GuzziMoto

The thing with Zarco I don't understand is why he signed to ride the Honda when he struggled so much on the KTM. The Honda is probably most like the KTM, especially the KTM when Zarco tried to ride it. You never know, but it seems like a long shot that Zarco will do well on the Honda. Zarco is also not known for his development skills, and riding the LCR Honda it isn't likely Honda would really use him for development anyway. That was Rins complaint riding the bike Zarco is going to ride, that Honda did not utilize him to develop the bike. Good luck to Zarco at Honda, but it doesn't seem like a good move. And it turned out it was a move he didn't have to make. The pass Zarco made on his team mate was aggressive, and really put Martin out wide allowing Bagnia to easily slide by. That was a hard move to pull on your team mate. But I guess Zarco knows he is gone at the end of the season and showed no team loyalty. I don't blame him, just an observation.

I believe what @LaGrasta is saying is his V7 has an O2 sensor and he was wondering if that should be upgraded. I believe the answer is likely "No". The O2 sensor on his V7 is not the same sensor as was delivered on V11s that had an O2 sensor. So, LaGrasta probably does not need to replace the O2 sensor on his V7. But if someone has a V11 with the stock O2 sensor that some came with you probably do want to upgrade the O2 sensor.

Welcome to the forum. PeterS hasn't been around since 2021, around two years ago, so not sure he will respond. Sweet Guzzi, shame you don't have it anymore. Hopefully someone is enjoying it.

It was a great race. That track tends to deliver great races. Jorge Martin took a gamble and it almost paid off. But I am not sure why he gambled. It hurt his title hopes in the end. Not a Zarco fan, but glad to see him finally get a win. Bagnia was on his game, waiting for the race to come to him and pushing the issue when the time was right. Super happy for DiGi. He seems to deserve it. He is better then his results say. Seems like his mechanic finally figured out what he needs. Shame he is loosing that seat to Marc while Alex Marquez is keeping his seat. But perhaps Alex Marquez was more about luring Marc to the team then his results. If so, mission accomplished.

If you are talking about the bracket I think you are talking about, the one that goes between the spine frame and the front motor mount points, I would make sure the engine is supported as that bracket holds up the front of the motor. But beyond supporting the motor you don't in my opinion and experience have to do anything else. No need to dis-assemble the back end of rig up some temp brace. If the weight of the motor is being supported so that the motor does not drop when you remove the bracket it will be fine. Just make sure your support of the motor is stable and secure. A basic premise of this would be if the motor is properly supported it won't drop or move when you remove the bracket. And if it doesn't move when you remove the bracket re-installing the brackets should be easy, the holes should line right up without any issue.

Yea, it will be interesting to see how he does. Some, like JLo, seem to think he will crush it on the Ducati and take more titles. I am not so sure. I think that could happen, but I don't think it is the most likely outcome. I am not sure Marc is the racer he used to be. He is older, has physically been through a lot, and I am not sure he has the ability he used to. That said, he clearly has talent. I am not a fan of his, I prefer a more technical racer, Marc is a more bravo racer who was fast by taking massive risks and having the ability to make amazing saves when the risks went bad. I am not sure he can still do that, and I am not sure he won't just crash a lot on the Ducati. The Ducati has been shown to smack you down if you make small mistakes. Just ask Bagnia and Martin. But you never know. I am curious to watch and see how he does. I am not rooting for him, but I would not bet against him.

Karma is a bitch....

Yes, as Martin showed, the latest version of Ducati's hole shot tech is amazing. I had to back it up and watch again as I was sure he jumped the start. Everyone in MotoGP likely has some version, but the current factory Ducati's seem to have the best version, for now. No doubt the engineers at KTM are working hard as we speak. From what I understand, the new version allows the rear of the bike to drop even lower. But that is just what I hear, no real knowledge.

No, the hole shot devices, front or rear, are not in MotoAmerica. The original front device was simple and based on what motocross guys have been using for ages. It simply holds the front suspension compressed. Likely they have by now gotten more complex. The rear devices are more complicated. But neither of them are used in MotoAmerica to my knowledge. There are two aspects to the start advantage. One is the reaction time and the initial hole shot to turn one. That is down to good reaction time and ability to feed to power in. The other side of it is the rest of the opening lap and a riders ability to go fast on what are effectively cold tires. Yes, they use tire warmers, but the tires aren't really working 100% right off the bat. They take a lap or so to scrub in and develop full grip. Being able to push hard on the first lap is a skill in itself. Back in the day I was pretty good at starts and could push hard on lap one. Our strategy was to try to push hard out of the gate and build a gap in the first few laps. Then I could back off just a hair and manage that gap. My team owner wanted me to make sure the other guys never thought they had a chance if at all possible. He didn't want me giving them any hope that they could win. He was a super nice guy, but ruthless when it came to winning. Not every race went that way, but more then a few did. Good times.

