Was Vinales right?

[Skub]

Everyone,myself included gave a resounding WTF when Maverick dumped Yamaha and went to the very much unfavoured Aprilia.

Look at it all now with fresh eyes,was he right about the Yamaha being uncompetitive and because Fabio could use his alien talent to work wonders,then Yamaha acted much the same as Honda with Marquez onboard and said the bike was a winner. Now we are so far down that road,that even Quartararo can't work his usual miracles.

When Dovi went to Yamaha from Ducati as primarily a development rider,he said the Yam didn't need more horsepower,it needed more grip. It was mostly the grip off the corners which made the Yam look slow down the straight. Quartararo wanted more power,but instead of this closing the gap to Ducati,it has made the problem worse.

Looking back now at Maverick jumping ship from Yamaha,somehow it doesn't seem quite so foolish.

[Yorick]

Yup. Almost as if he had a sixth sense.

[weeksy]

Well it'd be hard to argue against wouldn't it

[westers151]

Hodgson was saying that it's not really extra power that any of the bikes need as they're all fairly similar to each other, and silly powerful. What the non Ducati bikes need is the electronics and aero to be developed so that they can make best use of that power.

Ducati have a big head start on all of this, which all started back in the day when Ducati were nowhere, and so they started looking at all the options to change that. Aero and electronics is where they looked (as well as chassis), whilst the other bikes weren't looking at that seriously.

I know Hodgson isn't a technical genius, but it makes sense. Ducati caught everyone with their pants down when the wings came out, so it also stands to reason that they've been working furiously on the electronics side to harness all of that power.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

It probably doesn't hurt that Ducati have over 30 years of experience racing bikes with fuel injection, Yamaha and Honda are possibly 10 years behind them.

[ChrisW]

And their mass damper - this article's a decent read:

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... edici-fly/

[Skub]

And their mass damper - this article's a decent read:

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... edici-fly/

Fascinating. Robin Tuluie is a very clever man.

I wonder,like F1,will Dorna ever ban this tech,or is it too late now.

[hawkati]

Dovi was absolutely correct about the yam but was ignored because fourcheeses could ride around the issue just like marquez could with the honda.
Ducati got it right by more than anything else making the bike relatively easy to ride and lay the power down. It's not significantly faster down the straights because it's mote powerful, but because it grips and drives out of corners better. Payback for all those years of struggling.

[westers151]

And their mass damper - this article's a decent read:

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... edici-fly/

Yep, just shows how out of the box Ducati have been thinking, and for how long.

The other element being discussed was how the Japanese culture of doing everything in house, and low to little turnover in engineering staff, means their thinking has been stale.

Contrast that with the European approach of using external agencies, and a high turnover in staff, and you start coming up with ideas such as the mass damper. The Japanese have a long way to go to catch up with that approach.