At the launch of Sito Pons' Moto2 team, the double world 250 champion, also former owner and team manager of one of the most successful 500 and MotoGP satellite Honda teams of all time, spoke recently to Motomatters.com about the CRT concept for 2012 and the chances the Spaniard saw to move his his Moto2 team back up to the MotoGP grid under these new technical rules in the near future.
"I really believe in the idea of CRT bikes", Pons said. "But only if they are at a similar level of performance as the Japanese factory prototypes. I do not believe in a CRT concept with such wide differences in performance between the fastest Japanese bikes and the CRTs, as it is planned right now, either from a commercial point of view or from the point of view of the sport".
"In my opinion", Pons continued, "I thing the best solution is a MotoGP grid full of CRT bikes with similar performance, because that also would allow Japanese manufacturers to keep developing high technology engines that could be used by those same private teams, much as it is in in Formula One".
"For me that’s the ideal scenario for CRTs in MotoGP", Pons concluded, "And maybe a good opportunity for our team to race again inMotoGP. But we are not even thinking of trying with today’s CRT basis. It would be too difficult for any CRT team to perform at the minimum levels required to give their sponsors the exposure they need in such a commercial sport as road racing is. If you do not get good results, you do not get support from sponsors. If you do not have the budget, you do not get good results either. Engines with equal performance would give any team the chance to win in MotoGP".
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Comments
Does not have to be a spec engine but ...
It would only work if the Factory teams withdrew from racing themselves, as they could not allow a 'privateer' team to beat the factory team, so would have to supply less performant kit to the privateers and thus nothing changes. However, if they were not running a team themselves they could only benefit from providing the best possible kit, knowing that if any of their engines won then they had beaten all the other manufacturers. It would also help if the engines were sold (not leased) to the teams so they could 'tune' it themselves, rather than run what was provided by the factory, again falling into the trap of which teams were favoured by the factories. Imagine a young hopeful being given kit similar enough to the top riders such that you could compare like with like. I'm not suggesting the current 'aliens' are up front because of their equipment (although they can sometimes NOT be up front because of their equipment ...) but the playing field is not quite level.
Maybe motorcycle companies are too egotistic
In F1 Renault had no problem with Red bull beating their factory Renault team. Neither does Mercedes when McLaren beats them.
Chris
http://moto2-usa.blogspot.com/
Simple as that
Per current test times they will not be competitive -- simple as that.
One can understand the rationale -- hope might be a better word -- behind the CRT initiative. But at this point it threatens to become a joke, competition-wise. Which MotoGP really doesn't need.