Can only agree Pagik - I'd also love to see Vale win with the Duke, but they seem to have an massively petulant Italian in the way. As JB and the team have said, it's the total lack of updates that appear to come once a major iteration is out.
When you compare that to what HRC, and even Yamaha do, it's just not good enough at this level, it's something Casey also complained about.
And yes, they need to drop their "it's the way Ducati do it" and do what a modern MotoGP team does to win. Last time I looked the Repsol Fireblade was still a very desirable bike, yet it has a totally different engine configuration, sure a few concepts will have came over from the GP bikes, but the reality is it's sod all like the actual HRC bike.
So why, why on this earth do Ducati have to have an L4 in that bike? They don't even have an L4 in a roadbike, they've only got an L2 effectively, but still, if they'd literally drop a V4 in - even as an experiment to see if it'd help them, they could then choose.
Unfortunately in a world of Spec tyres, you simply have to build a bike to the tyres, and if they cannot get it working with the L4, it should be dropped, otherwise they'll just keep running in circles. At the latest Mugello test, they've started moving around lots of smaller parts - positioning of electronics, airbox, fuel tank - OK I say smaller! - If they can get it to work great, if not, then that's it really, personally I think they're going to struggle, it's such a major - and heavy part of the bike that even in moving things around, they're simply working around the problem, and in engineering, a bodge is never as clean as a solid design.
As it stands, I think Vale will either be seriously considering a move to Yamaha, with the negative being will he still beat a super consistent, in the form of his life Jorge. Or does he stay and hope they can get this bike working as it should.
Time will tell. Brno is in a month, we should all know by then.
Posted: 26/07/2012 at 10:58
