The second day of the special CRT test at Sepang, laid on to allow the teams using the brand new Magneti Marelli spec ECU, was as beset by problems as the first day. If technical problems and a lack of parts had been the bane of day 1, it was the weather which dogged the teams, though technical problems persisted. Heavy rain in the morning meant that only Danilo Petrucci went to put in a few laps before running into an electrical issue with a coil left the engine running on two cylinders. The rain stopped in the afternoon, but the track remained wet, leaving the riders present to do only a few laps.
Petrucci ended the day fastest - though his best time of 2'23.546 is fairly meaningless at a track where the race lap record is 2'02, and the pole record 2'00 - but frustrated at having not been able to get much work done. The electrical problems left him stranded in the pits in the morning, while teammate Lukas Pesek took the only Magneti Marelli ECU the team currently has at their disposal in the afternoon. Though Petrucci could have gone out with the old Bosch electronics for his BMW Suter (the bike being unchanged), it was not judged worth the effort. "Using the old electronics is not real work for us," Petrucci told MotoGP.com. "We want to find the real problem with the new ECU, to be ready for the next tests." For Pesek, his laps were mostly about getting comfortable on the bike, not having ridden a Grand Prix machine for two seasons. Pesek needs time to learn the chassis, the engine and the tires, more than the electronics.
Learning the tires was difficult. Nobody put in any laps on slicks, the wet track forcing everyone to use rain tires. The teams also had to deal with technical issues, as they continued to work on wiring harness issues which Hector Barbera, for one, had suffered with. Barbera ended the day with 20 laps under his belt, the issues being resolved towards the end. Barbera's Avintia Blusens teammate Hiroshi Aoyama decided against putting any laps on Monday, the Japanese rider not wanting to risk further injury on his damaged wrist.
Over in the Forward Racing garage, Colin Edwards and Claudio Corti also managed to get in a few laps, 7 for Edwards, 8 for Corti, after the team finally received all of the new parts they needed to complete the bikes. But Forward, too, struggled with set up issues with the spec ECU.
Tomorrow, the CRT teams will be joined by the rest of the MotoGP grid, as all of the riders take to the track for the first official test of 2013. The CRTs will be able to continue their work without the full glare of publicity, as the attention of the fans and the media turns to the genuine contenders for 2013. With Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa, Marc Marquez, Nicky Hayden, Andrea Dovizioso, Cal Crutchlow and Stefan Bradl on track, the real battle of 2013 commences.
Comments
"... teammate Lukas Pesek
"... teammate Lukas Pesek took the only Magneti Marelli ECU the team currently has at their disposal ..."
Just wow.
Have to agree with the above
Have to agree with the above all the rule changes mean zilch if you can't come up with the goods.....Are we seeing now just how serious dorna are about the crts??
An online forecast has rain all week.. Do we know if that's a fairly common occurance at this time of year??(not in england....) I realise you can't legislate for the weather but that doesn't really offer any comfort..:-(
Real battle commences
Against the elements again,all week long according to the weather forecasts. It looks like the teams have a beautifull opportunity to refine wet weather setups at Sepang 1 and thats about it.
May aswell go for it instead of sitting in the garage. May aswell smoke cigarettes whilst waiting for the weather to play ball. May aswell bring the tobacco giants back. Their funding could see testing during the winter happen where the sun is generally gauranteed to shine during the off season.
Let's face it,its not like MGP is a green sport even with the idiotic fuel limits that suggest it is. Does most of the rubber come from felling in Malaysia or Brazil ?
Extra Set-Up Time?
At this point, the CRT's aren't just setting up a new electronics system, they are also partially developing it at the same time. Once you realize how the electronic part of MotoGP works then you start getting a grasp around why it's so important. The time it takes to get a base "set up" with the electronics of a modern GP bike is almost as much time as it takes to set up the rest of the bike, including engine, brakes, and suspension. The CRT teams have been given the dough, now they gotta bake it into something. It's gonna take a little bit of time, but by mid season they should have things pretty much figured out.
Though it will be a definitive step forwards, a CRT bike won't be truly competitive until they allow it to weigh less, and use more fuel and engines. The fact that the state of tune of a CRT engine is less advanced than a Superbike because of the engine rules is ridiculous. This is the premier class, and as such, it should be the best version of an RSV4 motor in that ART machine.
it is a joke, yes ?
Edwards and Corti finally received enough electronic parts so they could get both bikes running, on the 2nd day of the test !!
Petrucci and Pesek only have enough electronic parts to get one bike running between them !!!
Barbera is battling wiring harness issues !!!!!!
What a total farce, these are race bikes and teams, they should have been given the electronic package end of last year to enable them to have everything installed on the bikes and at this stage, already clocked up 100's of hours of Dyno time sorting out a baseline at the very least
what a joke, worst part being that Dorna are now in charge of Superbikes now as well, just a matter of time before they stuff up that brilliant series as well
It beggars belief that a
It beggars belief that a business as big as Dorna can be so consistently crap at running a professional sport, CRT was a terrible idea to begin with, it now has all the status of a bad joke.
For the riders this must be heart-breaking, and for those who have been brave and foolish enough to plough money into this it must be galling indeed.
Grand Prix is now like the wild tiger, a once mighty beast facing extinction.
Unless and until the dead hand of a Spanish TV guy is prised off the throat of the sport, we are watching the slow murder of a once-great thing.
RIP GP.
In reply to It beggars belief that a by Locky
People still don't understand
People still don't understand the control the MSMA had over the technical regulations that caused the problems leading to CRT? CRT bikes aren't replacing anything, the grid would be down to around 12 bikes without them. Even if people think the CRT bikes aren't worth watching, they've been a success simply by forcing Honda and Yamaha to even consider lower cost options other than leasing satellite bikes.
In reply to People still don't understand by dave_m
Let's not look past Dorna and Ezpeleta
They have been consistently out maneuvered by the MSMA. As CEO, Ezpeleta's job is to look down field and anticipate problems. Unfortunately, he has none and ends up making poor decisions because of panic.
He needs to go. We've been saying as much for years.
In reply to It beggars belief that a by Locky
Agreed
I've heard many excuses for CRT, some of them superficially reasonable. Dorna's exclusive license for grand prix racing from the FIM is contingent upon a minimum grid size that the manufacturers were no longer fulfilling. But none of these ignore how Dorna got the series into this situation in the first place and needed to resort to these desperate contraptions deceptively named CRT. (POS may have been a better choice?)
Also, being quick to blame the MSMA and their previous pseudo-monopoly on technical regulations ignores Dorna's ultimate authority that they deferred to the MSMA contractually.
Ultimately CRT is a qualitative reduction in the prestige that is grand prix racing. Both Dorna's long-term planning and short-term operations are flawed and as long as audiences and authorities are willing to accept their paper over the cracks of a busted business we can expect more devaluations in the quality of the sport.
Can't believe!
What? Did the ECU came without instructions and totally empty, not even middle-of-the-ground calibration values? What other kind of inputs does it has? Suspension sensors? Gyroscope data? Accelerometers? Must be pretty cool to work with those kind of toys :)
Now a harness problem, that's really amateurish, I can't believe a serious effort will have those kind of problems, that sounds to me like a club rider in a third world racing series.
In reply to Can't believe! by Luiggi
Gyroscope data? Accelerometers?
Gyroscope data? Accelerometers? Must be pretty cool to work with those kind of toys :)
'Diablo super biker' app on andriod & iPhone.
Not quite Magneti Marelli, but for analysing your ride/drive, to the office.... nice :-)