Stoner to Honda

[Sidewalk]

Pedrosa...still came up short.

Sorry, I thought it was funny.

 

[House]

You didn't really read my post carefully. My point was that Pedrosa, while perhaps not getting the treatment Rossi did, still had the full factory effort behind him and so disregarding the stats is just silly. The stats require context to be information otherwise it is just data. However, I think the context for the stats I showed is pretty well set and I don't think that there is any reason they can't stand on their own. Introducing what-ifs based on a total lack of information such as the reasons for the Stoner/Ducati performance is wasted effort since we cannot possibly understand the causes.

So anything you can't quantify statistically just doesn't matter? Well, okay...

There's no arguing with the basic stats, Pedrosa hasn't performed at the same level as Doohan and Rossi while at HRC; hell, in certain respects he hasn't performed at the same level as Criville and Hayden, even though he was their clear #1 and the focus of their efforts while they weren't. But until one looks at all the details and puts that in a competitive context, it's just oversimplified numbers. I'm not a believer in Dani Pedrosa, but I think one should try to be fair about it.

House, with the bore limits, a 1000cc bike won't be able to rev high enough to produce any real power gains. Theoretically, you could get more torque at the low end but you could do the same with the 800s. Fuel limits are the determining factor here. You cannot just magically make horsepower appear when you are already at the knife edge of the fuel consumption.

Funny that WSB has had a 24-liter maximum for all bikes forever - 750-4, 1000-2, 1000-4, 1200-2 - any yet they keep playing with displacement and forms of performance balancing restrictions. Don't they know it doesn't matter? And you're saying that the reduction from 22 liters in 2006 (the last year of 990s) to 21 liters is so material that five years of advancements in fuel control systems won't make up for the loss of that one liter? Because 1000s certainly performed differently than 800s, and I doubt if they had run a mix of them in 2007 that the 800s would have done much winning, at 21 liters or 22 liters. And a less oversquare motor is likely the decision they might have arrived at anyway under a 21-liter limit; lowering revs will reduce consumption, right? And how much did laptimes drop off after the big switch from 24 to 22 liters on 990s in 05-06?

I think the only way that 800s would be fully competitive with 1000s is if they actually make more peak horsepower, so they can pass at the end of long straights. They will be faster mid-corner, but that will do them little good if a 1000 is parked in front of them, and I think the 1000s would get off the corners much better if starting at the same apex speed. And I just don't see 800s making materially more peak horsepower than 1000s, even at the same fuel capacity and with higher revs.

the fallacy that 1000s is going to make the racing "beter" always makes me laugh

It's probably a good position to take, because you won't get proven wrong for years yet...

 

[kevin 714]

not asa good as your position based entirely on opinion and not stats, which cant EVER be proven wrong ;-)

 

[Dove]

Fallacies are the only reason I read Barf.

I've actually learned new fallacies on Barf.

(working on my book...)

 

[kevin 714]

I'm not a believer in Dani Pedrosa, but I think one should try to be fair about it.

revisionist history...you yourself stated you picked dani to win the title in 2007 and 2008

 

[House]

revisionist history...you yourself stated you picked dani to win the title in 2007 and 2008

Yes, I did, and the reason I did was because I thought Honda would come out of the box with a very good 800 (they didn't), I thought Michelin would be superior to or at least equal to Bridgestone (they weren't) , and that Dani's size would be an advantage on the 800 (it was) - one out of three just wasn't quite enough...

 

[House]

not asa good as your position based entirely on opinion and not stats, which cant EVER be proven wrong ;-)

Newsflash, Kev, everyone's position on this is based on opinion, because a MotoGP 1000 doesn't exist, let alone have a track record in racing. Even yours...

 

[kevin 714]

Newsflash, Kev, everyone's position on this is based on opinion, because a MotoGP 1000 doesn't exist, let alone have a track record in racing. Even yours...

no jos lol his is based on cold hard facts. hes like a program from the matrix lol

lol and well, i wasnt really refering to your opinion of 1000s as much as the last few years of racing. ya'll were talking about stoner/pedro after all

 

[kevin 714]

Yes, I did, and the reason I did was because I thought Honda would come out of the box with a very good 800 (they didn't), I thought Michelin would be superior to or at least equal to Bridgestone (they weren't) , and that Dani's size would be an advantage on the 800 (it was) - one out of three just wasn't quite enough...

feel free to show examples of how danis size has positively affected his results

not unlike people assume 1000s will be better racing, people auto assumed danis size was a benefit when it seems in reality its a detrement

 

[House]

feel free to show examples of how danis size has positively affected his results

not unlike people assume 1000s will be better racing, people auto assumed danis size was a benefit when it seems in reality its a detrement

Without taking your bait and getting into that argument, let's try this again. Pedrosa finishes 5th, less than 50 points back, wins a couple races as a MotoGP rookie on the Honda 990, the best bike on the grid in '06 and with the best tires overall. A year later he's was to have full #1 status and on a bike built primarily for him. Being that it makes less power and so has to be ridden in more of a 250 momentum style, his size would be an advantage relative to the 990, and also when one considered the bodywork on the 212. Throwing in that he had a year under his belt and everyone else was racing what seemed to be modified 990s, and he was still on Michelins and perhaps have moved up in status with them as well, it wasn't such a stretch to predict Dani was going to win that championship. And without being of the opinion that he was the best rider on the grid.

Or even on that team...

