Pit Bull has noted repeatedly (certainly annually) how the great name of Honda has been shamed by results ever since the advent of the 800s. Ever a company of engineers, this time their seldom rivalled manipulation of the nuts and bolts hasn’t born the usual fruit.
Rossi left Honda because he felt riders weren’t valued enough; engineering is everything with HRC, and riders merely monkeys who can operate the controls. It will be ironic if it is riders who come to the rescue of the CAD-CAM crowd back at HRC HQ.
The possibility arises because of a nascent needle match between long-time incumbent Dani Pedrosa and second-year team-mate Andrea “Dizzy” Dovizioso.
Dani is still reckoned one of the Big Four in spite of claiming just two wins a year for the four seasons he’s been in the factory Repsol team. He is also backed by the powerful eminence grise Alberto Puig, who wormed his way into a management position with the team on the back of his rider, and has been causing trouble ever since.
Dizzy is a relative innocent: in only his third MotoGP year, and although his 2009 on the factory Honda was generally below expectations, he also won a race... giving him half as many victories as Dani.
Fast forward to this year. Honda has switched to Öhlins and resorted to the usual electronics to try to get back on terms, without much success at early tests. Until the last one, where Dovi put in a real dizzy lap to place third, while Dani languished in 13th.
More important than the position, opined the Italian, was being well ahead of Dani. “I want to make sure Honda don’t listen only to one rider for development this year,” he said.
There’s already a wall down the middle of the Yamaha pit, between Rossi and Lorenzo. Can it be long before there’s one in the Honda pit as well?
More Moto2 tests promise that even if the 250 replacements aren’t particularly fast, the racing will be ultra-close. And though some of the usual suspects – like MotoGP race winner Toni Elias and 125 champion Julian Simon – have gone predictably well, other names in the frame will be ones you’ve never heard of.
Not unless you’re a close follower of Spanish national racing, anyway. I mean, so far we’ve had top drawer test performances from hot American Kenny Noyes – who I had heard of, because I know his dad; and the Colombian Yonny Hernandez, who I hadn’t.
Well, I suppose if these new guys carry on going well, we will have heard of them after a bit, and deservedly. But I suspect the usual racing rule will take over: no matter how close the competition, it’s usually the same five or six guys up at the front anyway.
What a joy it’s been to watch F1 racing bite its own balls off by turning itself into an economy run. In fact, MotoGP has been doing exactly this for years. Shrinking fuel tanks (now down to 21-litres, for races lasting some 75 miles) mean that control of consumption has become of paramount importance; burgeoning electronics in turn mean that the best bikes often manage such accuracy that they run out of fuel on the slow-down lap.
Of course the riders complain when the economy programme cuts in just when they are asking for more horsepower. But even that’s better than not finishing.
There is another aspect. Force race engineers to concentrate on fuel efficiency and who knows what they will come up with? This is potentially of benefit to the whole world. It’s not often you can say that about motorbike racing.
The Hispanification of bike GP racing continues apace. Spain already controls the purse strings and provides the majority of the riders. Now there is an unprecedented fourth GP in Spain this year – at Motorland Aragon, which is inland somewhere between Barcelona and Valencia.
There are already GPs at Jerez, Catalunya and Valencia, plus one just over the border in Portugal. Add in the two in Italy, and seven out of 18 races in the so-called World Championship take place in the Latin zone of southern Europe.
Mind you, that’s not such a bad idea. The weather, the hotels, the roads, the facilities and the food are all better in Spain.
Why not let’s just do the whole series there?
