Spring Motorsports Roundup

[G.Irish]

SPRING MOTORSPORTS ROUNDUP
I'll start with F1 and see if I can at least work my way down through Moto GP and WSBK.

FORMULA 1
Formula 1 has wrapped up 6 races thus far and this is how I rate the teams relative fortunes.

^^ Stock is way up ^^ - Ferrari
The Empire Strikes Back. After looking pretty lazy in the preseason and unimpressive in the early going Ferrari has come back with a vengeance, winning 2 races at the hands of Der Schumacher and slotting in at second in the driver's and manufacturer's championships behind Alonso and Renault.

But their resurgence has not been without controversy. At the Australian GP onboard video clearly showed that Ferrari's front wing was moving in a manner not consistent with the rules which state "No movable aero devices". The FIA ordered Ferrari, BMW, and McLaren to change their wings for the next race. All complied but it seems Ferrari's wings are still flexing in manner that some teams think is illegal, notably Honda.

At any rate the controversy is still out there but the FIA hasn't taken action against Ferrari so chances are they won't be penalized (surprise, surprise).

^ Strong performance ^ - Renault
Just picking up where they left off.

< Breaking even > - McLaren, Williams
McLaren is a solid third in the championship but they haven't been challenging for wins like they were last season. Williams is doing about as well as BMW Sauber (remember that BMW was blaming Williams for the lack of competitiveness in their previous partnership) but Williams is not making any appreciable steps forward at this point, having suffered several mechanical failures.

v Stock is down v - Honda
From their preseason pace many predicted Honda to be fighting for outright wins from the start but they've seemed to fade in the last few races relative to Ferrari and Renault. The qualifying pace of the RA106 has been very strong but for some reason it has not translated into race pace. Honda will have to find another gear if they want to meet their goal of winning a race this season.

vv Out in the woods vv - Super Aguri, Toyota
It seems unfair to pick on poor Super Aguri Honda but they're still pretty slow, although they've closed the gap in speed to the next backmarker, Midland. When their all new chassis debuts midseason they should make the fight for 'best of the rest' fairly interesting.

Toyota's program seems to be in bad shape as they fired their technical director Mike Gascoyne last month and sit 7th in the championship with only 7 points. Unacceptable results for the largest budget on the grid. The bright side is that they were at least able to score a podium in Australia.

Alonso vs Schumacher
Its shaping up to be an epic battle between the youngest F1 champion of all time vs the winningest F1 champion of all time. Schumacher's victories over Alonso were a display of cunning tactics and fast laps at critical moments while Alonso's victories in their tete a tete have been due to Alonso and the Renault R26's sheer speed.

Its anyone's guess as to how it'll turn out but I'll put my money on Schumacher.

Welcome to the party Prodrive


About a dozen hopefuls put their names into the hat to become the 12th team on the Formula 1 grid for 2008. In the end Prodrive won the coveted final slot. The Prodrive organization has seen success in WRC, BTCC, Le Mans, and a few other series over the years and their president David Richards was key in taking BAR Honda to 2nd in the championship in 2004.

There are no details on what type of engine Prodrive will run but I have a few educated and uneducated theories:

1. Cosworth power. Cosworth has proven they can make a competitive engine and they could stand to benefit from supplying another team.

2. Renault power. There are rumors that Renault is looking to leave Formula 1 altogether and Prodrive could potentially just buy the whole operation from them which would give them an excellent technical base to work from. Will Carlos Ghosn keep the F1 program or sell?

3. Honda power. Even though David Richards was dismissed from his role as team principal of the BAR Honda team (most likely because of Buttongate, ask if you want to know) but it seems like relations are good between them, especially considering that another Prodrive employee (Nick Fry) is the current team principal. Only problem with this is that Honda already supplies the Super Aguri team.

Predictions, Observations, and Mockery

Biggest Jaw
Fernando Alonso

"Seriously, I know a few good plastic surgeons that could fix that right up for you"

Most Likely to Lose Job
-Yuji Ide (Super Aguri Honda) er-...wait a minute. Yep Ide got the boot after the San Marino GP where he t-boned one of the Midlands into a barrel roll. Ide never really got up to speed in F1 and has since been replaced by Frenchman, Franck Montagny. So much for the all Japanese team.
-Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault) In a few races Fisi has been embarassingly slower than Alonso and the team owner already has a young gun that he can bring in next year if Fisi isn't more consistent.
-Felipe Massa (Ferrari)...he's doing a fairly good job but if its between him and Raikkonen guess who's getting the nomex boot to the derriere...

