Ducati Monster Forum

day 1: rain, usual suspects, and apparently nicky is feeling better:
http://www.motomatters.com/results/2012/02/28/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_1_times_st.html (http://www.motomatters.com/results/2012/02/28/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_1_times_st.html)

day 1 press releases and an on-board lap with stoner:
http://www.motomatters.com/press_release/2012/02/28/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_1_press_re.html (http://www.motomatters.com/press_release/2012/02/28/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_1_press_re.html)

Curious as to why Stoner went all the way up through the gears at the end of pit lane going out, then again when coming in.  ???

Rossi not happy with the productivity of today's testing:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97719 (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97719)

Good to see Nicki getting better.

http://www.twowheelsblog.com/post/9245/nicky-hayden-faster-than-valentino-rossi-on-first-day-of-testing-at-sepang2 (http://www.twowheelsblog.com/post/9245/nicky-hayden-faster-than-valentino-rossi-on-first-day-of-testing-at-sepang2)

ok, so The Ben was fastest today!

..only it was raining.  and there were no Repsol bikes on the track.

but still.


;)

Hayden and Rossi at the back of the pack.  Hector in front by .3-.4  Ducati might be keeping a happy face for the media, but they have to be ripping their hair out behind the scenes.  The upside is they aren't so far from everyone not named Repsol Honda, but it has to be discouraging that their old bike is pulling better hot laps in the hands of a less talented racer.

Kinda cosmic... that was your 1198 post! [thumbsup]

More Sepang test news:

http://www.cyclenews.com/articles/road-racing/2012/03/01/stoner-fastest-in-sepang-motogp-test/ (http://www.cyclenews.com/articles/road-racing/2012/03/01/stoner-fastest-in-sepang-motogp-test/)

The Ducs going backward... AGAIN!!!!  [bang]

Data marker so the engineers know when the test was starting and then stopping?

Interesting thought.

The DA system has GPs, so I'm pretty sure they know where and when everything happens in the data stream.

I'm thinking it's one of Stoner's habits, like dragging his boots on the way out.

heading out, it may just be a superstition thing: make sure the bike is.. working.

coming back in, weird little habit?

test be ovah.  stoner.

http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301a.htm (http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301a.htm)

http://www.motomatters.com/results/2012/03/01/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_3_times_ho.html (http://www.motomatters.com/results/2012/03/01/2012_sepang_2_motogp_test_day_3_times_ho.html)

oh, and rossi is pissed:  http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301broman.htm (http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301broman.htm)

Haven't we heard this song before?

<Ducati makes new kit for VR>
<Post race/test; VR soundbite> "This new kit is the bomb!"  [thumbsup]
<After the very next race/test; VR soundbite> "This kit is shyt!"  [puke]

Rossi finished day 1 ~0.3sec quicker than Barbera, finished day 3 ~0.3sec behind.

Granted, Hector & crew are fine-tuning the same package they had in the last test, and VR & crew are trying new parts/code, but.....

Looks like another *long* season in the red garage.

in which case, also for sure the *last*

I'm starting to wonder if it's not just the bike. Anathema to many of you I know.

Rossi may for the first time be unable to adapt to a fundamentally different machine. He's old enough now to find adaptation more difficult compared to when he was kn his twenties. And the process of the last year has actually destroyed his confidence. The GOAT is human. It was the bike at first, but it's him now.

Even with the Yammy frame, he's lost because he's lost his edge. I reckon the Ducati brought forward five years for Rossi what eventually happens to all champions.
If he can win again he will be proving to everyone his GOAT status is real.

This is a fascinating (and a bit sad) case of the Champions struggle. The inner battle must be huge.  It would be great if he could bookend his career with another championship.

All they need to do is steal a Yammie and slap on a Marlboro sticker.

maybe next year.

http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/motogp-noyes-notebook-crunching-numbers/ (http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/motogp-noyes-notebook-crunching-numbers/)

I agree. [bang]

http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301broman.htm (http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120301broman.htm)

 :P

We'll see how well these guys feel after having to bully around the bikes. Whomever is in best shape will have the advantage at the end of the race at least the first few races.

yeah...especially with a public comment like Jorge's about how much a full race simulation took out of him....which is why I still have some hope for the Duc's, that while they may not be as fast...the lap times they are pulling out aren't 1 hit wonders sprint lap times with little consistancy...and Nicky and Val and the Ben are of the framework to have a little more to to manage that bike size under full race distance...

i'm a ben fanboy and blah blah blah.. but 'in the best shape', he wins.  or is the most/one of the most prepared, anyway.

