Ducati Monster Forum

according motogpmatters.com, ducati has exercised the option on nicky hayden's contract and he will remain with the factory team thru 2010. way to go, nicky!

probably has to do with the hayden 848 ?

more to do with his progress on the bike and the fact that nobody else wants to ride it.

Fixed it?

well, rumor has it that two guys that've ridden the thing turned down the opportunity.

the other guys probably read between the lines.

Good luck Hayden.  [thumbsup]

I'd ride it.

+1

Wait! ... I'd crash it.  (http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/yikes.gif)

It would be INTERESTING to see what Rossi could do on it and what Stoner (when he's healthy) could do on a Yamaha.

But congrats and good luck Hayden.

What makes Ducati's GP bike so difficult to ride?

Good damn question! How come everyone with two legs and a heart beat can ride the Hondas and Yammyhammers but only Stoner can ride the "beast" to a podium. If Pedrobot and Rossi hadn't crashed at Indy Hayden would have been off the podium. Glad he was there! I can see why they went after Capirossi with a bag of cash since they think he might still be the chosen one. Good for him for turning them down. And good for the Kentucky Kid for re-signing! [thumbsup] If they let him go the Hayden 848s would be like an Edsel to try and sell. Shouldn't you really do something on a bike before they make a replica of it? Just saying. :P Glad I've hung onto my '82 Hailwood Replica, '83 KZ1000R Lawson Rep and '04 RC51 Hayden Rep. [clap] Still, all things considered, good for Nicky!!

Do you suppose Troy would ride it for one season if Ducati offered him an amount he couldn't refuse ?

If my memory is correct, Troy won a MotoGP race after he captured the '08 WSBK Chamionship and announced his retirement.

He won on the big Duc.

Dolph        :)

Worst case would be cutting Hayden loose and him hooking back up with Honda (who is due for a new bike soon) and Ducati getting its ass kicked by Hayden and his new team.  Talk about drawing spotlight to the Ducati GP bike. 
I really don't get what all of the fuss is about though.  How much harder can it be to ride?  I know that the inline 4 and the twins are very different, but once you get used to the bike, seems like you would just go with it.  (That coming from a guy who has yet to even make it to a track day!)

The Duc is a V-4 not a twin. You sure can see the rear end of the Duc really squirming out of the turns. I've watched Stoner power out of some turns and I've thought to myself how in the hell does he not get spit off? Not big slides or the rear kicking way out just a high speed wiggle like it's hinged. Maybe the same guy who made the '69 H1 Kawi frames now has his kid laying up the carbon fiber swingarms for the Duc team? [laugh]

The H1 had a piece of junk mild steel frame/swingarm. The swingarm was positioned in the frame using a plastic bushing. A good bicycle has a better design. That frame/swingarm was good for an engine making about 40 hp at best. The big Kaw would twist and flex the swingarm/pivot/noodle tube frame anytime the throttle was twisted hard. This was accomplished with all of maybe 70 hp on a well tuned machine.

The Ducati CF framed GP bike isn't flexing, of all the unknowns about that bike's issues, flexing the chassis isn't one of them. Yes, it bucks and jerks and tries to spit riders off that are brave enough to wring it's neck...but the wheels stay in line (with each other) and forward progress is made, not always pretty, but it is violently semi-effective in controlling 220 hp.

I wonder if the CF frame is too rigid, it wasn't that long ago when superbikes started to design some of the rigidity out of frames. I believe Honda even used the term "tuned flex"

Mr. Hayden has made the observation that one of the reasons Casey is able to get so much out of the Ducati is because he (Casey) is so smooth opening the throttle. Apparently this was a subject of discussion withing the team, and most feel that it does have some merit. Suppo stated that with Stoner's throttle control, he could have been a top rider in the 500cc era when the bikes were even more difficult to ride.

It would be interesting to see which bike/rider was at the front if they took away the electronics.

There seems to be alot of experts here, who are in the wrong line of work. That is unless you already work for a MotoGP team.

bayliss won at valencia in 2006, the final race of the 990 cc era.

he test rode the 800 cc desmosedici but has never raced it

You can't be talking about me.  I didn't even know it was a 4 cylinder!

 [laugh] [laugh] [thumbsup]

If only I could get them to hire me.

I recently read Valentino Rossi's autobiography and was struck by an observation he'd made when he was being courted by Yamaha and Ducati at the end of his Honda days. As an Italian he had the same romantic notions of joining Ducati and was really impressed by the team, but felt that Ducati was like Honda in that they put all the emphasis on the technological merits of the machine and less on the rider. He went to Yamaha because they wanted him, the rider. They were willing to build a bike around him with his input.

