Pecco Moto GP

[LowRyter]

Duc Factory isn't running the newest tech engine.  Did I hear that Bastianini's team is running last years bikes?  Talk about mixed up.  A complete gaggle of teams and makes in the mix.  Last year's champ  down in 8th.   MM was second rider on his team.  

[fotoguzzi]

C NBC sucks! Once again they place a commercial break right in the middle of the race! I think we missed Fabio pass two riders during the break. Drives me crazy.

[Lucky Phil]

7 hours ago, KINDOY2 said:

As you said Phil they will get the new 2022 electronics sorted in a couple showings...Bastianini is on last years Factory bike though Correct? , Its tried and proven so probably no unknowns or surprises to deal with .  He rode a great race to the end though and waited for his openings ..a smart young rider.

 

Yep, a fully sorted package and all he's had to do in the pre season is work on Gelling with the bike. He has 2 years worth of data to pour over and no development work to worry about. I think Ducati has loaded up their works riders with so much development and parts testing after a 2 year technical freeze it's been detrimental to their first GP. Pecco never really got the front feel he needed and the race crash was the result. It's a long, long season though with 21 races. Remy Gardener got in the points in his first GP. Outstanding. 

[KINDOY2]

10 hours ago, Lucky Phil said:

Yep, a fully sorted package and all he's had to do in the pre season is work on Gelling with the bike. He has 2 years worth of data to pour over and no development work to worry about. I think Ducati has loaded up their works riders with so much development and parts testing after a 2 year technical freeze it's been detrimental to their first GP. Pecco never really got the front feel he needed and the race crash was the result. It's a long, long season though with 21 races. Remy Gardener got in the points in his first GP. Outstanding. 

Agree with all of the above!

[LowRyter]

16 hours ago, fotoguzzi said:

C NBC sucks! Once again they place a commercial break right in the middle of the race! I think we missed Fabio pass two riders during the break. Drives me crazy.

I wrote NBC yesterday and made the same point and several others.  You might write them too.  

[p6x]

If anyone of you uses VPN, contact me via pm.

I have a legal way to watch all the MotoGP events. All the FPs are without comments, only the race has commentary. There are no interruptions during the events.

[Lucky Phil]

On 3/8/2022 at 6:22 AM, LowRyter said:

I wrote NBC yesterday and made the same point and several others.  You might write them too.  

I watch the BSB on Eurosports and they have adds in the middle of races and you can lose 5 laps of the race. The classic was once they went to an add break and the last 2 min of the break was a "famous last lap battles" from a WSB race about 15 years ago. So these complete morons at Eurosport thought it would be a great idea to lose about 2 laps of a CURRENT BSB race to air the last lap and a half of a 15 year old WSB race you can view on Youtube any time you like, WTF. Is Europsport run by 15 year olds or something! 

Ciao

[LowRyter]

2 hours ago, Lucky Phil said:

I watch the BSB on Eurosports and they have adds in the middle of races and you can lose 5 laps of the race. The classic was once they went to an add break and the last 2 min of the break was a "famous last lap battles" from a WSB race about 15 years ago. So these complete morons at Eurosport thought it would be a great idea to lose about 2 laps of a CURRENT BSB race to air the last lap and a half of a 15 year old WSB race you can view on Youtube any time you like, WTF. Is Europsport run by 15 year olds or something! 

Ciao

I wrote them about 2 things.  We are usually 5-7 hours behind for most of the races, so it's always delayed.  I told them to 1) put it on at the same time, 2) take breaks with notice and resume the action after the break.   Costs them nothing since it's on paid programming channel on the weekends.

Now when BEiN had it, it was all live.  Quals and races all classes.  Set the record and watch until your heart's content.  

[p6x]

What do you think about Francesco Bagnaia outburst?

-"I am here to win, not to be a test rider"

Taking away the frustration, I do believe racer's contribution is essential for the fine tuning of the bike's design. Even if pilots may have different opinions on certain details, their input is necessary.