How "derbyesque" of me. ;D [bang]

The only people keeping consistant times, lap after lap, are Jorge and Casey(I'm talking podium pace).  Dani is under the 50% mark for laps "on the pace" and that percentage drops off from him on down.  I believe Lorenzo was the only person to do something close to a race simulation and I believe they said 78% of his laps were fast pace laps.  Considering he's dealing with testing traffic, I don't think "one hit wonder" applies.  Stoner doesn't do enough testing laps to really know, but even if he falls off the pace at the end of the race, he's already going to have a 5-10 second gap, so what does it matter to him?

http://www.gpone.com/index.php/en/201203016234/Guareschi-Rossi-could-go-faster.html (http://www.gpone.com/index.php/en/201203016234/Guareschi-Rossi-could-go-faster.html)

Time to start worrying.

the latter portion of the article is written poorly/weirdly but i think you misunderstoood:

"...testing a large number of different setups and solutions.  It's normal that a rider wouldn't achieve maximum performance in this situation, when their priority isn't outright speed"

Yeah, unfortunately this is the same spin Ducati was trying to feed us last year when Rossi turned in a bunch of junk lap times on the Duc.  I'm not eating it this year.  Saying his priority isn't outright speed is just covering for the fact they are still short on solutions..... or possibly covering the decline of Rossi as an alien.  A less than 100% Hayden is essentially running the same times, and Hector is pulling his hot lap faster than Rossi on the old POS bike.  Granted Barbera isn't consistantly fast, but the fact he's faster on those few laps is ridiculous.  They can say they aren't worried, but I guarantee that garage is permiating with doubt.  Its a new bike, but people don't want to hear that.  I want to see Rossi at least compete during his twilight.  Not ride into the sunset on a dog.

rossi says he's worried now... 



Next year.

Where's the damn panic button?!?!

Right here, but it's broken.

Parts on backorder.

I think the panic button is having front end problems.

meanwhile, have you seen all the HRC mind games?  nakamoto says Yamaha has the better bike.  and that the riders are more important than the bike.  the latter being a friggin bombshell, when you consider how they felt about riders and the 211v.

either a) this is old japanese men playing old japanese businessmen games, b) the new minimum weight is really screwing up the 213v more than we know (and this is why they didn't do many consecutive laps in sepang), or c) nakamoto learned something from rossi after all.

maybe all 3.

 [clap]

Looked at the results from Sepang 2, day 1.
Pedrosa did runs of 8, 8, 7, 3, and 5 laps.

I don't recall when in the day he saw the red light.

Whatever it was, it scared the engine boys a *lot*.
I'm suspecting they have an oil problem, all OK for 3-4 laps, but maybe gets foamy after that.

There's a lot of panic buttons except from the Yammie garage.

red light was toward the end of the day.

i have buddy who works at HPD.  he theorizes that they were testing parts significant enough that, if they failed, would mean changing some significant direction back in japan.  and they were probably parts that they had only a handful of; hence the warning to the riders ahead of time about the red light.  he says that the 'shut it all down and send the engine back to japan immediately' thing is very.. honda.

he also says that it's very likely the last minute weight change is giving them fits; the bikes are likely sensitive to ANY weight change.

maybe it's me, but this circus isn't much fun anymore  :'(

Keep your expectations low, and you'll seldom be disappointed.  :P

Didn't realize expecting epic battles like Rossi dueling with Max/Sete/Jorge for championships or with Stoner at Laguna Seca in 2008, like Nicky and the smurf, and Simo with anyone near him was setting my sights low....

I expect this year's GP will be much like last years. There. Expectations set remarkably low.

That's the point...you aren't. ;)

I have an annual New Years resolution that applies here as well. Keep my standards high but my expectations low. [thumbsup] [laugh] [popcorn]

jeez ya bunch a negative nancys.. at least wait until qatar.  =)

Yeah... bunch of negative people! Just wait for Qatar to watch Casey win by like 20 seconds before you start complaining.