Where Heads will roll if there aren't results
Toyota
Honda

Toyota has the largest budget in Formula 1 by a good margin and they have the least to show for it. They already said sayonara to their technical director, who else will have to fall on their sword for Toyota's lack of results?

Honda typically doesn't fire people very often (unless you badmouth the team/company like Max Biaggi of Moto GP did) but its safe to say that if a win or two doesn't come by the end of the season there might be a shakeup.

Biggest Dissapointment - Rubens Barrichello
The whole reason Honda hired Rubinho is because they wanted an experienced, known quantity that could score points and challenge for the win right away. They didn't sign him so he could take a third or half of the year learning to acclimate to the car. Lucky for him he is finally starting to perform closer to Button.

Most Likely to go KABLAMO! (engine failure)
Williams
Honda

Revised Best driver lineups
1. Michael/Felipe
2. Kimi/Juan
3. Alonso/Giancarlo
4. Button/Barrichello

Best Quote
"He has some rather large attachments." David Hobbs commenting on the size of Nico Rosberg's balls after a rather daring pass on David Coulthard. Apparently you can't say balls on TV.

Most Embarassing Moment
1. Jenson Button's chief mechanic lifting the "stop" sign too early and Button dropping the clutch with fuel hose still attached, ripping the nozzle from the hose and sending several crew members flying
2. Yuji Ide ramming his pit crewmember who was holding the "stop" board, knocking the poor guy to the ground.
3. Juan Pablo Montoya spinning on the formation lap. He would have lost his qualifying position and started last had one of the Renaults not stalled on the grid.

Most Incompetent - FIA President: Max Mosley
I can't even begin to get into how asinine this guy is but the most recent proof of his ineptitude has been his new rule that the current teams should submit their engine designs for 2008 by the end of this year. That design will be frozen from 2008 to 2011 so that no engine development can occur on the engines. This is supposedly to reduce costs. This would also be the end of F1 as we know it.

Oh well, maybe this means Le Mans will get interesting again...

[JohnC]

I disagree about Fisi getting fired, or at least I disagree about the reasons.

Giancarlo Fisichella Race Results - Retired (hyrdaulics), 1st, 5th, 8th, 6th, 3rd.

And 4th in the Driver's championship (only 3 points behind Raikkonen). He may not be the fastest out there on a consistent basis, but he's scoring points every week and he's one of only 3 drivers so far this year to win a race.

[G.Irish]

Well the reason I say that is that Flavio (Renault team boss) has a superfast young gun in Heikki Kovalainen that he can bring in next year. Montoya will also be on the market and Telefonica Movistar (Renault's main sponsor) would definitely like to have a Latin driver after losing Alonso (and Dani Pedrosa in Moto GP). If Fisi performs like he did last year I have to think that he'd be in danger of losing his ride especially since he is getting on in years now.

But as you said he won a race and got a podium last time out so if he performs more like that for the rest of the season it would cement his place on the team.

[.RJ]

Well Flavio (Renault team boss) has a superfast young gun in Heikki Kovalainen that he can bring in next year.

Who may or may not pan out... maybe he will be fast and destroy equipment, or maybe he wont ever get up to speed. Its unknown... what is known is that Fisi is scoring points every weekend and renault will win the constructor's title - not much more you can ask from your #2 driver.

[Mike]

good writeup, but did you fix the integra yet?

[.RJ]

good writeup, but did you fix the integra yet?

It'll be another 3 months before it even gets on

[ScottyB]

that was a fun read

[G.Irish]

MOTO GP

Nicky putting it together
This is American Nicky Hayden's fourth season in the Moto GP class on the Repsol Honda team. The Repsol team is Honda's official factory team and many have been very critical of Nicky since he was not able to score a win until his maiden victory at Laguna Seca last year and because he finished 8th in the championship in 2004. Nevermind the fact that he was rookie of the year in 2003 and finished a narrow third in the championship in 2005, a season that Rossi soundly dominated.

But this last race at China makes it 8 podiums in a row for Nicky (the longest active streak in GP) and he leads the championship by 12 points. Having come from the AMA Dirt Track and Superbike championships Nicky knows that the key to championships is consistency and not having any DNF's.

Right now he is the only rider on the 2006 version of Honda's RC211V. All of the other riders are riding updated 05 chassis. The 06 machine is said to be narrower and features some new engine design features (in the bottom end I've heard) which are meant to go into the 07 800 cc machine.

