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Have you attended a California Superbike School school?

Found 15 results

  1. Mat Oxley disects Maverick's riding style, along with tidbits about who different it is from Jorge's style. http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/motogp/what-maverick-s-secret
  2. MCN posted an interview with Andrea Dovizioso about the transition from Bridgestone to Michelin tyres. Dovi posted a pic of the 2 pages on twitter here. Since it's pretty hard to read, I transcribed here for everyone's reading interest: Enjoy! /Kai
  3. I watched many highsides in motogp and WSBK this year and the last but I can't remember a single airbag opening. I know they have chips to analyze the g-force change but how can it be that the airbag protection is never required in all those crashes? The hit-air vests are more widely used this year in my trackdays organization and I hear positive feedback from riders: it seems to help against neck strain, chest and also collar bone injuries.
  4. Here's very nice interview with Luca Cadalora, who is working as a coach for Valentino this year: http://www.cycleworld.com/valentino-rossi-new-coach-luca-cadalora-yamaha-motogp-team-interview/ Just proving that he's an Old Dog That Can Learn New Tricks. /Kai
  5. Even if you're a big fan of Valentino Rossi, you'd be hard pressed not to say that the race was kinda boring: Pole, fastest lap, win and led every single lap in the race. A Lorenzo-eque dominant win. Lorenzo blamed rear wheelspin down the straights for not being able to take the victory. It turns out that Rossi and Marquez also had problems with the rears spinning from mid-race. Sam Lowes took an almost equally dominant win: Pole, led from lap 2 to the end to win by ~2.5sec over Folger. Niether Folger nor Alex Rins (2nd and 3rd) had any answer to #SidewaysSam's pace and spectacular style. Zarco had an uncharacteristically bad weekend, but benefited from falling riders (and passing Tom Luthi) to salvage a 5th position at the end. In Moto3 Brad Binder did the seemingly impossible: after being demoted from 2nd on the grid to the rear for using an un-sanctioned ECU map, he still came through to win the race. Teenager Nicolo Bulega (SKY Team VR46) took pole and 2nd place by an audacious but cleanly executed pass of Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Navaro in the final corner. Surely two riders we are going to see more of in the future. Edit: Oh, and Cal Crutchlow actually finished a race, for the first time year. Even picked up championship points too!
  6. 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
  7. I think this race was probably the most exciting race of the year (so far), because it was a four-way dogfight to the line. It was totallt insane that Marc Marquez was about to take 1 second out of Jorge Lorenzo on the final lap, to catch up to him, pass him, to be ahead by 0.25sec at the chequered flag. Just WOW! In some ways, it was a very unusual race, because neither of those that went (Marquez, Lorenzo) in front were able to up a decisive gap, but were caught up again. Lots of passes at the two hairpins (Turn 4 & 10) and great stuff like Iannone passing both Rossi and Marquez, when Rossi did a block-pass on Marquez but left the door open on the inside for Iannone. Oh, and Iannone taking out a seagull with his helmet and fairing - there was a mighty hole in the fairing just over the right handlebar! Marquez and Iannone demonstrated again and again the power advantage of the Honda and Ducati over the Yamahas, as they out-dragged Rossi several times out of Turn 12 and down the Gardner Straight to the finish line and Doohan Corner (Turn 1). I guess that Ol' Santa can start preparing a more powerful engine as a Christmas gift for Rossi & Lorenzo. With Rossi missing the podium for the second time this year, his advantage over Lorenzo is down to 11 points. Not terrible, but not exactly great for him either, as it seems that every race a new contender comes and pushes him backwards in the points. In Moto3, Danny Kent really just didn't have the luck, as he got clipped twice by other riders. First time he was lucky "just" to be pushed back 4 seconds and behind Bastianini at the 16th place. He fought himself back through the pack and Bastianini to around 5th when Antonelli's front wheel clipped Kent's rear wheel, sending the both off in a big way - and taking Bastianini with them.
  8. After Silverstone, I didn't expect we would have a stranger and dramatic race. Boy, was I wrong. On the Sunny Adriatic coast, after sunshine all Friday, Saturday and even Warm-up on Sunday, it starts raining. Hello, did they move the unstable British weather from England to San Marino? I can't recall ever before seeing the riders having to change bikes from dry to wet and back to dry again in the race. Clearly, Rossi has the advantage over Lorenzo and Marquez in the rain, so that definitely played his way. It was pretty clear that Lorenzo and Rossi played a mind-game about when to pit for the 2nd time to change back to the dry bike. Rossi probably counts himself very very lucky for Lorenzo crashing out with the cold rear tire. Lorenzo, on his side, probably is relieved to find that Rossi didn't end up on the podium so he only took 11 points on him. Marquez, on his side, did a great tactical job on selecting when to change bike the 2nd time, to go on and take the win.
