SPOILER! Valencia MOTOGP
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This season is done and dusted.
Can't wait for first testing on Monday.
Interesting read on motomatters about the KTM lack of mechanical grip. Hope they can sort it easily and quickly.
Can't wait for first testing on Monday.
Interesting read on motomatters about the KTM lack of mechanical grip. Hope they can sort it easily and quickly.
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22,072 Posts
I don't know what people expected KTM to do on they're first outing, but I think new Dad Mika is doing a great job, improving by almost a second in every session, and not breaking down. That's actually better than what Suzuki did in their 1st stab in realistic testing.
Jorge is a machine when thing go his way, I think it's going to be hard for him to get away from MM though, and Mavrick seems to have good pace too. Hope it's a good race.
I'm curious to see how the KTM Moto 2 bike will be doing next year, anybody seen it yet ?
Jorge is a machine when thing go his way, I think it's going to be hard for him to get away from MM though, and Mavrick seems to have good pace too. Hope it's a good race.
I'm curious to see how the KTM Moto 2 bike will be doing next year, anybody seen it yet ?
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Q1 & Q2 Results
Amazing pole lap and pace by Lorenzo. Staggering!
Great effort by Marquez. In camera close-ups one could see how much he was pushing. And generally very enjoyable qualifying. It seems temperature and tires helped riders to up the ante.
To anyone that has access, watch again and again the slow motion shots of Marquez through turn 13. In FP2(hope I remember correctly) especially.
That is pure art! It is godlike!
Amazing pole lap and pace by Lorenzo. Staggering!
Great effort by Marquez. In camera close-ups one could see how much he was pushing. And generally very enjoyable qualifying. It seems temperature and tires helped riders to up the ante.
To anyone that has access, watch again and again the slow motion shots of Marquez through turn 13. In FP2(hope I remember correctly) especially.
That is pure art! It is godlike!
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Hi Nes. I watch and record EVERY practice, qualifying session and race, all year. It's great in HD on Foxtel. I remeber Stoner going around that last bend on the Ducati, it was amazing for the day, MM is a spectacular rider to watch when he's really trying, Lorenzo is so smooth it looks almost boring.
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Hi Dons. Yes I agree and remember Stoners style. Lorenzo, as the commentators were saying, one looks at him and thinks he will be 12th or something. But when the time comes in...textbook smooth.
In Spanish Academies they show videos of Lorenzo as a reference to teach how to go fast. Always reminding pupils that there is no "correct" way to go fast on a GP bike(as I'm sure you know) or any bike fast enough to permit a wide range of skills/style applied.
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Marquez to take RC213V for a spin with the '49 AJS Porcupine
The most recent winning bike in the premier class to join the first – from 1949 – in a lap of the Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana
In an incredible one-off event to mark the end of the 25th anniversary celebrating the collaboration between the FIM, Dorna, the MSMA and IRTA, Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) will be joined by the AJS Porcupine E90 – the winning bike of the first 500cc World Championship in 1949 - in a special lap of honour at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, with the legendary machine ridden by Northern Irishman Sammy Miller.
Living legend Miller is an eleven-time British Trials Champion, twice European Trials Champion, and a multiple World Championship podium finisher. The Northern Irishman now presides over one of the biggest collections of motorcycles in the world in the Sammy Miller Museum – the home of the AJS Porcupine E90.
The Honda RC213V ridden by Marquez will share the lap of honour with the bike taken to that historic first premier class title by Les Graham in 1949, proving the perfect final piece in both a history-making 2016 season and the 25th anniversary celebrations - bringing together the first and the most recent winning motorcycles in the premier class of Grand Prix racing.
Source: MotoGP
The most recent winning bike in the premier class to join the first – from 1949 – in a lap of the Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana
In an incredible one-off event to mark the end of the 25th anniversary celebrating the collaboration between the FIM, Dorna, the MSMA and IRTA, Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) will be joined by the AJS Porcupine E90 – the winning bike of the first 500cc World Championship in 1949 - in a special lap of honour at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, with the legendary machine ridden by Northern Irishman Sammy Miller.
Living legend Miller is an eleven-time British Trials Champion, twice European Trials Champion, and a multiple World Championship podium finisher. The Northern Irishman now presides over one of the biggest collections of motorcycles in the world in the Sammy Miller Museum – the home of the AJS Porcupine E90.
The Honda RC213V ridden by Marquez will share the lap of honour with the bike taken to that historic first premier class title by Les Graham in 1949, proving the perfect final piece in both a history-making 2016 season and the 25th anniversary celebrations - bringing together the first and the most recent winning motorcycles in the premier class of Grand Prix racing.
