khp

During Q2 today the commentators mentioned that Lin Jarvis (head of Yamaha MotoGP) told them that Jorge Lorenzo also was offered a contract, but he was waiting to sign. Jarvis' commented that Lorenzo might be waiting to see what Ducati would offer him. Edit: Lin Jarvis held a small press-conference to answer questions. He told that Yamaha treats their riders equally, so when Jorge wanted to have a contract ready before the start of the season, they prepared offers to both riders at the same time. He repeatedly refered to the contract as 'their very best offer' to him, indicating a fatter contract than ever before. The offer has an expiry date, so Jorge cannot wait forever to decide. Naturally, Jarvis was not willing to tell the press when the offer expires. Lin Jarvis 20min Q&A with the press (paywalled, I presume): "There is not one like Rossi"

Well well well. As the very first rider, Rossi & Yamaha has this morning announced that they are signed a 2 year extension. With Lorenzo saying just a couple of days ago that he wanted to sign before the beginning of the season, but that Yamaha didn't want to do that, this must be a bit of a blow. http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2016/03/19/rossi-yamaha-confirm-2-year-contract-extension/195869 Regardless, Rossi re-signing with Yamaha was almost a given. If Yamaha at any point asked their fans and sponsors, they would be in no doubt that Rossi's name is more worth in marketing and press coverage that probably all of the other MotoGP riders combined. Rossi just turned 37, so he would be almost 40 years old when the new contract runs out at the end of 2018; I wouldn't be surprised if he then retired to either work more directly with the VR46 Academy, or fool around in Rally cars for a couple of years. Possibly both So, who's gonna be the next signer? Will Lorenzo still sign with Yamaha or will Ducati be tempting him even more? What about Marquez, Pedrosa and Iannone? Who will Yamaha sign alongside Rossi - Maverick Viñales or Andrea Iannone? Rossi stalked Viñales in FP3 for a couple of laps yesterday. I could see Alex Rins come in through Tech 3 Yamaha with an option to move him to the Factory team after 2 years if he progresses well, but less likely that he would arrive directly to the factory team. I know where my popcorn is

I've had (and crashed with) Held and have (and crashed with) Alpinestars. Both are great gloves. In terms of outright protection, my Helds comes out on top. As Hotfoot says, they can be quite difficult to find, even here in Denmark (Held is from Germany, just south of the border).

You're welcome Johnno. Andy and the UK squad did a series of videos. You'll find them here: https://www.youtube.com/show/superbikeschooluk which also includes the knee-to-knee discussion. Kai

Sounds like one of Andy Ibbot's movie/clips, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEi0HtalGpU Andy founded the UK branch of the CSS and used to be the head coach until he has a stroke about 5 years ago.

Getting older is ALWAYS better than the alternative

I'm streaming off motogp.com Cost me 100Euro for a year.

Wow, great find on the compound information rchase. I've never found that kind of information before. And yeah, there were definitely a few causes for the quick death of the SC0. Too low tarmac temperature was one of them. I did manage to reduce the wear rate on it by reducing the compression damping a lot.

Yup, that's because of the NTEC construction. The carcass of the Dunlop NTEC's are much stiffer than other tires, which allows them to run the much lower pressure. But when you change tires manually, they are much harder work than, say, the Pirellis. I don't need a tire that makes the difference between being able to ride a 0:59.x sec or a 1:00.y sec pace, when my best lap ever at that track was a 1:08.86 (set in 2011) and the best lap in 2015 was a 1:10.36. In other words, it's my sense of speed and traction that sets the limit, not the tires. Feel/feedback, consistency and progressive/controlable traction loss is important to me. Cost/wear is also a consideration, as I have a fairly limited budget. I once picked up a couple of really cheap Diablo Supercorsa SC0 rears. I very quickly realized why they were so cheap: they got shredded even at my pace in a single trackday - so not good value for money. FWIW, I put on a new set of Diablo Supercorsa SC1/SC2's at the beginning of last season and put 2 full days and 2 half days on them. There's still a couple of days left in them at my current pace.

