions were made by HRC.

As for the rest - you have my wife's grasp of hindsight.
It's easy to be clever after the fact.

it wasnt HRC ,it was MM and some of his team.Gabarini didnt know

[Bender]

Tyre Suppliers
Do you not watch Moto2?
Neither tyre supplier tested.
And that excuses poor performance by both suppliers? This debacle was brought about by their mistake in not taking the new surface into consideration.

I don't recall MM complaining about his DSQ for breaking rules that he and his team agreed to in writing.
The poor decisions were made by HRC.

Nakamoto: "This is bullshit." Pretty strong words for the boss of HRC. (I'd put that in the complaints department.) We don't know what other complaints were made because the only media we get out of MotoGP is tame and controlled by Dorna. If you review the on-line footage of the practise session there are shots of HRC people arguing strongly with MGP officials.


As for the rest - you have my wife's grasp of hindsight.
It's easy to be clever after the fact.

When making personal attacks it's probably wise to leave your wife out of it. My views were formed at the time ... as the events unfolded on the track, not later. It's hard to form views about these things before they happen.

I thought the whole "two bikes and swap half way through" was bloody mickey mouse when they announced it. Clumsy at best and potentially dangerous. I was gobsmacked when it was announced. When they practised it during the morning's warm up session, there were a couple of near misses - Lorenzo/Espargaro being one of them, Crutchlow/Marquez was another. They are lucky it didn't rain half way through the race, something that is always a possibility at PI. That would have been a clusterthingy.

Bottom line: all this has made for a much closer and exciting end to the season.

[Oscar]

Bottom line: all this has made for a much closer and exciting end to the season.

Two tyre suppliers cocked up, I'm not disputing that - I only brought it up as you and others were concentrating on the MotoGP class. The inference that multiple tyre suppliers in that class would have avoided the problem is negated by the cock up in Moto2.

What I am saying is that it's easy to be wise after the event.
Can you suggest an alternative?

Cancel it??

As for bike changes, these were very common until recently, so i can't see a problem with using it to extend race distance.

[Mental Trousers]

Bridgestone in MotoGP, Dunlop in Moto2 & Moto3, Pirelli in WSBK. All 3 manufacturers have had big problems with the resurfaced Phillip Island.

It's all good saying they should've tested but to do that they have to have front runners in each class doing the testing. You can't stick a test rider on a bike and know for certain the tyre will last because the test riders are, inevitably, slower than the racers. After all, if the factory test riders for Yamaha were as fast as Lorenzo or even Rossi they wouldn't be test riders, they'd be on the grid.

However, because of budgets, class rules, schedules etc none of the tyre manufacturers were able to test at Phillip Island.

As for bike changes I was loving it and was thinking they should've done 2 changes each to go full race distance.

Having said that Phillip Island isn't the circuit to be doing them because pit lane is narrow and pit exit fires the rider straight out onto the fastest corner on the track.

[Oscar]

Bridgestone in MotoGP, Dunlop in Moto2 & Moto3, Pirelli in WSBK. All 3 manufacturers have had big problems with the resurfaced Phillip Island.

It's all good saying they should've tested but to do that they have to have front runners in each class doing the testing. You can't stick a test rider on a bike and know for certain the tyre will last because the test riders are, inevitably, slower than the racers. After all, if the factory test riders for Yamaha were as fast as Lorenzo or even Rossi they wouldn't be test riders, they'd be on the grid.

However, because of budgets, class rules, schedules etc none of the tyre manufacturers were able to test at Phillip Island.

As for bike changes I was loving it and was thinking they should've done 2 changes each to go full race distance.

Having said that Phillip Island isn't the circuit to be doing them because pit lane is narrow and pit exit fires the rider straight out onto the fastest corner on the track.

Dead right.
The pit lane speed limit extended to the end of the lane was the only thing I had a slight problem with.

[Dave-]

Dead right.
The pit lane speed limit extended to the end of the lane was the only thing I had a slight problem with.

conspiracy theory: Pit lane was extended so a bike swap was roughly equal to one lap?

If the pit lane had been shorter, or the speed been higher MM might have come out way ahead of Lorenzo. Sure he would have gotten caught up pretty quick but who knows what might have happened.

[Oscar]

conspiracy theory: Pit lane was extended so a bike swap was roughly equal to one lap?