  9. OK Ladies and Gentlemen, please raise your hands if you've ever wondered if this thing with "The Aliens" in MotoGP is a recent thing or something we've always seen? Thank you. This only popped up into my mind a couple of weeks ago, and I'm afraid I have too much time on my hands. How possibly else could I come up with digging into data like this? The Aliens - way faster than the rest: But let's back up a few steps. I first heard the term "The Aliens" about 6-8 years ago. "The Aliens" are the top-4 guys (seemingly invariably the Honda and Yamaha Factory riders) that were just that much faster than the rest of the bunch. So just how much better are they at winning than the rest? - crazy much better. The more I look into it, the more my mind is swimming over their dominance. Consider this: the Yamaha & Honda Factory Teams has currently won the last 87 consecutive races together. They have won every single race since Casey Stoner won on a Ducati in 2010 at Twin-Ring Motegi. Yes, Casey won later on an HRC Factory machine, so that counts on the Factory side. Of the current riders, only Nicky Hayden (3 wins) and Andrea Divizioso (1 win) has ever won a MotoGP race, outside the Yamaha/Honda Factory teams. And both of them were on an HRC Factory ride at that time. But I digress... As I said, a couple of weeks time ago I paused to wonder whether this is a new thing in MotoGP. After all, in Rossi, Lorenzo, Marquez and Pedrosa we are seeing some out-of-this-worldy talents. Tonight, I say down with the help of MotoGP.com's statistics function and a bit of spreadsheet work and found myself arriving at a surprising conclusion: No, what we're seeing today is normal. On average, 4.2 riders win a MotoGP/500cc race during a season. Of the 67 seasons, 49 seasons have seen 3-5 riders winning. Only twice have a rider made a clean-sheet and won all racers in a season. Who? Giacomo Agostini. Twice (1959 and 1968). Outliers are seasons like 2000 (7 different winners, title went to Kenny Roberts Jr) and 2006 (6 different winners; Nicky Hayden's championship year), and the decade 1973-1982, where there were 5-6 different winners every year. Moto2/250cc and Moto3/125cc: So what about the smaller classes - how about them? The statistics are clear on this: there is much more fighting going on, with average 7.3 and 6.8 different winners per season in Moto2 and Moto3. Despite Zarco and Kent's dominance of their respective series, there has already been 7 different winners in Moto2 and 6 in Moto3 this year. In Moto2, only Zarco have won more than one race. In Moto3, only Miguel Oliveira have won 2 races (Kent has won 6). Looking back at the data, I rationalize this as due to the Moto3 & Moto2 classes being feeder classes of the best onto the top-dog class: MotoGP. So if you had a really excellent rider in a class, he would invariably be offered a contract in a higher class and therefore move on. So if you want to see some exciting racing and be less sure of who's going to win - MotoGP ain't the race to watch
  10. Wow, what a race and a way to re-open the championship! After the free practice and Qualifying Friday & Saturday, I was totally convinced that Rossi was dead and buried - he was just nowhere as fast as Marquez and Lorenzo. Interesting to see so many falling in the rain (including Jack Miller doing the cardinal sin of taking out his teammate in his fall), and how others just shone in the rain - I'm thinking on Petrucci especially, and Scott Redding. But the 12 points that Rossi has on Lorenzo can quickly go again, so with any luck it's going to go all the way down to the final race in Valencia. And congrats to Danny Kent for his home-soil victory. He's doing so well that he's making it look boring
  11. So we've seen Marc Marquez crash out of three races in the first half of 2015, in all three cases from second position. I went through the points to see how the championship would have looked like, if he had scored second places in those three races: Marc Marquez: 114 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 174 pts Valentino Rossi: 179 - 0 - 3 - 4 = 172 pts Jorge Lorenzo: 166 - 1 - 0 - 0 = 165 pts Andrea Iannone: 118 - 2 - 4 - 2 = 110 pts Andrea Dovizioso: 87 - 4 - 0 - 0 = 83 pts For each of the riders I've simply taken their current points and then deducted the amount of point they would have lost by Marc finishing second. Since Jorge won two of the three races in question, he would only loose a single point, whereas Iannone looses out 8 points. So, if Marc had been given the same advice as was given to Kevin Schwantz*, he would have been leading the championship by two points. Do I think that Marc's done and over this year? No, not at all. All it takes is a little crash from Rossi and/or Lorenzo to mix things up quite a bit. And there's still 9 races to go. *) "There's no bonus for being first in the first corner, being first at the end of the first lap. Only bonus is for passing the finishing line. So let's just go out there and see how things goes"
