The Long wait is over!
So the day that MotoGP fans have been waiting for throughout the
long, dark, bikeless winter break has nearly arrived. In a few short
hours time, the MotoGP bikes will be tearing up the track in Malaysia
once again in preparation for the 2012 season. Indeed, all day Monday, a
few MotoGP bikes - the cynics and naysayers would refute that the
Aprilia CRT bike is a MotoGP bike, but they are wrong - have been
howling round Valencia, but as that is a private test it has not
impinged upon the consciousness of MotoGP fans as much as Sepang has. On
Tuesday morning, the winter is officially, finally over.
A very great deal of the interest in the Sepang test has been focused
on Ducati, a rather logical result of Valentino Rossi's dismal debut
year with the iconic Italian brand. In the break between the Valencia
test and tomorrow's test at Sepang, the Desmosedici GP12 has been
redesigned from the ground up, Ducati Corse boss Filippo Preziosi
claiming that the bike is 90% different, even though it would look
strikingly similar to the bike labeled the "GP Zero" by the press at
Valencia. To further stir the interest of the fans - as if they needed
any stirring - Ducati then failed to display the bike at their
traditional Wrooom! launch event in mid-January, leaving even more room
for speculation and conjecture. Even a private test of the bike
organized by Ducati Corse at Jerez went off without anyone managing to
sneak any photos or information out to the ever-eager press.
But they cannot hide the bike any longer. The first picture of the
redesigned GP12 was revealed - fittingly, given his role in pushing for
the redesign - by Valentino Rossi himself on his Twitter page,
and though the bike does indeed appear superficially similar, there are
a number of key differences, some highly visible, others which can be
inferred, despite being hidden behind fairings. For an overview, see the
illustrations over on Italian site Motocorse.com,
but to summarize, it's clear that much has changed. The shape of the
chassis is clearly different, hinting that the engine itself has changed
significantly. From the way the relationship between the swingarm pivot
point, the top rear suspension mount and the upper spar of the twin
spar chassis has changed, the engine is radically different.
The tank is another clue: the aluminium tank shown in the photo
appears taller than the original GP12 tank, though the difference in
color schemes between the painted red of last year's bike and the raw
beaten aluminium of the GP12 can deceive the eye. The new tank sports
two huge dents at the front, cutouts for the handlebars, suggesting that
the space underneath the tank has been occupied by something that
wasn't there last year. Given that the part generally labeled "tank" on a
racing motorcycle usually does not contain any fuel - mostly, they are
simply covers over the airbox, with the ECU located behind the airbox -
any change in tank shape means that major changes have happened
underneath the cover.
The real clue, however, is the pair of exhaust pipes peeping out
below the swingarm mounting strut. On the GP Zero, those pipes were
routed over the top of that strut, coming as they did from a relatively
upright rear bank of cylinders. On the GP 12, they have been routed
underneath the strut, suggesting that the rear bank of cylinders is at a
much greater angle from the vertical than the former design. This fits
in nicely with all of the rumors coming out of the Ducati factory -
though very few and far between have they been - that the angle of the
engine remains at 90°, but that the entire engine has been rotated
backwards around the crankshaft, in much the same manner that the
Panigale 1199 V-twin Superbike engine has been.
Putting two and two together - the exhaust routing, the higher,
shorter tank, the altered chassis shape - it seems a safe bet to
conclude that the engine has been rotated backwards, and probably by a
significant amount. The trouble with speculative mathematics, of course,
is that the result you get putting two and two together can end up
being spectacularly wrong, if you don't know the precise values of two
that you are working with.
Whether all of the work put in - and Ducati have crammed between two
and three years of normal work into a period of just a few months - will
pay off will only become apparent on Tuesday, when Nicky Hayden and
Valentino Rossi put the bike through its paces for the first time. Lap
times from Tuesday will not tell much of the story - the bike is brand
new, and much work will be needed to ensure that everything is working
correctly and to find a base setup - but the response of the riders to
the bike should be telling. After the intense work put in all last year,
and intensified over the winter, the word "Stakhanovite" springs to
mind to describe the efforts of Ducati. Whether the rewards showered
upon Comrade Aleksei Grigorevich Stakhanov will come also to Ducati remains to be seen.