Matthew Birt writes on motogp.com: "My 21st season in the MotoGP™ World Championship is about to get underway and one of the few things I’m willing to predict is 2016 will be the most unpredictable campaign for a long time." After the pre-season tests, I fully agree with his comments. Honda seem to be struggling compared to Yamaha, Ducati, and Suzuki. I wonder why... The 2015 engine was too aggressive and part of the 'fix' to this for Marquez was to change back to the 2014 chassis (he couldn't change the engine) as well as getting modified exhausts and swingarm. But it still leaves me wondering: what if they just pulled out the 2014 bikes and used them with the unified software and Michelins? Ducati has the '14, '15 and '16 spec bikes running in parallel. Why not Honda. I'm loading up on microwave popcorn for the first couple of races

My trouble with the KR106/108 is that they are viciously expensive. Just the rear tyre is 100EUR more than the Pirelli Superbike (285EUR vs 185EUR). The KR's are good for around ~1.0sec in laptime, on a 1m36s lap (when you're at the circuit record/national championship level). I need to shave off 10seconds before I have those kind of problems, and I'm strugging just to get back to where I was in '11

Me three. Except that it needs to be changing radius turn or a turn where you need to vary your distance to the inside curb. If I just need to follow the inside curb, I'm all good

Wow. I wish I had the time and money to jump on a plane and come over to play with you Cobie. For those of you that haven't tried CodeRACE, I can tell that it's a great experience. Gets you closer to real racing; here everyone is out to improve their laptime.

I don't understand racing well enough to say whether Marquez was dog-guarding Lorenzo in Valencia or not, but one thing was sure: Rossi was nowhere near close enough to take the points he needed to become the champion. To me, the 3 incidents between Rossi & Marquez was more of Rossi's doing than the opposite. "Rossi is your best pal until you start beating him" (Marco Melandri). As for MotoGP, I think we're in for another interesting season. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) Ducati and Suzuki upping their game. I'm hoping that Ducati can take a couple of wins this year, and Suzuki making some podiums. 2) Tires and ECU changes. From the tests so far, it sounds like some teams & riders are struggling harder than others. I'll give it the first 6-9 races before the dust has settled. Title contenders: Lorenzo & Marquez. As much as I would love to have Rossi win that 10th title, I have a hard time seeing it happening. The changes to tires & ECU changes might play into Rossi favour, if the changes could upset the Spanish Duo (but Lorenzo didn't seem phased one bit in Sepang). Dani seems perpeptually unlucky - he'll go into history as the best MotoGP rider who never won a title. Silly season: Lorenzo & Marquez to stay. Unless Dani has a stellar season, he gets the kick. I'm 50/50 on whether Rossi will retire or not. Iannone and/or Viñales hitches a Factory ride with Yamaha/Honda. If Iannone gets a Yamaha or Honda Factory ride or Dovi gets kicked, Petrucci might get a Factory Ducati ride. Smith gets passed over, stays with Tech 3. The Espargaro brothers: Aleix stays with Suzuki. Pol might switch teams, but to another Satellite team. Cal might even get the kick, depending on how many riders are coming up from Moto2 (Zarco, Rins, Lowes [goes to Aprillia], others?)

The recommended pressures for all the Superbike/Superbike Pro/Supercorsa SC/Supercorsa SP rears are exactly the same, so they should apply for the 200/55's as well. For some reason, I can only find the 200/55 profile in the Superbike Pro version on Pirelli's webpage

Great, then we can swap notes. I'll probably be going for SC1/SC2 front/rear. My experience is that the recommended pressures work really well (23-26psi front, 25-28psi rear; same as the SP's). High psi for warm days, low psi for cold days. I grabbed the tech advice from Pirelli's website, printed it double-sided on a sheet of paper and laminated it for durability. I've attached PDFs that you can print. Edit: convinced my pdf printer to print both in A4 and US letter formats. Pirelli Diablo SuperCorsa - tech advice A4.pdf Pirelli Diablo SuperCorsa - US letter.pdf