I'll make the 1st wager of the year and say that IF Casey wins, his margin will be less than 10 seconds!

Casey in Qatar? I would take that bet if there was an easy way for you to pay me that $$$$.

I expect some fantastic battles for the podium, and three or four battles for the win.  The rest, I expect Casey to clear off into the distance.  I think Ben, Dovi, Jorge, and the Turd will have some epic scraps, and Rossi will get more than one podium just because people do crash, and rain happens.  He's not far off those guys, but at the same time I think he's struggling with himself as much as the bike.  Supposedly they have chassis updates after Catalunya, so we'll see how the year progresses.

I also think DePuniet is going to beat the factory backmarkers at least once on the Ape.  I'm not sure if thats a stretch, but I think that bike will surprise some people by years end.

+1 on this....I think the ART project is going to reveal some of the more GP than not aspects of itself and it is going to frustrate RDP in how they engineer it to try and not reveal it's real capability when all is said and done....

who knows, maybe this is Aprilia's test bike for entering the GP next year

huh?

rumor is the rsv4 was originally a gp project that was "street-ified" for superbikes...

if you listen to what carmelo has been saying the future of the gp class is likely the crt formula.

doood, were you stoned that early in the day?  ;D

but seriously.. why in the world would they need to de-engineer that bike in order to hide something?  it's not like they're hiding its potential in WSBK.  and it's already been classified as a CRT bike -- if it's discovered that RDP's team is really an Aprilia factory team/that they are getting ongoing factory support, only 2 things happen:

 - they have to live with 21 liters of fuel
 - they have to live with only 6 engines

it's not like they have to quit racing or something.

AND then no one can take the bike away from them.  the Aprilia engineers can go crazy, if in fact that's what they have in mind.


it's not a stretch at all.  he's within 2 seconds of barbera.  2 seconds is a lot, but it's also not.  if just a few things fall into place on Any Given Sunday (or Saturday), he'll beat some satellite bikes.

do you REALLY think that Aprilia wants to short itself any advantage it can stretch out if it comes out of the gate barking down the back doors of the factory bikes while all of the other CRT bikes are 10 seconds behind them?...don't you think DORNA is going to march their legal asses right down the pit road and snatch that bike up and scrutinize them unmercilessly the minute they look like anything more than a Satelite bike in terms of performance??....I mean really...the Ape is going to have to show some level of parity with the other CRT bikes if they are going to keep the curtain maintained to keep DORNA off their ass....

I think Carmello wants Aprilia to kick ass as a CRT team and it would have to be a blatant violation of some rule...like discovering factory 'support' for DORNA to do anything.

It fits his misguided, IMO, vision for GP

the classification, or not, of being CRT is a very short list of rules.  so far, they have the stamp.  while they have the stamp, they know that any team who feels like it can show up and buy the bike.  bang.  gone.  so:

 - don't cheat
 - use your own engineers
 - work your ass off to win

so, no, i don't think if he gets within 1 second, or zero seconds, of satellite machines that suddenly carmelo is going to run down pit lane with his hair on fire.  he WANTS them to be competitive.  he's hanging the success of the series on CRTs being the new satellite machines.  that way, there are enough bikes on the grid to actually give to deserving Moto2 riders each year.  3, 2, and GP all succeed as a result.

of course, if he discovers direct aprilia support he'll yank the CRT status.  duh.

but consider the RSV4 engine: just like in WSBK, it's the only V4 among the CRTs.  evidently that engine configuration is the juice.

I pointed out the key to things in your statement above...

and yes, I do in fact think the direction that GP is going is a little misguided with the CRT project...but Carmello is playing with his train set and will set forth the wants he deems fit...and if Aprilia shits on his idea as a way to play games with the rules and bend around them and try to cheat the system....I think Carmello will drop the hammer kind of harshly

nah, he'll just yank their CRT status.  like i've said before, there's at least some chance that Aprilia has that in mind.

but it's much more likely that they just want to own the CRT category.  it gives them prominence, they can feed their WSBK team, and they can play in both series without needing Japanese money.

and as factory bikes become a little more CRT-like in the future, why be running a skunkworks get-back-into-full-prototypes project?  they can clearly kick ass with production cases.

and, this: http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120313b.htm (http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2012/Mar/120313b.htm)

This...