Source: MotoGP
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KTM problems
Notes from Trackside
Having been out trackside during FP1, to see the bike in the flesh, it was surprising to see Kallio finish so far down the timesheets. For part of FP1, Kallio was caught in the middle of a pack of six or seven riders, and managed to hold his own.
Watching from Turn 12, where you can see the bike braking in a straight line, turn in for the right hander and then being flicked hard left for the start of the endless and glorious Turn 13, the KTM RC16 looked pretty good.
It was stable in braking, and turned in well for Turn 12, though it was obvious Kallio was having to use a lot of force to get the bike back over for Turn 13. Whether that was the bike or Kallio, however, it was hard to say.
I then moved to Turn 13 and round to the entrance to Turn 14, watching the bikes as they stream down the hillside, heeled hard over and the rear stepped out.
The KTM looked solid through Turn 13, though it would occasionally show a spot of blue smoke from the rear tire, a sign it was being worked too hard. That smoke had been spotted by Bradley Smith, who is due to take his place on the bike on Tuesday morning.
It meant the rear was spinning up too much under acceleration, he explained.
Rear Grip vs. Wheelspin
That was exactly what Mika Kallio complained of when he spoke to us on Friday afternoon. “For some reason there was no grip with the rear tires. Even if we changed different settings, and the soft and the hard on the rear, I always faced the same problems,” Kallio said.
“It was spinning and basically I lose the contact of the rear going into the corner. It never comes back so we lost a lot of time there. I started to lose the grip at the point when I was flicking into the corner. Then when I was picking up the bike I lost too much time there.”
The lack of rear grip had come as something as a surprise to Kallio, after he had been eight tenths quicker at a test here back in October. “We were here one month ago and we were faster,” he said.
“That’s why we were expecting more. We are not too far from the temperature when we tested. In the afternoon we realized that it was the same. I think there is something else at the moment.”
One sign of the problems KTM was having was the fact that Kallio’s top speed was well below what was expected. Kallio was third slowest in top speed along the straight, clocking around 312 km/h, or 10 km/h slower than Andrea Iannone on the Ducati.
As the engine is not short of horsepower, the low top speed was being caused by a lack of acceleration, rather than anything else.
Stop Spinning
That issue had taken KTM rather by surprise, but this is basically the difference between testing and racing. Paul Trevathan, crew chief to Kallio and from Tuesday, for Pol Espargaro, explained they hadn’t been expecting this to be a problem, as it had never been an issue they had been concerned with during testing.
“It’s clear from when you start riding with the other guys, that it wasn’t a point that we were so aware of,” the New Zealander said.
The issue was not one of electronics, Trevathan said, but rather one of basic chassis design and geometry. “It’s not actually the electronics side, it’s more mechanical, and we have to figure out a way of getting around that in a short period of time,” he said.
“Mechanical grip, the feeling from us and him is that it’s this, so we have to try to fix this. How to load the tire in a different way and try to understand it. But again, it’s something that we hadn’t realized that it was a problem. We’ve been fine when we’re by ourselves.”
Good Engine, Good Braking, & Now the Details
There were also plenty of positives to be taken from the day, both Kallio and Trevathan insisted. The engine character was good, and it produced plenty of horsepower.
Having an engine with a manageable power delivery also meant less work for the electronics, Trevathan said. But KTM still had work to do, to help the bike turn in a little better.
The difficulty Kallio had been having flicking the bike from right to left had not been entirely down to Kallio’s size, the Finnish rider one of the smaller, lighter riders on the grid.
“There comes a point that there is a limit of what a rider can do by leverage. And the bikes are heavy. They’re not as light as people like to think,” Trevathan said.
“I think it’s still a point we have to work on, it’s not the strong point of the bike, absolutely, so we have to find ways around it. But when you’re smaller, these things are difficult, especially at high speed.”
Kallio ended the day three seconds off the pace, and eight tenths slower than he had been during the test a month previously. He had expected to be two seconds slower than the fastest riders, as he had been at the test in Austria.
“OK, it’s a completely different track, but I think this is the minimum that we need to do,” Kallio said. “We need to improve one second to be close to the others.” Qualifying on Saturday could be a bit of a problem, but race pace should be much closer.
