Up close with the Ducati V21L MotoE bike

Paul G said:

Finally a championship is theirs!

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Vbreeze said:

… Rossi was screaming for "aluminum frames, how about an 85°V, fk give me something that turns!" while Ducati was screaming, "everything in the shops are trellis frames, 90°L engine, we want to try CF. " Disaster, largely because...
"SINGLE TIRE MANUFACTURER rule / Honda gets to win every race for a few years." Wow Marc sure looked amazing there for a while. (He's great, but on any other team, 8 would have been maybe 5, 6 - I don't know - not 8 though. No f'ing way. He had it handed to him on a platter.)

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craig bush said:

This all verified true? I love “inside baseball” info like this related to MotoGP.

Interesting that Ducati wouldn’t have been more willing to accommodate their prodigal.

Why couldn’t other manufacturers adapt more quickly to challenge Honda’s supremacy on the new tire?

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craig bush said:

This all verified true? I love “inside baseball” info like this related to MotoGP.

Interesting that Ducati wouldn’t have been more willing to accommodate their prodigal.

Why couldn’t other manufacturers adapt more quickly to challenge Honda’s supremacy on the new tire?

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Vbreeze said:

It's that 2 basic bike and tire differences - it's more complex than this but two basic huge differences between Honda / Ducati tire ideal.

Ducati, a brick with wheels on it and 1 wheel has single sided swing arm. ie. short frame parts, engine stress member connecting them. Brutal powered engine.
Honda, flexible as a fish (Samurai sword they like to say) (Watch a slow-mo of Marquez with head-shake - it's unreal how that bike flexes.) Softer power delivery.

Ducati tire needs: Flexible carcass, tough tread. They called it "the last inch of lateral suspension," came from the Flexible tire carcass.
Honda tire needs: Stiff carcass, can handle softer tread.

Swap the tires characteristics on these bikes and you have chaos, disaster, and a ....-show.
And that's what happened. Dorna drops "Single tire manufacturer rule" first to Bridgstone (disaster), then to Michelin. (Because of Dorna business model exclusive expensive streaming, sponsors have a small audience and can't justify investing millions a year if they only win sometimes. Single tire, Michelin wins every race. ya!

This is not confirmed. Just do the math, and you tell me what happened. Like magic the first year of the single tire rule, Ducati started shreading tires and couldn't turn anymore.
They lost that critical lateral flexibility and got a softer tread their engine obliterated.

Honda sells 19,000,000 bikes a year
Ducati sells 50,000. bikes a year. That's a set of 3 zero's less.

Who's Michelin going to please if Honda says, 'Hey, we'll put some Michelins on a few million of our bikes in the showroom, ya just got to make us look really good in MotoGP.'
Ducati 100% Pirelli in showrooms.

This is called "boardroom racing." The race, before the race to determine who wins. "Win on Sunday, sell bikes on Monday."
This is pretty famous in F1 as well. Some racers like Ayrton Senna used to talk about it, pretty disgusted. These days, it seems like they are all pretty tight lipped and just go with the program.
This required Ducati to pretty much reinvent their frame and handling strategy. All those no-win years starting with Rossi.
You can find loads of articles on Ducati's desperation redesign everything in those years.
Now we have aluminum frames.

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Vbreeze said:

It's that 2 basic bike and tire differences - it's more complex than this but two basic huge differences between Honda / Ducati tire ideal.

Ducati, a brick with wheels on it and 1 wheel has single sided swing arm. ie. short frame parts, engine stress member connecting them. Brutal powered engine.
Honda, flexible as a fish (Samurai sword they like to say) (Watch a slow-mo of Marquez with head-shake - it's unreal how that bike flexes.) Softer power delivery.

Ducati tire needs: Flexible carcass, tough tread. They called it "the last inch of lateral suspension," came from the Flexible tire carcass.
Honda tire needs: Stiff carcass, can handle softer tread.

Swap the tires characteristics on these bikes and you have chaos, disaster, and a ....-show.
And that's what happened. Dorna drops "Single tire manufacturer rule" first to Bridgstone (disaster), then to Michelin. (Because of Dorna business model exclusive expensive streaming, sponsors have a small audience and can't justify investing millions a year if they only win sometimes. Single tire, Michelin wins every race. ya!

This is not confirmed. Just do the math, and you tell me what happened. Like magic the first year of the single tire rule, Ducati started shreading tires and couldn't turn anymore.
They lost that critical lateral flexibility and got a softer tread their engine obliterated.

Honda sells 19,000,000 bikes a year
Ducati sells 50,000. bikes a year. That's a set of 3 zero's less.

Who's Michelin going to please if Honda says, 'Hey, we'll put some Michelins on a few million of our bikes in the showroom, ya just got to make us look really good in MotoGP.'
Ducati 100% Pirelli in showrooms.

This is called "boardroom racing." The race, before the race to determine who wins. "Win on Sunday, sell bikes on Monday."
This is pretty famous in F1 as well. Some racers like Ayrton Senna used to talk about it, pretty disgusted. These days, it seems like they are all pretty tight lipped and just go with the program.
This required Ducati to pretty much reinvent their frame and handling strategy. All those no-win years starting with Rossi.
You can find loads of articles on Ducati's desperation redesign everything in those years.
Now we have aluminum frames.

Click to expand...

Vbreeze said:

Ducati tire needs: Flexible carcass, tough tread. They called it "the last inch of lateral suspension," came from the Flexible tire carcass.
Honda tire needs: Stiff carcass, can handle softer tread.

Click to expand...