Moto1 - Page 4

 

Julian Bond wrote:

Suzuki's best result of the year was at PI, Neukirchner finishing 2nd
and 0.032 second behind Haga in race one, and his race fast lap was a
1:32.877. Vermeulen finished last at PI in MotoGP and his best lap was
a 1:32.815, and Capirossi, who finished 12th, had a 1:32.555. Kagayama
finished 3rd in that race and did a 1:32.801, but Corser did race fast
lap, at 1:32.726. The MotoGP fast lap was Rossi at 1:30.085.

Now PI is a very fast track, and acceleration probably means less
there than almost any track, with it's flowing nature. But peak
horsepower probably does matter more than a lot of places. It's also
the one place where the WSB track record actually bested the 500
record at one point, about ten years ago, IIRC.

So this shows that under optimal conditions (PI) the Suzuki superbike,
which has been very fast, can lap almost as fast as the Suzuki GP
bike, which hasn't been nearly as good, relatively-speaking. Even
though the tires aren't as good. But what happens when the GP bikes
move back to 1000cc? In 2006 the fastest warmup lap (the race was wet)
was Stoner's 30.32, and qualifying best was a 29.02 by Hayden; in 2007
at 800cc Stoner's best in the warmup was a 30.86 and the Q best was
Pedrosa's 29.20. Even this year's warmup best was a 30.8, and top
qualifying was in the 30s (with no Q tires). That leads me to the
conclusion that the new 1000s will make a jump there over the 800s.

That said, the current WSB regs on motor modification are notably more
restrictive than what almost anyone would do with a MotoGP motor
derived from a production motor, even at relatively modest cost. I
wouldn't be all that surprised if a decent rebuild could get one up to
240-250 horsepower or very close to that.

 


You'll have to go and find it. But an Aus National championship race ran
at the MotoGP. The fastest Suzuki in that race ran a faster lap than the
fastest Suzuki in the MotoGP race. Or maybe it was practice. Or
something.

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On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:16:34 -0800 (PST), Mark N


Yep, that's my view.  Which means, I think, that a privateer team
could get on the grid with a bike good enough to challenge for the top
10, with a budget probably less than that required to lease a
satellite bike from a factory.  And, perhaps more importantly,
complete autonomy - such a team could run whatever kit they wanted.

I think it could be promising.  But it requires a few things to fall
into place yet.
--
Champ
neal at champ dot org dot uk

 

Champ wrote:

I think the two biggest barriers for such a team, once you get beyond
the budget to build this machine, are having a rider good enough to
run that high and to have an electronics package sufficient to result
in that sort of performance. Really those two things come down to
money as well, but any independent team with that sort of budget is
almost certainly going to be running a satellite factory bike or maybe
a factory lease prototype motor in their own chassis (like KR). So the
basic performance of the motor probably won't be that much of an
issue, you give this sort of team a factory motor (sans electronics)
and they still end up at the back end of the grid. Which is why it's
worth opening things up for these kinds of efforts, it's just ends up
with the inevitable impact of expanding the grid, last place is lower
in the order than it used to be...