Through the preseason the 06 bike was actually a bit slower than the updated 05's and it wasn't expected to be competitive for the first few races of the season. But Hayden has been able to pull some strong results with it already so it should only get stronger as the season progresses.

Young Guns
This season saw 3 newcomers enter the GP class from the 250cc championship and a replacing of the guard at Honda that has resulted in a team with an average age of just 23 years old.

Most heralded of the new comers is 2 time 250 cc World Champion, Dani Pedrosa. Dani is the smallest rider on the grid at 5'3" and somewhere between 105 and 113 lbs (reports vary) and many thought he would have trouble adjusting to the GP premier class due to a lack of strength. He proved the detractors dead wrong by winning his first GP race last week in front of the home crowd at Barcelona, Spain, making him the 2nd youngest rider to win a GP race behind 2 time American champ, Freddie Spencer.

In 2005 the runner up to Pedrosa was Casey Stoner (Australia). He earned himself a 3 year deal with Honda for a satelitte ride and has already put it to good use earning himself a pole position at Qatar and being narrowly beaten out for the win at Turkey. The message is clear, don't sleep on Stoner.

^^ Honda ^^
HRC's 6 bike armada is looking like they can win back the manufacturer's championship from Yamaha and possibly unseat Rossi for the rider's championship. On a good day Rossi can/will still win but now he has at least 4 Hondas to fight with at the front rather than maybe 2 from last season. All they basically have to do is not take each other out.

^ Ducati ^
As predicted, the Bridgestone tires proved to be a big advantage for Ducati riders Loris Capirossi and Sete Gibernau at the season opener, yet they have been only average at other tracks. Ducati could legitimately challenge for the championship but not if the Bridgestones aren't competitive at more of the venues. At the venues they don't do well at they will have a gaggle of Hondas and a few Yamahas ahead of them stealing away precious championship points so its imperative that the Bridgestones are more consistent.

^ Suzuki ^
The 2006 GSV-R is a new machine signalling Suzuki's renewed committment to success in Moto GP. Its almost shameful, but until the USGP last year Suzuki's current president hadn't even visited a GP race. After seeing the poor results for himself he decided to dedicate more resources to their effort. Recently the rumor is that the head of the GSX-R project will be moving to the GP team.

Out of the box the GSV-R seems faster although it suffered an embarassing double retirement at Qatar. But Vermeulen was able to take a pole position at Turkey (finished 7th) and Hopper was able to come home 4th at China. Much better results than this time last season.

^ Team KR ^
Team KR is the currently only privateer team on the grid that manufactures their own chassis. Owned and ran by two-time GP champ Kenny Roberts Sr. Team KR had a deal last season with KTM to provide engines. This deal abruptely crumbled before the end of last season leaving Team KR high and dry. They were ominously close to folding when Honda stepped in to supply them with engines. In another stroke of fortune prodigal son Kenny Roberts Jr. was not extended an offer to re-up with Suzuki so he joined his father's team. Getting KRJR for relatively little money is definitely a god send.

With the proven powerplant of the RC211V Team KR is now arguably in the best position they've ever been to post competitive results. True to form they were able to post competitive lap times in some of the preseason tests and pulled an 8th place finish in the season opener ahead of both factory Yamahas and both Suzukis. That finish was followed by a 10th and two 13th's but still much better than their performance in recent seasons. At the very least they can beat all of the satelitte teams except for the Hondas and probably even finish ahead of Kawasaki.

< Yamaha >


The Valentino Rossi and Yamaha showed seemed to be on easy street for most of the preseason, posting even stronger lap times than he did before his dominant 2005 season. But on the last few tests a new Michelin tire caused a massive handling problem with the Yamaha M1 that has left both Rossi and his teammate Edwards in the proverbial boonies.

Rossi's unique talent has always been to ride around difficult conditions and indeed he recovered from a 14th place finish in round 1 to claim a victory in round two. But in the third race he was only able to get a 4th place after qualifying poorly and in the last race he had to push so hard from 13th place that he totally chewed up his tire to the point that he had to come into the pits to change it.

The Yamaha crew for its part has been bewildered by the handling problem which has been described as chatter but Colin Edwards has said that it is not. They tried bringing their 2005 M1 back out to test back to back with the 06, and even modifed the 06 chassis with some of the 05 geometry.