If the pit lane had been shorter, or the speed been higher MM might have come out way ahead of Lorenzo. Sure he would have gotten caught up pretty quick but who knows what might have happened.

I'm not sure what they were thinking, but it did put a slow bike into the fastest turn on the track.

As for MM coming out ahead, if MM had of been going faster on his pit lane exit, JL would have going faster on his.
Therefore, all other things being equal, they are still in the same place at the same time, i.e. in the middle of turn one, but with MM going faster.

[pritch]

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/ra...n-at-valencia/

[roogazza]

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/ra...n-at-valencia/

Cheers pritch, I read that from Oxley on another site.
Hayden's year, and then the next, Stoner arrived on the Duc.
But hey , then Rossi got the next two ! lol.

[tail_end_charlie]

Prior to 18 October 2013
1.) Dorna fucked up because they should have organized/forced BS and Dunlop to test at a track that is notorious for being hard on tires, especially when it had been resealed and there was ample evidence to show that the track was an even worse tire eater now.

2.) BS/Dunlop fucked up because they should have pushed for a test at PI. Computer simulations and empirical data are all well and good, but its only half the story. There is nothing likes boots on the ground.......err......tires on asphalt.


Race weekend
1.) Hindsight is all well and good, but once the race weekend had started Dorna had their balls caught between a rock and another fucking rock. They had to make some fast decisions on how the weekend would play out with tires that wouldn't physically last race distance. (This wasn't a case of a significant drop off in performance, this was a case of tires destroying themselves and flinging riders helter skelter. If you want to see what that looks like, look up the tire failures at the Daytona 200. Very nasty stuff.)

------ a.) Opt 1: Divide the race into two 10 lap sprint races and award half points for each race. Positives include it being a bit safer, added spectacle. Negatives are that it wouldn't fit in the allocated TV time period because of the time required to re-grid et'al.

------ b.) Opt 2: Run a 19 lap race with a pit stop in the middle (which everyone is more or less prepared for because of the flag to flag racing). Positives include adding a bit of spectacle and will easily fit into the TV time period. Negatives include a little more risk in pit lane and merging off of and onto the track. I personally (and I think a lot of people would agree) that the way they extended the pit lane speed limit into the pit entry and pit exit was a bad decision. Also, requiring the riders to pit in only a two lap window was what was a compremise born of trying to make the race as long as possible while knowing that the Bridgestone tires could only last 10 laps. Marc's tire after 11 laps (and watching him on lap 11 going all over the track) should have been more than ample proof of that fact. If you think about a flag to flag race I would suspect that the majority of riders would come into the pits within 2-3 laps of each other, so this probably wasn't that different.

------ c.) Opt 3: Let the riders race one 10 lap race and that's it. This obviously would have gotten a lot of people upset (those spectators in attendance and the ones who pay to watch it on TV and online) as well as the TV broadcasters, sponsors, ect ect. Since these are the people who put the money in that makes the racing happen, you can't piss them off without consequences.

------ d.) Opt 4: Cancel the race on safety grounds, more or less hand the title to MM, and piss off anyone and everyone who has anything to do with MotoGP.

2.) Now if you want to argue that TV schedules be damned, you obviously don't understand how much Dorna depends on that money to make this whole 'circus' go around the world every year and present what we see. Unfortunately sticking to TV schedules is what we have to deal with in this modern era where you can flick on the TV and see pretty much any sport at any time anywhere in the world.

3.) Dani Pedrosa's penalty seemed to be kinda stupid in hindsight and probably should have been a ride through.............but we're already worried about pit lane crowding, so putting anyone else through pit lane seems kinda stupid. Telling him to drop a place was bout the best option at the time.

4.) If everyone was made aware of the black flag penalty for an unsafe action (racing on tires past their used by laps, which Marc obviously did) then I don't have any problem with it. Race Direction said that no rider was to make more than 10 laps on any slick or wet tire. Can't state things much more clearly than that. Of note on this, I also have a bit of a suspicion that RD black flagged Marc to make sure that he didn't finish the race, and therefore the penalty couldn't be challenged. If he had finished the race and then they had excluded him from the results, there would be the option of challenging that decision and having armchair racers weighing in after the fact and possibly swaying opinion. Since Marc didn't finish the race, that couldn't happen and probably prevented a lot of arguing after (even more than what has taken place).



Anyways, that's my thought on things............not that it really matters (see below).