Test pilots are there to do the breaking in, put down the laps and find out about initial weaknesses. The feature increments or changes or additions have to vetted by the guys that are the real competitors.

When you are not racing any given Sunday, your appreciation and sensitivity is different. Testing requires a different skill set; I agree. The test pilot will have a closer relation with the engineers, may also understand better the physics, and learn how to communicate his sensations.

The pilot may or many not speak the same language than the engineers, although in this case, Bagnaia does. I don't know if Jack Miller speaks Italian enough to describe accurately how the bike behaves, and what he would prefer. But he surely can do it in English.

Bagnaia probably needed to vent his frustration for having been expected to perform, and failed the expectations. Obviously, wiping off a team mate made it worse.

That Ducati took the blame for displeasing Pecco was new. They agree the GP22 is still in the rough, with an hybrid engine in the factory team, a mixture of 2021 and 2022. Pramac is using the 2022 version.

I am wondering if Enea's performance was a one off, or will we see more of him at the front? he seemed pretty good from my armchair.

 

[LowRyter]

10 hours ago, p6x said:

What do you think about Francesco Bagnaia outburst?

-"I am here to win, not to be a test rider"

Taking away the frustration, I do believe racer's contribution is essential for the fine tuning of the bike's design. Even if pilots may have different opinions on certain details, their input is necessary.

Test pilots are there to do the breaking in, put down the laps and find out about initial weaknesses. The feature increments or changes or additions have to vetted by the guys that are the real competitors.

When you are not racing any given Sunday, your appreciation and sensitivity is different. Testing requires a different skill set; I agree. The test pilot will have a closer relation with the engineers, may also understand better the physics, and learn how to communicate his sensations.

The pilot may or many not speak the same language than the engineers, although in this case, Bagnaia does. I don't know if Jack Miller speaks Italian enough to describe accurately how the bike behaves, and what he would prefer. But he surely can do it in English.

Bagnaia probably needed to vent his frustration for having been expected to perform, and failed the expectations. Obviously, wiping off a team mate made it worse.

That Ducati took the blame for displeasing Pecco was new. They agree the GP22 is still in the rough, with an hybrid engine in the factory team, a mixture of 2021 and 2022. Pramac is using the 2022 version.

I am wondering if Enea's performance was a one off, or will we see more of him at the front? he seemed pretty good from my armchair.

 

I think the guy meant that a race weekend shouldn't be a test session.  (*edited, mistakenly I attributed to wrong rider and team)

 

*Thanks for the prompt Gary.  My mind is jelly from trying to do my taxes manually from with no hard copy instructions. 

[Tomchri]

Yes l enjoy M GP big, and are a HUGE 93 fan, What a bike handler, to me. IPA, yes please,

Cheers Tom.

 

[Lucky Phil]

7 hours ago, p6x said:

What do you think about Francesco Bagnaia outburst?

-"I am here to win, not to be a test rider"

Taking away the frustration, I do believe racer's contribution is essential for the fine tuning of the bike's design. Even if pilots may have different opinions on certain details, their input is necessary.

Test pilots are there to do the breaking in, put down the laps and find out about initial weaknesses. The feature increments or changes or additions have to vetted by the guys that are the real competitors.

When you are not racing any given Sunday, your appreciation and sensitivity is different. Testing requires a different skill set; I agree. The test pilot will have a closer relation with the engineers, may also understand better the physics, and learn how to communicate his sensations.

The pilot may or many not speak the same language than the engineers, although in this case, Bagnaia does. I don't know if Jack Miller speaks Italian enough to describe accurately how the bike behaves, and what he would prefer. But he surely can do it in English.

Bagnaia probably needed to vent his frustration for having been expected to perform, and failed the expectations. Obviously, wiping off a team mate made it worse.

That Ducati took the blame for displeasing Pecco was new. They agree the GP22 is still in the rough, with an hybrid engine in the factory team, a mixture of 2021 and 2022. Pramac is using the 2022 version.

