MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

If it is ok for Aprilia to sell customer CRT bikes then maybe Suzuki and Kawasaki could get in on the act too. And yes, sell, not lease!

I've heard that Suter is very strict with the use and modifications of their bikes but don't know about other mfgrs.

Chris
http://moto2-usa.blogspot.com/

Agreed.

Ezpeleta said in a very recent and interesting interview (well worth a read):

"(A CRT costs) around one million euros to race all year, with the advantage that the bike will be the team’s property. Right now a factory bike costs three million and has to be returned so that they can then give you another one, which isn’t much better, for another three million. That’s a scam and it’s over. They’ve been squeezing and squeezing until the end."

EDIT: here's an english translated version of that enterview:
http://www.rideontwo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3255

Here's the original interview in Spanish:
http://www.as.com/motor/articulo/motogp-ahora-gustan/20111023dasdaimot_…

If Aprilia is now going to fabricate a CRT racebike "officially", building a complete package with the intent to lease that to private teams, then it simply makes any of Dorna's CRT initial arguments contradictory (for the least, IMHO), blatantly so according to that interview of Ezpeleta.

But if Aprilia is going to SELL those bikes... now that would be something more in consonance to what Ezpeleta has said and, in that case, this could also represent big news for other manufacturers!

If Aprilia lease these complete 'race only' machines, then the battle is already lost in terms of cost reduction.

Similarly, if the chassis builders won't allow teams to do as they wish with the chassis they provide, then CRTs lose the potential for cunning engineering to give them a competitive edge, which would be a HUGE blow to the sport.

Plus one to this. Big part of the MotoGP problem is a lack of an efficient internal economy. I.e. there isn't enough competition for resources. Indeed, there's almost NO competition - nearly all resources are bound together monolithically, with just a few single entities controlling almost everything from significant numbers of the riders on the grid, to chassis & engine. To introduce competition requires breaking stuff and separating things, making a number of chassis manufacturers compete for the same or a greater number of team customers, engine suppliers compete for chassis manufacturers, etc.. Allowing machinery to easily be bought & sold, from supplier to team or team to team, is a critical part of that. MotoGP needs to ban any anti-competitive practices that try prevent machinery from being sold on.

I want a MotoGP with a diverse number of manufacturers, from traditional bike manufacturers to specialist chassis and/or motor engineering companies, a diverse number of tyre makers (get rid of the one tyre rule, arg!), and an even more diverse array of teams and riders, who then have a good choice of what equipment to use, without being too constrained by far-off factory politics.

I guess it depends on what you buy... if you want support, there's not much point modifying it yourself. If you believe you can do better, you wouldn't take the support contract.

However the reason Suter got away with so much was because of the superstition that his bikes must be much better 'cos a) one of them won last year; b) they cost more.

No wonder he was so keen to throw whatever it took at Marquez to get the title... it might even have worked if not for some bad marshalling/track management in Malaysia.

So last year Bradl won on a Kalex and fastest Suter yesterday was 5th. His business model may have collapsed.

You're approaching a subject that can be touchy (and interesting!), I think that's actually a great point!

The only problem is that, at least with these rules, you can not use a chassis from a stock production bike in GP, nor from SBK, so we may never know the real truth on that.

Common sense would say that 4% is not enough of a difference to warrant an entirely new chassis. I wonder if they'll release more lap times once they get the riding position, suspension, etc. dialed in. I hope so because the Bridgestone "voodoo" is totally confounding to me (as well as Elias).

Look at the smaller classes. They always had a stock of owned, customer race bikes of various degrees of sophistication: RS Hondas with A-kits, Yamaha TZ's and TZM's with YEC kits, Aprilia RSW's. Some of them were tuned to the point of exploding... and did so.
It wasn't terminally embarrassing for the manufacturer. Those bikes then worked their way down through national series.

The YZF250 factory bikes Tech 3 ran in 250's in 2000 (1st & 2nd in the title for Jacques & Nakano) were handed down to the Petronas team the next year (although I think a couple of them are now in Guy Coulon's attic).

Also, one of the advantages of buying machines is that you're not obliged to use Aprilia (etc) parts, you can get them made elsewhere. If you think "get them made" sounds expensive, you haven't had a good look at HRC or Aprilia Corse price lists...

Plus, it works in WSBK... Ducati have sold their race bikes, one year behind the factory spec, for years.

The whole idea of using production-derived or production-based engines is that there is a plentiful supply of parts.

I don't think factories can really be worried about POTENTIALLY poor reliability of highly tuned race engines affecting their reputations. If you put a turbo on a Hayabusa drag bike, and it later exploded, would you blame Suzuki?

The factories (past, present or future) should not be allowed to control the activities of true racing teams (Tech3, Aspar, etc) in this way. This is what drives up costs and creates a false economy.

While I agree full factory bikes (title winning or otherwise) rarely see a track in anger again, there are plenty of privateer machines that do. Lots of WSB/BSB machine end up in road racing or Endurance.

>> As for hand-me down machines. When has this realistically happened since the mid seventies? Japanese factory machines have always gone to a title winners living room, the factory museum or a skip. <<

Well, for the premier class, and until late 80's, you would have at least some national and continental championships of 500cc 2-strokes (European champs, for instances), some actually running as wildcards in GP.
This was even done at a time when leasing already had begun, by reusing the mid 80's Suzuki RG500 and Honda NS500 of GP, along with the odd Paton and alikes, all bought and then maintained/modified until those last years.

I can certainly remember Peter Lindén (Sweden) being crowned European champion in 1989, running a patriotic paint in his helmet and in his NS500. :-)

...there are already some Moto2 national championships (Spanish and Italian, for instances), now imagine bringing the premium series back as it was untill the late 80's, now with CRTs!

I don't doubt the validity of your source, just the validity of Gigi Dall'Igna's arguements in defence of this policy.

Ultimately, I believe that racing is at it's best when it is the business of racing teams; teams who have no other business outside of winning races or, at the very least, building racing only bikes for other teams to win races.

Unfortunately, the simple truth is that the people with the deepest pockets will always win. They can afford the best bikes, the best engineers and the best riders. This model favours factory-backed teams, and the aims of the factories don't always line up with those of the racing teams themselves.

Of course, I don't have an easy cure or cover-all rule to eliminate this, but for now I think bike ownership by CRTs, with the ability to sell on parts as they see fit, is the best 'quick fix' available.

As an aside, shouldn't some idiot have lowered this thread into a slagging match between Stoner and Rossi fans by now? ;o)

Actually ROC were around for quite a while, via the Swissauto V4 ex-sidecar motor. Those bikes and the KR machines had some extended life by running under other colours ... BSL for eg.

However the main reason ROC and Harris had a relatively brief exposure was because Yamaha turned off the engine supply... and neither Honda nor Suzuki would sell or lease engines and of course there were no viable production engine alternatives to start from.

The ECUs have maps up the wazoo for every setting. It takes a lot of track time with test riders to get all these maps in the ballpark so that the factory riders can then tweak the last 1-2%. All of that rough testing the factories do is invisible to us and expensive for satellite/private teams to accomplish. Then any changes to the bike/track/weather/tires/rider's mental state require changes to all these maps to maintain optimum performance.

Also don't forget the travel costs for the technicians too.

Chris
http://moto2-usa.blogspot.com/