New Moto2 rules published

 http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72441

I admit I'm rather new here: which series in the USA has a "claiming rule" ?

 just bob wrote:

The AMA has had various claiming rules over the years. but not too much
of that now. Claiming in the '08 rulebook is as follows:

Superbike: Fork assemblies ($7500), shock assemblies ($2500)
SSport and SStock: entire bike can be claimed for MSRP plus $1500, but
only by the AMA
Formula Xtreme: none

It's pretty clear that the GP2 rule exists to keep costs down in the
motor area, although I wonder how well it will work. If teams become
aligned with factories, and that's almost inevitable if the motors run
aren't just race shop jobs based on stock motors, then a team running a
given OEM's motor will be very reluctant to claim another's motor from
the same OEM, which will likely be the only thing that will fit in their
chassis. And the sanctioning body can't claim a motor, according to the
rules as published.

Mischief does seem a possibility, however - a motor can be claimed after
a race and must be immediately surrendered. Now imagine they're at PI
and the next weekend they're racing at Sepang. The rules allow only two
motors at a meet, although I suppose a team could be packing extras. But
what do they do in this circumstance? Take someone else's motor? Someone
elsewhere suggested the 20k euro price was set to discourage claiming,
as motors built to this spec won't cost more than half that. I have my
doubts.

Anyway, what I find interesting here is the significant effort made to
drop the motor out of the equation, by reducing costs and controlling
performance. The two main aspects of that are the obvious opening for
production motors and the control ECU. What's not clear is whether or
not FGSport have signed off on this, or if it's a trial balloon floated
in Spain that might yet collect some buckshot from somewhere in Italy.
That it's an FIM-sanctioned statement suggests the former.

So will we really have to wait until 2011 for this? I say 2010 or bust...

 
How likely is it that by 2011 (or 2012), road going 600s will already
have
- Oval throttle bodies
- Dual butterflies
- Variable length inlet trumpets
- Traction control
- Launch control
- A real 17k rev limit
- It's also not inconceivable they'll have 16.5" wheels so Bridgestone
and Pirelli can jack the price of a pack of three sticky tyres again.
Specifically so they can win in WSS600

In which case the base engine specs on this class will be below what you
and I can buy from the showroom. If there's any showrooms left.

But, and it's a big but, MotoGP2 appears to allow a free camshaft and no
restrictions that would limit cylinder head design and compression
ratio. So they could potentially be quite a bit faster than WSS600 even
before you get to the completely free chassis components. Is 3/4 of
MotoGP type power possible within this rule set? 165-170 hp?

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 Julian Bond wrote:

So does it matter? Don't variable length inlet trumpets enhance
powerband spread, and does that matter on the track? Do we really want
traction control in GP2? How advanced are the current 250 two stroke
motors? And some of this stuff can be changed as necessary. For
instance, it's pretty clear that they're going to do spec tires here, so
does it really matter if the wheels are 17" or 16.5"? And what stops
that from changing a year and a half from now when the awarded company
wants to build 16.5s or even 16s?


I can't even imagine it. The one thought I had was that one of the
MotoGP factories might build a triple based on the 200cc cylinder
technology already developed for MotoGP. But that's technology in part
based on stuff that's outlawed here. More likely will just be reworked
stock 600 motors, and one wonders if there's much value in spending a
lot of money developing motors under these performance restrictions. And
will the factories do much in the area of chassis development, or will
this be an aftermarket game?

It's a tortured necessity, these rules, designed to utilize the one
cheap, guaranteed source of powerplants, street middleweight motors. But
   WSB territoriality and GP tradition makes for rules that are
considerably less than ideal. At least they didn't buy all those dynos
that DMG have canceled orders on...

 
Yeah, but the point is that they're outlawing technology that might
easily be on production machines in the showroom by the time the series
starts. We've seen some of this stuff on 1000s this year[1]. It's not a
huge leap that we'll see that and the rest on 600s by 2011.


Take a 2009 R6, and tune it as high as it will go without going to
titanium rods. You can increase compression, flow the head, use any cam
profile you can get away with, fit bigger valves. What horsepower is
achievable in a race bike? More than WSS600, but how much more? If
WSS600 is making 140-145 now, 155 should be possible.

[1]
- Twin butterflies. Suzuki
- Variable length trumpets. Yamaha
- Traction control. Kawasaki and Ducati, Alternate maps, Suzuki
- Oval inlets. Ducati.
- 17k rev limit (marketing, 16.5 real). Yamaha

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