Exactly! This is what I do. I find that the tyre temp drops from ~70C out of the warmers to around ~55-60C when I return to the pits after a 20-30 minute session. With warmers, I have delibrately gone out and put my knee on the ground in the first corner, without any kind issues or warnings from the tires at all. This wasn't the first session of the day, though, but we're still talking Scandinavian temps (~20C) As for the coaches, they are in a different situation: they stop and start all the time, which means that they want a tire that heats up quickly, and has a good grip at lower temps. But ask them to hunt down Joe Roberts, and I'll guarantee you that they want slicks rchase: Are those slicks the Superbike, or the Superbike Pro?

chase, don't laugh, but I'm seriously considering to go with the Superbike over the Supercorsa SC V2's, simply from a cost perspective: The Superbikes are USD410 vs USD485 for the Supercorsa SC V2's.

So who are we going to see standing at the podium during the year? and how is the final standing going to look like? To recap, the only rider leaving for MotoGP was the 2014 Moto2 champion Tito Rabat. Up from Moto3 comes the following: 2015 champ Danny Kent, runner-up Miguel Oliviera, Efren Vasquez. Luca Marini (Rossi's half brother on his mothers side) also joins, but I have no idea how fast he is. Marini had a 2013 WC in Moto3 and one in Moto2 last year; both times he failed to score points (DNF, 21st). For reference, only Johann Zarco (8), Alex Rins (2), Sam Lowes (1), Thomas Luthi (1), Jonas Folger (2), and Xavier Simeon (1) won a Moto2 race in 2015 (besides Rabat). The same "usual suspects" also did a clean sweep of the 2nd spot. Can the 'upstarts' from Moto3 pose a threat and not just grab podiums, but even wins and take a swing for the championship?

Thread coming up on MotoGP and Moto2 tomorrow. Since all rider contracts are up for grabs at the end of the season, the silly season is going to be interesting (and long)

Nope, they didn't There's a motorcycle show at the end of the month that I'm planning to go to, so with a bit of luck (a lot, actually), Dunlop will be there and I can get a longer answer. My guess is that since I'm primarily going to ride on the streets, that they want to stick to the OEM size/profile to avoid problems. Unfortunately Steve is no longer visiting the forums, so we can't lean on him.

I managed to find a contact form for Dunlop (well hidden on their website) and shot the question off to them. They recommended the stock profile (the /50), so I'll be going with that.

Good questions guys. I went back and searched around on Pirelli's "hidepages" and finally found their Tyre Guide 2015. On page 7 is shows the attached graphic. The Diablo Superbike and the Diablo Supercorsa SC are shown in the "professsional" category (contrary to the counter-intuitively named "Superbike Pro" tyre). The text blurb on the Diablo Superbike tyre (page 8) says "Improved SC compound". I seem to remember that the Superbike & Supercorsa SC tyres is using the same compound (but my memory has been wrong before). Regardless, going to either will be a big up from the SP's, whereas the Superbike Pro's have only slightly more grip but has more longevity (according to Pirelli). Anyway, I have seen a championship winning rider ride the Diablo Supercorsa SC's at pretty mind-blowing speeds (within 1 second of the lap record).

Robert, which brand of slicks are you looking at? I run the Diablo Supercorsa SC's and last time I checked, they were actually quoted (by Pirelli) to have more grip than the Superbike slicks. This year, I'm planning to go for the Supercorsa SC v2's in 120/70 & 180/60 for my R6. I asked Pirelli in Germany and they recommended the 60 profile over the 55 for the R6 (5.5" rim width).

Hi Hotfoot, I'll be riding 90-95% on the road with the R1. I'll be on track doing some instruction 2-3 days per year, but that will be at a fairly relaxed pace. My own trackdays will be using the R6. The wear was fairly level, both sides and the middle. The main reason I'm replacing them is that they're manufactured in 2010.