Much will also depend on the tires. Ducati's biggest problem has been
getting temperature into the tires, and almost all of the changes have
been aimed at using the Bridgestone front better. To some extent,
Bridgestone is meeting Ducati halfway, as the Japanese manufacturer is bringing their all-new 2012 tires to Sepang.
The front uses a less stiff carcass than last year's tire, making it
warm up much faster, and improving the feel, something that all of the
riders complained about last year - though notably, Casey Stoner was
cagey about wanting changes, fearing perhaps, like Mick Doohan before
him, that he may lose the advantage he had over his competitors. In
Doohan's case, it was being able to handle Honda's 500cc two-stroke
screamer engine; in Stoner's, it is the ability to use the treacherous
Bridgestone front better than anyone else. Bridgestone will be spending
much time liaising with newly appointed Safety Officer Loris Capirossi,
who has already been extremely outspoken about the tires.
While Ducati was generating most of the buzz, HRC held the official factory Repsol Honda team launch
in Kuala Lumpur. Casey Stoner presented the #1 plate he will be using
for 2012, and Stoner and teammate Dani Pedrosa faced answers from the
press. The color scheme is virtually unchanged from 2011, with only the
hardcore fans able to pick out the minor details. The chassis is changed
slightly, revised in line with input from Stoner and Pedrosa at the
Valencia test and tailored to their specific requests, and both men will
be comparing the new bike to the Valencia bike to evaluate progress.
The engine of the RC213V - HRC Vice President Shuhei Nakamoto was typically cagey about capacity,
saying only that it was "larger than 800cc, smaller than 1000cc" - is
listed as producing "more than 230hp" in Honda's press information, but
given that press handouts typically understate horsepower by around 10%,
the bike almost certainly is capable of producing 250hp. All that power
will add to top speeds, Nakamoto revealing that the RC213V was topping
out some 10 km/h faster at Valencia than the 800cc, which was managing
310 km/h in the hands of Casey Stoner. Controlling wheelies will be the
biggest problem with the new bikes, but apart from that, both Dani
Pedrosa and Casey Stoner reiterated that they expected the bikes to be
similar in riding style to the old 800s, with the added torque meaning
the bike required less revs.
But HRC's budget was larger this year than it was last, Nakamoto
revealed, a natural result of the change in regulations. Nakamoto was
also careful to point out that even something like the increased minimum
weight - introduced in December last year - meant increased costs, as
the already designed bike had to be modified to comply with the rules.
Nakamoto also responded to questions from journalists about their
interest in an all-CRT championship, which he estimated to be zero.
Given that an all-CRT championship is not on the cards - only the
factories can afford the sky-high salaries of the top 6 or 7 elite
riders, and the factories need MotoGP to showcase their brand and their
technology - HRC should remain in MotoGP for a while.
Yamaha, meanwhile, were operating in the shadow of both their rivals,
though the Japanese factory did announce a new oil sponsor, JX Nippon,
confirmation of the news leaked earlier in the year.
Yamaha, too, have brought revised bikes to Sepang, modified based on
the input of Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo over the winter. For Lorenzo,
it will be the first time he has ridden a MotoGP bike since October,
when the Spaniard crashed out of practice for the Australian Grand Prix
at Phillip Island, losing the tip of his finger in the process. His
finger is now healed, and Lorenzo has been training on dirt bikes - a
dangerous pastime, given the injuries to Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky
Hayden over the winter - and he should be quickly up to speed again.
How the injured Hayden and Dovizioso hold up will also be a factor.
Both men are in Sepang, and both are aiming to ride. Hayden's fractured
shoulder blade has healed well, and Dovizioso has a plate in his broken
collarbone, but how well their respective injuries cope with the
stresses and strains of a MotoGP bike - especially a heavier, more
powerful MotoGP bike, that will be arriving at braking points at much
higher speeds, a particular problem at Sepang, with two long straights
followed by two sharp corners - remains to be seen.
At least we don't have very long to wait any more. Covers will come
off, engines warmed up, and bikes rolled into pit lane in just a few
short hours. The 2012 season gets underway properly tomorrow.
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