RE: PH2: MotoGP Spain

[SPS]

MrKipling43 said:

I'm getting really bored of this argument. This is what Grand Prix racing is. It always has been, and it always will be. It's not a sprint race.

Tell that to the likes of Clark, Moss, Fangio, Hill(the dad) Surtees etc etc!
It has most definitely not always been like it is today thank God.
Yes it's a spectacle - well it is at the start.
By the way I love the list of cars that have the carbon goodies - yeah how much each are those bad boys - circa £80K plus. Which of those cars has them as standard (the FF maybe)?

[macdeb]

BBS-LM said:

MotoGP was guarantied close fast racing. The last couple of races I watched where terrible, even the commentators sounded fed up.

There is more talking about other stuff 'during the race' than 'about the race' and it's obvious they are having to fill in the gaps. Shame really. Yesterdays race started off really exciting what with bike changes befor ethe start etc, then it was another snooze fest Moto 3 Rocks!

[em177]

I would love a 'day of champions' style after the final GP round in both series. Where all the GP riders do a race on equal Moto3 bikes, and all the F1 guys in equal GP2 cars. That would be interesting....

[Johno]

MrKipling43 said:

Johno said:

Stuff

Ultimately they're just as irrelevant to road technology as each other. But I don't see that as a problem.

So why use it earlier to demonstrate the greater relevance of F1 versus MGP then

Although I agree with your later comment, what works on track doesn't always translate directly to the OAS, but still contribues to the engineers understanding.

[srob]

KERS will filter down from F1 to road cars eventually, I think. There's a lot of wasted energy from braking.

I've said it before, I think they need to loosen the rules to allow costs to come down and thinking to come up in MotoGP. At the moment, there's such a small envelope to work within that absolutely everything has to be honed to the nth degree, and that's the only way to succeed.

I think that if the rules were loosened a bit, it would alow people to use their minds a bit more than their wallets. It worked in the past when Peter Williams made his Nortons fly, and gave the big guns a run for their money as he was such a good engineer (and rider!).

I know it would be more difficult now, but it would be nice to see some real variety on the grid and the technology does filter down, in one form or another!

[MrKipling43]

Johno said:

So why use it earlier to demonstrate the greater relevance of F1 versus MGP then

Sorry, I wasn't - that wasn't what I meant. I was just disagreeing with SPS's contention that Formula One has no impact on road tech whatsoever. You'll notice that when I said 'carbon brakes from F1' the 'from' was in inverted commas.

SPS said:

Tell that to the likes of Clark, Moss, Fangio, Hill(the dad) Surtees etc etc!

Er, ok. And they'd agree. It's Grand Prix racing - nursing the car has always been a part of it. Whether that was trying to stop a turbo motor from going bang, any motor from going bang in the Moss/Fangio days or conserving fuel, which has always been a part of F1.

It's no coincidence that people like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart were reknowned for their mechanical sympathy, while Fangio and Hill (the dad) were both mechanics, by trade.

SPS said:

By the way I love the list of cars that have the carbon goodies - yeah how much each are those bad boys - circa £80K plus. Which of those cars has them as standard (the FF maybe)?

I fail to see what relevance price has (IIRC, the FF, RS6, 911 Turbo and certainly the higher Panamera models have carbon brakes as standard) - don't forget that ABS brakes were only available on the Mercedes S-Class to begin with.

[SPS]

MrKipling43 said:

Johno said:

So why use it earlier to demonstrate the greater relevance of F1 versus MGP then

Sorry, I wasn't - that wasn't what I meant. I was just disagreeing with SPS's contention that Formula One has no impact on road tech whatsoever. You'll notice that when I said 'carbon brakes from F1' the 'from' was in inverted commas.

SPS said:

Tell that to the likes of Clark, Moss, Fangio, Hill(the dad) Surtees etc etc!

Er, ok. And they'd agree. It's Grand Prix racing - nursing the car has always been a part of it. Whether that was trying to stop a turbo motor from going bang, any motor from going bang in the Moss/Fangio days or conserving fuel, which has always been a part of F1.

It's no coincidence that people like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart were reknowned for their mechanical sympathy, while Fangio and Hill (the dad) were both mechanics, by trade.

SPS said:

By the way I love the list of cars that have the carbon goodies - yeah how much each are those bad boys - circa £80K plus. Which of those cars has them as standard (the FF maybe)?

I fail to see what relevance price has (IIRC, the FF, RS6, 911 Turbo and certainly the higher Panamera models have carbon brakes as standard) - don't forget that ABS brakes were only available on the Mercedes S-Class to begin with.

Your points about the great drivers of Grand Prix is holding no water at all. 1/ it was not F1, 2/ these guys DROVE the cars in EVERY sense of the word. Lets put this difference into sharp focus - LOOK AT AN F1 CARS STEERING WHEEL AND THEN COMPARE WITH A GP CAR OF THAT ERA!! You are not comparing like with like. It's now a real possibility that due to modern technology drivers actually slow the cars down. There have even been tongue in cheek adverts showing the cars being "driven" by remote control by F1 drivers. This is not racing as the great Grand Prix drivers understood it so don't compare.
It was a different era when machine needed man - now it's a debatable point.
Re prices of the cars with the F1 hand me downs it is highly relevant as this means that mass produced cars will never have these items as production costs would sky rocket and hardly any would get sold. No these items are for the wealthy car owner or race teams. Some very watered down tech may well filter down as stated but it will all be driven by money (even if you think the price of the car is irrelevant - lucky old you)

[MrKipling43]

SPS said:

Your points about the great drivers of Grand Prix is holding no water at all. 1/ it was not F1

No, it wasn't Formula One, but it was Grand Prix racing - long races, in prototype cars. Which is exactly what it is now.