I'm thinking that Ducati still have some of this mentality and have reams and reams of very good data that support what they believe makes a bike as fast as possible, but something about it makes it more difficult for the rider.  I would guess that the feel of the bike is somewhat odd and Stoner simply rides through it, giving 100% of his trust to the bike, wherein the other riders have that little switch in the back of their heads that says "Oh Shit!!" as the bike is clawing it's way out of a corner.

It's well known and has been well documented by a number of Motorcycle writers that Ducati always put there effort into the bike, and then find a rider who could ride the bike.
And it worked, for one season, Stoner was able to tame the beast in 07 and basically caught the Japanese teams with there pants down.

but the Japanese companies and teams do what they do best, threw lots of time and money at it and worked around it, suddenly Ducati realised we have to tune the bike to the rider, hence we have seen them start to tune/tweak the bike to make it more rider friendly.

Hayden said he always liked the bike to move around under him when he's riding it,but I don't think he was expecting it to buck and kick as much as it did, but he and the team have worked hard to make the Desmosidici a more rider friendly beast, and so far it seems to be working.

Exactly. Nicky says he's going to WOT sooner than Stoner, but he's still not able to get the lap times, so I'd say he's not confident in the front end to get it turned into the corner, so he's losing more speed than Casey on entry, or the Duc needs such fine tuned throttle control that Nicky's needing a little more finesse to get the exit right. It does seem that Ducati are making a LOT of changes to help him out and they seem to be working, so maybe next year, we'll have Casey, Nicky, Jorge, and Velentino all dicing back and forth for the lead like Fiat-Yamaha have been doing this year.

Didn't Nicky and Casey have their background in the Dirt.

Where as Vale and I don't know about Lorenzo but Vale came up through the ranks of GP.

I would think that would make a difference in how they react to the way their bikes handle and how they setup for corners and how they accelerate coming out of a corners.

Casey is a very small person and the Duc is a hand full.

Vale is taller and I'd think could man handle his bike more, especially since the Yammy is a more narrow looking bike.

Nicky looks to be stronger so I don't know why he can't man handle the big Duc better.

In '08, Casey was in the lead or near the lead in many races and ran wide often going into a corner which was the difference between leading or possibly winning a race.

I don't know if he was just carrying too much speed in to the corner and had to brake longer and couldn't turn in or what but it was very obvious he was missing corners and loosing a few seconds which is terminal usually in a race.

I don't think Nicky ever had the confidence to attack due to not knowing what the front end was going to do.

Dolph       :)

I remember reading an article when one of the Ducati team heavy weights was interviewed by Aust Motorcycle news, He described the situation with Marco, Marco could never extract the  best from the Tyres, he struggled to push the bike to it's limits because it felt like it was going to bite him and spit him off.

Where he said Casey was happy to take it to the absolute limit, pushing that extra 3 or 4 % meant he could get the Tyre up to few degrees that it wanted and get the performance the bike and Tyre wanted, Casey was able to push through the Barrier, Marco was unable to push to a point, but just couldn't push that final few steps.

But it seemed The team was trying to change Marco, instead of tweaking the bike, they sent Marco to a sports Psychologist to try and change his attitude. Ducati always blamed him, bike was perfect, Marco was the problem.....

Maybe now Ducati is realizing that (more now at this exact point in time, with Casey out of action)  that you can't pin your hopes on one rider to win all your races and world Titles.
So it would appear Ducati has learnt a lesson from the whole Marco debacle and has changed it's attitude to tweaking and tuning the bike to suit individual riders.

Nicky's confidence with the bike is growing, they are tweaking the bike to suit his style, and Ducati is tweaking his team around him to suit him.
It means that 2010 might be a very good season to watch.

As small and light as Casey is, he should with more hp than the Yammy and Vale weighing a little more , run away from Rossi.

Dolph      :)

But it would appear that Yamaha have closed the horsepower gap, in 07 the horsepower gap was pretty big, now, not so much if at all.
So Ducati has lost that big horsepower advantage it had, now it has to go back and get that horsepower to the ground, and make it more rider friendly.

Watch any of the 07 races, Casey could stay with them around most of the track and when he hit the straight, open the taps and Gooone!

Now, he can't do that, watch any recent races, there are a couple of tracks that the Yamaha powers past the Ducati!

I think it's going to be an interesting 2010 season!

Not in the wrong line of work at all.  We're renaissance men here, able to make major contributions in numerous fields, should we choose to do so.  ;)

 :D [drink]

Lots of good stuff this week about Hayden, Spies' move to GP in 2011 & as always, more about Rossi talking with Ducati...Again.
 
  www.tankslapperz.com (http://)

Nicky rocked on Honda's & He'll rock on the Ducati next season.
Rossi is signed for another year on the Fiat team but he wants to be on a Ducati in 2011.
Everyone knows that right?

we have a pretty comprehensive thread in the racing forum covering the silly season:

http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=25778.0 (http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=25778.0)

Thanks derby, I hadn't seen that thread before.

 good readin'   [thumbsup]