Oddly enough in the same race where Rossi destroyed his tire and had to retire, his teammate Edwards was able to score a 3rd place finish. So maybe all is not bad at the Tuning Fork race team but its certainly not going to be as easy as last year. Even so, as quickly as the chatter problem appeared, it could be solved just as quickly so watch out.

v Kawasaki v
Kawasaki is the only factory team that doesn't seem to have improved much over the off season. While their qualifying performance (a 3rd, 9th, 8th, and 4th) has improved a tick they haven't posted much better race results (7th, 11, 9th, 10) than last season. Its clear they need to take another step to start fighting for a top 5 rather than a top 10.

Most Likely to Lose His Ride
Makoto Tamada
James Ellison

Most Likely to Mistaken for a Carnival Worker
World's Largest Forehead (Sete Gibernau)
Peanut Boy (Dani Pedrosa)


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In Danger of Getting Shown up by his Teammate
James Ellison
Nicky Hayden
John Hopkins

Most Likely to Bitch and Moan
Valentino Rossi

Rossi is typically jovial and upbeat but when/if difficult weekends stack up you can expect to see a sullen and bitchy Rossi. He was already complaining about difficulty in passing countryman Marco Melandri at Shanghai:

...I passed a lot of riders but I had a battle with Marco Melandri that cost me some time. Some of his moves were quite strong, which I could understand if we were fighting for the win on the last lap but not for eighth place at that stage of the race.

Wake up Rossi, no one is going to make it easy for you whether its 1st place or 16th.

Most Likely to Crash
??? The fight at the front has a lot of different players who all want to get a piece of Rossi in possibly his last season so I think we'll see several different people crashing out this year.

I should've taken the Honda
John Hopkins
Chris Vermeulen

Both of these guys probably could've gotten a win by now even if they were riding a satelitte RCV. Luckily it seems that the team is moving forward so they might be able to score a "W" this season on the ole 'Zuke.

Most Likely to Deliver Surprise Finish
Suzuki
Team KR

In the Shadows
BMW
WCM

There is a persistent rumor that BMW is looking to join the party in 2007 and there are reports that they are already testing a prototype.

WCM couldn't find the funds this year but look for them to team up with a manufacturer for an engine deal next season.

[Ginger]

Speaking of Rossi trying to call out Melandri. Didn't he put a whole in Melandri's foot last season?

Hello, Pot? This is Kettle....

[G.Irish]

Yeah he did. Although I suppose Marco should thank him because after that he won 2 races.

[G.Irish]

WORLD SUPERBIKE

Bayliss in control
After 3 relatively unsuccessful seasons in Moto GP (2 on Ducati, 1 on Camel Pons Honda) 2 time the WSBK champion has returned to have a go at another championship. Thus far he has laid down the law and definitively defeated defending champion Troy Corser.

"The Battle of the Troys" was the story at the beginning of the season but its starting to turn into a 1 Troy show. 7 race wins in a row and it doesn't look like Troy Corser is gonna be able to do a thing about it.

Traction control
Its been somewhat of an open secret that a few of the top factory teams are using traction control on their WSBK steeds. The rules leave it in somewhat of a grey area and some teams like the (factory Ducati and Suzuki teams) have seized upon the opportunity.

Unfortunately that has left the have-nots out in the woods. At the head of the have-not contingent are the Ten Kate and Klaffi Honda teams who have the speed, power, and riding talent to win, but are at a decided disadvantage against their TC toting rivals.

The Ducati team in particular is using the electronics from their Moto GP program and the Honda teams would like to do the same (getting their electronics from the RC211V). However, Honda of Europe (and I imagine HRC) has given them a flat out no, stating that it is against the spirit of the series and that the cost would be greater than the entire budget of the Klaffi Honda team.

My take is that Honda probably refused for a couple of reasons. 1) They don't have a true factory HRC team in WSBK. Typically when they lease bikes like that they expressly forbid the leasees from dissecting or modifying the fundamental technical aspects of the bike. 2) They don't want anyone to even get a whiff of their Moto GP electronics 3) They don't want to have to subsidize any of these semi-privateer teams with several hundred thousand dollars worth of electronics and have to provide them with engineers to tune it. Apparently staffing is tight at Honda right now.

So Klaffi and Ten Kate are all but doomed right? Well, apparenrtly they've decided to pool their forces (along with DFXtreme) to buy a commercial traction control system. I guess we'll see the fruits (or disaster) of this effort sometime over the next few rounds. Probably too late to make a championship run at this point unless the "Baylisstic Missile" catches some bad luck.

Will the Zombie be a factor?

Alex Barros (or as some like to call him, the Zombie) is a Moto GP race winner who stepped down a class when he got pushed out by the new blood in GP. He's been doing a bang up job as a WSBK rookie, narrowly missing out on a win on several occasions and making amazing charges to the podium from well outside of the top ten.