SPS said:

2/ these guys DROVE the cars in EVERY sense of the word. Lets put this difference into sharp focus - LOOK AT AN F1 CARS STEERING WHEEL AND THEN COMPARE WITH A GP CAR OF THAT ERA!! You are not comparing like with like.

F1 drivers now 'drive' the cars in every sense of the word. They control the throttle, the brakes, the steering and the gears - what is that if it's not driving? There's no traction control and no ABS - that's all down to the drivers. Yeah they have flappy paddle gearboxes, but fundametally that's the only difference.

What you're saying is the equivalent of me saying at the dawn of car racing 'yeah, but the drivers don't power the things they're racing, so ya know... Tour De France... real racing'. Or, in other words, total bks.

SPS said:

It's now a real possibility that due to modern technology drivers actually slow the cars down. There have even been tongue in cheek adverts showing the cars being "driven" by remote control by F1 drivers.

So what? This has probably been true since the days of ground effect - it's just that there wasn't the technology to control the cars remotely by then.

I don't see what relevance this has to anything really. The drivers are still in the cars driving.

SPS said:

This is not racing as the great Grand Prix drivers understood it so don't compare.

It's exactly that. Get in a car on a start line, get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Everything else is purely academic.

In fact, if they weren't all so concerned with safety, a modern F1 driver would stand a much better chance in an old F1 car than the other way round. Such is progress.

And, if you think the drivers of the early GP era didn't have to think about 'managing' the car over a race distance, I'm afraid that you're just wrong.

SPS said:

It was a different era when machine needed man - now it's a debatable point.

Put an F1 car on a track without a driver and see what happens. I don't think there's any debate about whether or not the car needs the driver. Especially in the post-V10/TC era.

SPS said:

Re prices of the cars with the F1 hand me downs it is highly relevant as this means that mass produced cars will never have these items as production costs would sky rocket and hardly any would get sold. No these items are for the wealthy car owner or race teams. Some very watered down tech may well filter down as stated but it will all be driven by money (even if you think the price of the car is irrelevant - lucky old you)

I don't think the price of the car is irrelevant because I can afford them. Far from it. What I mean is that technology (if it's going to work properly) has to start at the top end of the market.

Alloy wheels are the perfect example - lighter and stronger than steel, much better looking. 20 years ago they were high-cost options, now you'll struggle to find a car on steelies at anything other than the most poverty-spec end of the range.

As are paddle-shift or, if you prefer 'automated manual' gearboxes. You can get those on a Polo GTi now. Ten years ago they were the preserve of only the most expensive cars.

Sticking with carbon brakes, I think the Enzo was the first road car to have carbon brakes as standard? Is that right? That was half a million quid when it was new. The '2012' 911 Turbo has Carbon Ceramic brakes as standard and that's £110k new.

I'd say that's a pretty good 'trickle down'.

[RX7]

em177 said:

I would love a 'day of champions' style after the final GP round in both series. Where all the GP riders do a race on equal Moto3 bikes, and all the F1 guys in equal GP2 cars. That would be interesting....

Most MotoGp bikes run similar hp anyway, how they get there is perhaps a different story, honda, grunt out of a corner, yamaha a more linear delivery. So in essence its the chassis thats different just like Moto3 or 2.

For the last few years though you just have 4 incredibly gifted riders that are a fraction better than the rest and usually one will prevail down to set up. Casey, Danni, Jorge and Valentino on the same bike would probably result in one finding the perfect set up and the other three dicing it out, i really dont think it would be any different to now!

[Yoda.]

Ah, good. We're back to bikes then...

[SPS]

Not for long and I apologies for sort of hijacking the thread.
I love the way you can wind some people up lol
I love the way Mr K ignores the bits of the debate that he does not like. I say again LOOK at the steering wheel on an F1 car not the bloody paddle shifts - the wheel - then look at one out of an early Vanwall/ Cooper/Lotus/Ferrari/Mercedes etc. How many buttons/controls are on a current F1 car and how much does it cost?
Mind you cost is irrelevant!
Anyway enough wind up - bored with it now but I'm sure that the journalist will have the last word!

[MrKipling43]

SPS said:

Not for long and I apologies for sort of hijacking the thread.
I love the way you can wind some people up lol
I love the way Mr K ignores the bits of the debate that he does not like. I say again LOOK at the steering wheel on an F1 car not the bloody paddle shifts - the wheel - then look at one out of an early Vanwall/ Cooper/Lotus/Ferrari/Mercedes etc. How many buttons/controls are on a current F1 car and how much does it cost?
Mind you cost is irrelevant!
Anyway enough wind up - bored with it now but I'm sure that the journalist will have the last word!

Me getting wound up? I'm not the one that was cap-locking all over the place.

Tell me which parts I've ignored and I'll happily explain exactly why you're wrong about those things too...

Early F1 cars were almost certainly just as expensive as modern ones.

[SPS]

Told you - always want the last word these journalists!

[kiteless]

In the spirit of the OP

Initially, one of the better races of the year in the top class I thought but Moto2, and Senor Marquez in particular, was astonishing.

I know some of his passes this season have been questionable to say the least, but his determination as a racer surely can't be questioned? This weekend's performance reminded me of Estoril last year when he started from the pit lane and still won the race.

I like the lad, but wonder if it's going to be a black and white season for him next year: he'll either give the establishment riders the fright of their lives, or be a ditchfinder-general (taking others with him into the gravel at the same time).