I am wondering if Enea's performance was a one off, or will we see more of him at the front? he seemed pretty good from my armchair.

 

What I think is it's "early doors" in a 21 race season and Pecco is a bit of a sook. Miller has a much bigger reason to complain but took it on the chin publicly.

Ciao

[GuzziMoto]

I think Pecco had a valid point. His bike setup went too far into the weeds trying all these different options and that stuff should have already been worked out by the factory tester. But I suspect that won't be as big an issue going forwards. I don't think he will play that game in the future, and I think he was only in that situation because it was a brand new bike at the first race of the season. As the races go on I suspect they will have a narrower and narrower range of set up that they know works for him. They were just to early in the learning curve this time. It seems the only Ducati rider not falling into that trap at the first race was Bastiani, who was on a bike they already knew how to set up. Worked out well for him.

[Lucky Phil]

6 hours ago, GuzziMoto said:

I think Pecco had a valid point. His bike setup went too far into the weeds trying all these different options and that stuff should have already been worked out by the factory tester. But I suspect that won't be as big an issue going forwards. I don't think he will play that game in the future, and I think he was only in that situation because it was a brand new bike at the first race of the season. As the races go on I suspect they will have a narrower and narrower range of set up that they know works for him. They were just to early in the learning curve this time. It seems the only Ducati rider not falling into that trap at the first race was Bastiani, who was on a bike they already knew how to set up. Worked out well for him.

Well, factory riders have always historically had to do the bulk of the "real" parts testing. For all the hype and focus on Factory test riders not one of them is genuinely fast fast enough to offer the factory racers any assistance with setup for getting genuine pace and qualifying class speed out of a GP bike. Mick Doohan pointed this out years ago when he mockingly mentioned it for the Japanese testers in his day. He considered them as parts endurance testers and he was right and it's pretty much the same today.

Dani Pedrosa is about the quickest from recent races and qualified .8 seconds slower than pole which wasn't a bad effort and was 19 seconds down at the end of the race in Austria. He knew the track like the back of his hand though with a mountain of testing he does there.

Pirro in his last outing was 1.2 seconds off the pace in quali and a massive 28 seconds down in the race. Broadly speaking even these top testers are around rookie class speed and you don't go to rookies looking for information for the factory guys setups. The truth is testers are there to endurance test parts and ensure new componentry actually works reliably and does what it's supposed to do. Then it's handed over to the "racers" to see if actually translates into faster lap times or other advantages. Testers simply aren't fast enough to determine major development directions and modifications. It's the last 2-3 tenths that determine the winning bike from the also ran machines and as Doohan pointed out back in the day unless the test riders are within a few tenths of his lap times then their feedback on bike development and speed is pointless. You notice in the last few years the testers are doing a lot more PR type stuff for the manufacturers simply because they need to try and get maximum value out of them because their impact on bike speed is pretty lame. They have a genuine role to play but lets no overemphasise their importance.

Ducati fell for the backlog of 2 years worth of development waiting to be tested and overloaded the factory riders with new parts and options to sort through. It's happened before. Then again Pecco has been hyped to the sky in the off season and I've been waiting to see if he's actually up to it. Personally I think he's a sook compared to Miller who's just sucked it up and then kept his head down even after the factory Ducati team messed up his entire race for him. Ducati have gone "all in" with their choice of Pecco and are now in the position of needing to either blame themselves for poor management or allow the commentariat to question their total commitment and hyping of Peccos chances for the championship. 

I notice lately that the hype in MotoGP is getting to F1 level which is sad. I see hardly any sensible information coming from any source these days it's 99.9% hype based on speculation. Even the new commentator Fox has is a pain and my wife said she won't be able to watch the GP's this year if he continues with his 5 words/second speed babble which is just too much. Last years pair were good but only 1 remains. 

One things for sure this year, nothing would surprise me and I'm strapped in already.

Ciao 

[p6x]

Incredible number of crashes from MM93 in Indonesia, including one of the most spectacular high side during the warm up....