  12. Today had a very mixed bag of results for the brits: Win in Moto3, 4th place in Moto2, and 5th/DNF in MotoGP. Danny Kent showed why he's the guy to beat in Moto3, by first testing if he could get away from the pack (he could only gain about 0.4sec on a lap, which wasn't enough to avoid the others slipstreaming him down the main straight), then checking that if he was indeed 1st coming out of the final corner, then he wouldn't get passed before the finish line, and then sitting back and waiting for the pen-ultimate lap to pounce from the rear of the lead group (6th place) to slipstream to 1st by Turn 1 on the final lap, and then keep the others from passing him before the chequered flag. Brilliantly done! Sam Lowes had been struggling a bit during the weekend (he seems to been doing that for the last couple of races), but was in the lead trio of riders that got away in the front. Lowes lead the race for a couple of laps in the beginning, before falling back to 3rd place. There, Alex Rins chased him down and passed him. It seemed that Lowes was struggling to keep the pace of Rabat, Rins, and Zarco. Zarco made an audacious move on the final lap to pass Rabat, and Rabat blew it a couple of corners later to allow Rins to pass him. For Cal Crutchlow, the race was quickly over when he got a slight bump on lap 3 by Aleix Espargaro. Out and down he went. But the biggest news of the weekend was probably that the two Suzuki's qualified as one-two. Last time Suzuki qualified 1-2 was in 1983, with Schwantz and Barros. Unfortunately for Suzuki, they got out-dragged by "everyone" from the front line to Turn 1, so they had their work cut out for them. Lorenzo quickly moved to the lead, and only Marquez could follow him. Unfortunately, Marquez completely blew a corner (Turn 10?) on lap 3, and narrowly avoided taking Lorenzo out from behind, before going off track and dropping the bike in the gravel trap. This was a race with a lot of falls - 8 riders would not finish the race. By the time Marquez fell, the race was almost over. Rossi had moved past Dovizioso, but was 1.5s behind Lorenzo and while the gap moved up to just over 2 seconds, Rossi slowly reeled in Lorenzo at the end of the race, but he was only able to cut the lead to 0.88s at the finish line. This was the first time Lorenzo have won 4 consecutive races. Oh, and Rossi only leads the championship by a signle point now. Questions to everyone: - What's up with Marquez? He's had 3 DNFs in 7 races, and he's 69 points down on Rossi. That's a mighty big deficit. - Why couldn't Lorenzo ride that way the first 3 races? What changed from Argentina? - How can Rossi get back at Lorenzo? It seems that he's not qualifying well (OK, he's never been a suberb pole-setter) and his race-launch is not as good as the others, so he's creating work for himself here. I guess that previously he relied on his race-craft to pass the others, but he is now facing a couple of riders (JL and MM) who are able to ride quite as fast as him, and for the full distance. How can or should he compensate?
  13. Well well weel! It's looking to be one of the most interesting MotoGP seasons in a long while! Ducati is back at the top with their GP15 bike, which is significantly faster and has gotten rid of that dreaded understeer I understand. Dovizioso put the GP15 on pole, with the Repsol Hondas on #2 and #3 - but with Pedrosa ahead of Marquez. Yamaha seemed to be struggling with Lorenzo in #6 and Rossi on 3rd row as #8 - "as usual" I would add, since it's never really been Rossi's speciality to set the fastest pace during Qualifying, but boy is he there during the race! And and "old fart", at 36 years old! The Suzuki's aren't half-bad, but they still have a while before they are up there with Honda, Ducati, and Yamaha. Aleix Espargaro was +20sec down in the race. Aprilia, on the other hand, might as well have waited for 2016 to join. Melandri was about 4 seconds down - per lap, every lap. Marquez almost wrote himself out of the race at the very first corner (he went wide across the astroturf and turned on the asfalt on the other side to rejoin at the very back of the pack), but was able to rejoin and end 7.0sec down on the winner in 5th spot. THE RACE: The two Ducatis took off from the field together with Lorenzo, with Pedrosa not able to match their pace. Rossi clawed his way through the field from 8th and hunted the trio down to make them a quartet by Lap 8. It was only on Lap 20, when Dovi and Rossi was able to pull away from Iannone and Lorenzo, with Rossi winning by 0.17sec ahead of Dovi. I didn't check the stats, but I'm sure it's been a long while since it was an all-Italian podium last time! Marquez is by no means out of contest yet, but he sure didn't make it easier on himself this time. Looks like it was the right year I got a MotoGP season pass :D
  14. I saw this on motomatters.com (http://www.motomatters.com/blog/2014/09/17/guest_blog_mat_oxley_a_new_way_of_riding.html). It reminds me of the hook turn technique taught at the superbike school. Here is an excerpt from the original article http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/race/motogp-race/a-new-way-of-riding-a-new-way-of-crashing/ : " A new way of riding, a new way of crashing Well, it appears that whoever coined the term ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ didn’t know what they were talking about. On Sunday in Italy a middle-aged man defeated a young phenomenon for several reasons. Firstly, he’s learned a new trick or two. I can only assume that Valentino Rossi discovered his new way of riding his Yamaha YZR-M1 by reading old copies of Grand Prix annual Motocourse because he seems to have adopted the outlandish riding style of 1990s BSB champ James Whitham. The Yorkshireman rode in a highly unusual fashion, with upper body completely out of line with the motorcycle, neck craning towards the inside of the corner, as if he was literally dragging his machine to the apex. Whitham developed that style while riding Suzuki’s recalcitrant 1992 GSX-R750 and it worked well for him in subsequent seasons. And now it seems to work just as well for Rossi who’s been thinking scientifically about what he can do to close the gap on young pup Marc Márquez, riding Honda’s quicker-steering RC213V. “If you want to stay on top you must look at what the fastest riders are doing,” Rossi affirms. “I now use more of the top of my body to move outside of the bike to improve turning. I watch and I try to modify my position on the bike and the movement of the bike. I now move forward more to avoid wheelies.”"
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