In my opinion, Jakes ability to clear off quickly at the start of a race is more about his talent and ability to go fast on cold tires and has nothing to do with the fuel. But the team running illegal fuel is illegal (obviously) and it does taint what Jake has accomplished. As to the team telling him, in my experience as a racer the team is unlikely to involve the rider in things like that. The rider has certain responsibilities, and on a big team like that what fuel the team runs is not one of them. Jake might have known that the fuel was illegal, but he likely had no involvement in that decision. Even on the small team I raced for I as the rider was not involved in deciding what fuel we ran. I did know what fuel we ran, but only because I had to help load it and unload it. I am pretty sure Jake doesn't do that at the team he rides for. They have people to do that. We had four people, including me.

Doesn't matter to me. I can figure it out. Brad Binder was a bit of a wrecking ball this past weekend. But he did pretty well despite the two long lap penalties. His hit on Oliveira didn't seem as bad to me as his hit on Marini. I respect that he apologized to Marini. His run in with Oliveira seemed more of a racing incident to me.

Jake was disqualified, from race 2 @ COTA. But the question immediately arises, how long had the team been running the illegal fuel? They really can't disqualify him from other races, although in my book they could have disqualified him from race 1 @ COTA as well since it seems likely he was running the same fuel for race 1. But that is likely strecthing things, and reality is he is only disqualified from race 2 @ COTA. But his championship is tainted now, probably through no fault of his own. The rider at that level would likely have no knowledge of what fuel was put in his bike. It seems unlikely he was involved. But he is affected, whether he knew or not. Hopefully MotoAmerica has learned a lesson from this and will actually test fuel often enough to prevent this from happening. I raced back in the days of fuel wars, and some of the fuels used were seriously nasty. But you had to run something similar, or you were going to lose. Everyone was going it. I applaud MotoAmerica doing away with the fuel wars, but if you are going to ban fuels like that you need to test fuel. I don't know what they were thinking passing a spec fuel rule and then not testing fuel at all.

Here is another link on the story that has good background info, including that apparently MotoAmerica hasn't tested fuel since the current spec fuel was introduced. It also points out the the team owner of the Yamaha team seems to have a serious dislike of the MGP fuel that VP supplies. https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-fresh-n-lean-progressive-yamaha-fails-fuel-test-from-cota/ Someone isn't telling the truth. And it sounds like it is the Yamaha team.

Some crazy news from MotoAmerica involving Jake Gagne and his Yamaha. https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-gagne-dqd-from-cota-superbike-race-two-for-non-compliant-fuel/ MotoAmerica: Gagne DQ’d From COTA Superbike Race Two For Non-Compliant Fuel and https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-disputes-yamaha-statement-on-gagne-penalty/ MotoAmerica Disputes Yamaha Statement On Gagne Penalty It sounds like Yamaha got caught running illegal fuel. It seems that MotoAmerica had not checked fuel in a while, so it is hard to say how long they had been running illegal fuel. Yamaha is trying to brush it off by saying that they simply ran fuel from last year. But MotoAmerica pointed out that last years fuel would have been legal, in fact any fuel since 2019 would have been legal. It seems the fuel sampled from the Yamaha contained a "foreign chemical component". The rumor mill seems to think that the fuel Yamaha were running was oxygenated. As in contained MTBE. To add to the confusion, Yamaha was in possesion of a drum of VP fuel that was supposedly mis-labeled, with the label indicating it contained fuel that had MTBE in it. VP says that the actual fuel in the drum was the correct MGP formula. So, it seems Yamaha was caught cheating. How long they have been cheating I don't know. But it seems unlikely that the first time they ran the illegal fuel was the race they were caught.

Yea, R means it is faster, and two R's (RR) means it is faster still.....

X, S, and R are all popular letters. Some letters get no love, like O or U.

The Ulysses was a decent bike for an SUV. But because of its extra height it was never going to handle as good as the standard version, and me also not being overly tall (around 5'10") it just was never practical. Besides, it was never going to be worth the sacrifices from the height because it was never going to be very capable off road. Don't get me wrong, I love a good Dual Sport. I have owned a couple and loved them. But a streetbike on stilts holds no appeal to me, it just screws up the handling and makes it harder on me. For what I can do on the typical adventure bike I could do on a normal streetbike. And most of it I could do better. I do prefer the earlier tube frame Buells, but the later aluminum framed ones were great. The engineering that went into them made them unique.