If Barros could get traction control and put an end to his pathetic starts that have lost him as many as ten positions on the first lap he very well could win some races this year. But again, his chances of catching Bayliss are pretty low.

Haga?
Noriyuki Haga ever the bridesmaid, never the bride. Nitro Nori won a few races last season aboard his Yamaha France R1 but this season so far he's failed to crack the bubbly on the top step of the podium, but he's been tantalizing close. Recently he's been the only consistent challenger to Troy Bayliss's throne.

Haga is easily the most exciting racer in all of Superbike racing with his close and daring passes that mere mortals wouldn't dream of attempting but in the past he crashed a lot so he never won a championship. This year he's looking consistent but will he be able to string together some wins?

Jerk behavior
Ruben Xaus

Xaus gets into another rider during practice, Xaus flips out:
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Biggest Dissapointment
Lorenzo Lanzi

Lanzi got a little factory support at the end of last season since Ducati Corse riders James Toseland and Regis Laconi weren't doing much of anything and he was able to win two races. Because of that performance Ducati gave Lanzi a factory ride for 06, and Lanzi has proceeded to look like crap.

Most Likely to Lose Job
Lorenzo Lanzi

In the shadows
Aprilia
KTM
MV Agusta

Supposedly Aprilia is developing a V4 1000cc sport bike to re-enter the fight in WSBK using some of the lessons they learned in their brief stint in Moto GP. Don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing because the Aprilia Cube was a bike that tossed its riders over the handlebars more often than anything else on track...

KTM has been hemming and hawing about building their RC8 concept bike for years now but it looks like they finally have the capital to go ahead and produce it. It will be a 1200 cc V-twin reportedly putting out power that would be competitive with the Japanese liter bikes so look for 170 hp. With the rumored switch to a 1200 cc displacement limit for V-twins in WSBK they're rumored to be taking a gander at entering the championship.

Last but not least, Italian exotic moto manufacturer MV Agusta is supposedly looking at returning to racing (they were very successful in GP racing back in the day) with an updated and pumped up with 'roids version of their F4 1000. It remains to be seen whether they will be blown into the weeds with a bike that was designed almost 10 years ago.

(MV Agusta F4 Veltro and KTM RC8 pictured below)

[.paul]

G, do you work at all?

[G.Irish]

I don't make these posts in one sitting, I'll make an outline and save it as a draft and flesh it out over the course of a couple of days.

[Mike]

probably couldn't hurt to make them articles on the front page. you know, the one that none of us ever go to?

[ViPER1313]

Better yet: the Articles page?

[G.Irish]

SPRING MOTORSPORTS ROUNDUP
I'll start with F1 and see if I can at least work my way down through Moto GP and WSBK.

FORMULA 1

Predictions, Observations, and Mockery

Most Likely to Lose Job
-Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault) In a few races Fisi has been embarassingly slower than Alonso and the team owner already has a young gun that he can bring in next year if Fisi isn't more consistent.
-Felipe Massa (Ferrari)...he's doing a fairly good job but if its between him and Raikkonen guess who's getting the nomex boot to the derriere...

Fisi has gotten a contract extension so I was wrong there. He has alluded to having a Finn as a teammate next season and that means one of two people. GP2 star Heikki Kovalainen or McLaren ace Kimi Raikkonen. I'm sort of halfway hoping its Kimi so that we can see exactly how much of Alonso's success was the car.

Where Heads will roll if there aren't results
Toyota
Honda

Honda typically doesn't fire people very often (unless you badmouth the team/company like Max Biaggi of Moto GP did) but its safe to say that if a win or two doesn't come by the end of the season there might be a shakeup.

The axe has fallen and there's a bit of blood to be mopped up. Last week Honda F1 announced that they were restructuring the team. Technical Director Geoff Willis was being relieved of his trackside duties to spend more time getting the wind tunnel up to speed (Willis has a Ph.D in Aerodynamics), while at the same time long time Honda man Shuhei Nakamoto (Honda Racing Development Engineering Director) was appointed Senior Technical Director above his head. After that development Willis decided to resign.

Nakamoto is a career Honda guy, working almost 20 years in HRC in the 250 and 125 GP championship programs and later being the project leader for the championship winning RC45 and RC51. Personally I don't know if he'll be able to turn the team's technical fortunes around but he's certainly got a lot of success behind him.

No word yet on further personnel changes at Honda but I wouldn't be surprised to hear more in the intervening weeks. I expected this, but damn, not so soon.