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/motogp/friday-motogp-summary-at-valencia-growing-pains/
Notes from Trackside
Having been out trackside during FP1, to see the bike in the flesh, it was surprising to see Kallio finish so far down the timesheets. For part of FP1, Kallio was caught in the middle of a pack of six or seven riders, and managed to hold his own.
Watching from Turn 12, where you can see the bike braking in a straight line, turn in for the right hander and then being flicked hard left for the start of the endless and glorious Turn 13, the KTM RC16 looked pretty good.
It was stable in braking, and turned in well for Turn 12, though it was obvious Kallio was having to use a lot of force to get the bike back over for Turn 13. Whether that was the bike or Kallio, however, it was hard to say.
I then moved to Turn 13 and round to the entrance to Turn 14, watching the bikes as they stream down the hillside, heeled hard over and the rear stepped out.
The KTM looked solid through Turn 13, though it would occasionally show a spot of blue smoke from the rear tire, a sign it was being worked too hard. That smoke had been spotted by Bradley Smith, who is due to take his place on the bike on Tuesday morning.
It meant the rear was spinning up too much under acceleration, he explained.
Rear Grip vs. Wheelspin
That was exactly what Mika Kallio complained of when he spoke to us on Friday afternoon. “For some reason there was no grip with the rear tires. Even if we changed different settings, and the soft and the hard on the rear, I always faced the same problems,” Kallio said.
“It was spinning and basically I lose the contact of the rear going into the corner. It never comes back so we lost a lot of time there. I started to lose the grip at the point when I was flicking into the corner. Then when I was picking up the bike I lost too much time there.”
The lack of rear grip had come as something as a surprise to Kallio, after he had been eight tenths quicker at a test here back in October. “We were here one month ago and we were faster,” he said.
“That’s why we were expecting more. We are not too far from the temperature when we tested. In the afternoon we realized that it was the same. I think there is something else at the moment.”
One sign of the problems KTM was having was the fact that Kallio’s top speed was well below what was expected. Kallio was third slowest in top speed along the straight, clocking around 312 km/h, or 10 km/h slower than Andrea Iannone on the Ducati.
As the engine is not short of horsepower, the low top speed was being caused by a lack of acceleration, rather than anything else.
Stop Spinning
That issue had taken KTM rather by surprise, but this is basically the difference between testing and racing. Paul Trevathan, crew chief to Kallio and from Tuesday, for Pol Espargaro, explained they hadn’t been expecting this to be a problem, as it had never been an issue they had been concerned with during testing.
“It’s clear from when you start riding with the other guys, that it wasn’t a point that we were so aware of,” the New Zealander said.
The issue was not one of electronics, Trevathan said, but rather one of basic chassis design and geometry. “It’s not actually the electronics side, it’s more mechanical, and we have to figure out a way of getting around that in a short period of time,” he said.
“Mechanical grip, the feeling from us and him is that it’s this, so we have to try to fix this. How to load the tire in a different way and try to understand it. But again, it’s something that we hadn’t realized that it was a problem. We’ve been fine when we’re by ourselves.”
Good Engine, Good Braking, & Now the Details
There were also plenty of positives to be taken from the day, both Kallio and Trevathan insisted. The engine character was good, and it produced plenty of horsepower.
Having an engine with a manageable power delivery also meant less work for the electronics, Trevathan said. But KTM still had work to do, to help the bike turn in a little better.
The difficulty Kallio had been having flicking the bike from right to left had not been entirely down to Kallio’s size, the Finnish rider one of the smaller, lighter riders on the grid.
“There comes a point that there is a limit of what a rider can do by leverage. And the bikes are heavy. They’re not as light as people like to think,” Trevathan said.
“I think it’s still a point we have to work on, it’s not the strong point of the bike, absolutely, so we have to find ways around it. But when you’re smaller, these things are difficult, especially at high speed.”
Kallio ended the day three seconds off the pace, and eight tenths slower than he had been during the test a month previously. He had expected to be two seconds slower than the fastest riders, as he had been at the test in Austria.
“OK, it’s a completely different track, but I think this is the minimum that we need to do,” Kallio said. “We need to improve one second to be close to the others.” Qualifying on Saturday could be a bit of a problem, but race pace should be much closer.
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/motogp/friday-motogp-summary-at-valencia-growing-pains/
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Thanks Nes. Lack of speed down the straights is something that a lot of people (even here on the forum) can't understand, it's like have a sprint race against someone that's allowed to start a split second before you, in running shoe's and you're barefoot..haha.
I think KTM will do fine next year.
Thanks for the pictures.
I think KTM will do fine next year.
Thanks for the pictures.
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