As a former motorcycle racer who traveled this country racing for peanuts, I really don't think learning the tracks in Europe is key to getting an American racing in MotoGP. Learning tracks is not that hard for a talented racer. If learning tracks is holding you back, you may not have enough talent. I raced local racers at their home track, a track that I had never been to or a track that I had only been to once before, and was still able to race them and often beat them. And I was not MotoGP caliber. Some racers learn new tracks faster then others, but at that level all of them should have no issues learning a new track in a day or two. There are Americans like Joe Roberts running in Moto2, but sadly he is not overly impressive. You could say he went over there too soon, but then had he not gone as soon as he did people would say he went there too late. PJ Jacobson went over there fairly early as well, but came back and is now honing his skills and improving. What could have been had he done that first. The pressure is to go to Europe as soon as you can, but it is such a meat grinder that you may kill your career if you don't get the right ride quick enough. The reality is, at one time the world looked to America for the next hot talent. Now they do not. We have incredibly talented racers here, but they tend to be over looked. As they say, talent is universally distributed, but opportunity is not. The lack of American talent in MotoGP is mainly down to a lack of opportunity in my opinion. But it is what it is. I also think the current feeder system is suspect, with success or failure in Moto3 or Moto2 not being a good indicator of potential in MotoGP. Moto2 is closer then it was with the Honda inline 4, but the Triumph triple is a very different animal then what you have in MotoGP.

I doubt the US will have a serious entry into MotoGP anytime soon. Our better chance is in WSBK, where Gerloff is gaining his footing on the BMW. Joe Roberts continues to run mid-pack in Moto2, sadly he was never one of our better racers. He is good enough to be in Moto2, but it seems unlikely he will do enough to get promoted to MotoGP. Reality is currently that success or failure in Moto2 seems to have little bearing on success or failure in MotoGP. It is possible that Joe Roberts could be amazing in MotoGP, but unless he does better and earns a shot we will never know. And I can't see him earning that shot.

Land Rover still has a "Defender". It is not like it used to be, the current version being all swanky and complicated while the old one was rugged and stone axe simple. But it is still a name in use by them.

No doubt Fabio Di Giannantonio would like a spot in all this shuffling. He may have to settle for going to WSBK. I think the old Marc Marquez would be a serious threat on the current Ducati. Not sure how well the current Marc Marquez will do on it. I suspect he will do well, but I am not confident he will win the title on it. It could happen, but it is not highly likely in my book, just possible. I think the winner in all this is the fans.

I think Zarco will move up from LCR to HRC next year, and Lacuona will move from WSBK back to MotoGP to ride the LCR bike Zarco was going to ride. I would love for Vinales to go to Honda, that would free up a spot on an Aprilia for someone else. While Vinales will always have those occasional great races where he does amazingly well, all to often he struggles in the races. I would be happy to see his seat go to someone else with more consistent talent. I think Quartararo would do well on the Ape. It will be interesting to see how Marc Marquez does on the Ducati. I don't think he is the all conquering racer he once was. But he clearly still has talent.

It varies from one manufacturer to another, but generally a 170 will fit on the same wheel a 180 will fit on. The later V11's have a 5.5" wide rear wheel. Here is a screen shot of a chart on the Dunlop website listing recommended wheel widths. You can see that both the 170 and 180 are listed for a 5.5" wide wheel, and the 160 is listed as fitting a 4.5" or 5" wide wheel. The 170 will also fit a 4.5" wide rear wheel, which was the original tire size for V11's that came with the 4.5" rear wheel. But in both cases, using the narrower tire for that wheel width will result in lighter steering. That is not something everyone wants, but many do.

I would not run the 160 unless you have the 4.5" wide rear wheel. The wider 5.5" rear wheel is not really suited to the 160. To deal with tire wear I recommend the multi-compound tire options. They seem to really help with tire wear. A 500+ pound bike is going to wear its tires.

As mentioned, there are two different rear wheel widths for the V11, a 4.5" wide rear wheel on the earlier V11's and a 5.5" wide rear wheel on the later V11's. You do not want to install a 160 on a 5.5" wide wheel, but it works great on a 4.5" wide wheel. If you have the 5.5" wide rear wheel you can go with a 180 or a 170, either should fit that rear wheel just fine. I would prefer the narrower 170, as it will give lighter handling all else being equal. And reality is the V11 does not make more power than you can comfortably use with a 170 rear tire. That said, some people like the wider rear tire and the way it makes the bike feel and look.