 

[JO EBRMC]

Brahe? Interesting.

So anything you can't quantify statistically just doesn't matter? Well, okay...

There's no arguing with the basic stats, Pedrosa hasn't performed at the same level as Doohan and Rossi while at HRC; hell, in certain respects he hasn't performed at the same level as Criville and Hayden, even though he was their clear #1 and the focus of their efforts while they weren't. But until one looks at all the details and puts that in a competitive context, it's just oversimplified numbers. I'm not a believer in Dani Pedrosa, but I think one should try to be fair about it.

You just keep missing it. The context is set. I was never comparing Pedrosa to Rossi or Doohan. Pedrosa was being compared to Stoner and in that context, the stats are valid and speak for themselves.

Funny that WSB has had a 24-liter maximum for all bikes forever - 750-4, 1000-2, 1000-4, 1200-2 - any yet they keep playing with displacement and forms of performance balancing restrictions. Don't they know it doesn't matter? And you're saying that the reduction from 22 liters in 2006 (the last year of 990s) to 21 liters is so material that five years of advancements in fuel control systems won't make up for the loss of that one liter? Because 1000s certainly performed differently than 800s, and I doubt if they had run a mix of them in 2007 that the 800s would have done much winning, at 21 liters or 22 liters. And a less oversquare motor is likely the decision they might have arrived at anyway under a 21-liter limit; lowering revs will reduce consumption, right? And how much did laptimes drop off after the big switch from 24 to 22 liters on 990s in 05-06?

I think the only way that 800s would be fully competitive with 1000s is if they actually make more peak horsepower, so they can pass at the end of long straights. They will be faster mid-corner, but that will do them little good if a 1000 is parked in front of them, and I think the 1000s would get off the corners much better if starting at the same apex speed. And I just don't see 800s making materially more peak horsepower than 1000s, even at the same fuel capacity and with higher revs.

Here is were all of your historical knowledge has no value. The 21L limit is huge. The 800s are extracting all of the power available from that amount of fuel. Corner speed isn't going to change with a switch to 1000cc, the bikes are going to run exactly as they do now. There is simply no way to extract more power from the fuel they have. More to the point, 81mm bore is going to limit RPMs to the where there will be absolute parity between the 1000s and the 800s. I guarantee you that they will be no faster.

 

[kevin 714]

it wasn't such a stretch to predict Dani was going to win that championship.

yes it was....i still 100% contend dani will never win the motogp title, and the main reason is his size

 

[House]

yes it was....i still 100% contend dani will never win the motogp title, and the main reason is his size

Huh? Didn't you pick him to win one of those championships?

While a lot of people would agree with you about him ever winning a championship, I really doubt too many think it comes down to a matter of his size. Even your general criticism of him doesn't seem to have much to do with size. On the other hand, as a "MotoGP madman", you are incentivized to deny the size issue in general terms, as it runs contrary to the notion that purely the best riders in the world are in MotoGP, because that also basically means the best riders in the world come from 125 and 250. Which basically means small.

 

[House]

Brahe? Interesting.

I thought so...

You just keep missing it. The context is set. I was never comparing Pedrosa to Rossi or Doohan. Pedrosa was being compared to Stoner and in that context, the stats are valid and speak for themselves.

No, they don't. They help make certain cases, but there is nothing absolute about win and loss statistics in a team sport that involves machinery as much as athletes. In order to claim that you have to believe that bikes and tires don't matter. You have said teams do, but only to the extent one is either on a factory team or not, which I suppose could also be drawing a hard line between having a factory bike or not. You're taking a fairly limited amount of data and jumping to conclusions based on it. They might be the right ones, but they aren't definitively and irrefutably supported by that data. Make a simple statistical comparison of results between Gibernau and Roberts in 03-05, and Sete looks like much the better rider, and he was on a satellite team while KRJR was on a factory team. But then look at their results in 2002, when they were on the same bike and the same team.

Here is were all of your historical knowledge has no value. The 21L limit is huge. The 800s are extracting all of the power available from that amount of fuel. Corner speed isn't going to change with a switch to 1000cc, the bikes are going to run exactly as they do now. There is simply no way to extract more power from the fuel they have. More to the point, 81mm bore is going to limit RPMs to the where there will be absolute parity between the 1000s and the 800s. I guarantee you that they will be no faster.

And I think that's a very questionable claim. It seems that part of the reason 800s were quicker through the corners than 990s was the physics related to the mass of the moving parts in the smaller motors, and if that's true, it will repeat itself again. I haven't seen anything responsibly claimed by anyone suggesting that the drop from 22 liters to 21 liters was a threshold event, while the drop a year earlier from 24 to 22 wasn't. What will be different between 800s and 1000s is the quality of power, because the pump being run with that fuel is different, and there are reasons to believe that the quality of the 1000 power will be advantageous, and the limitations imposed by downside of that configuration as well.

 

[2strokeYardSale]

Here's a thought: The conservative factories will give their liter bikes to their satellite teams to develop while they continue to run 800cc. I.e., Fiat Yamaha 800cc, Tech 3 1000cc. Suzuki, who have nothing to lose, would just jump in with both feet.

 

[EastBayDave]

Dani will never win it; he has a vision problem.















his eyebrow's keep getting in the way...

 

[House]

Dani will never win it; he has a vision problem.















his eyebrow's keep getting in the way...

Do you think Nicky would lend him his tweezers? I'm thinking not...

 

[JO EBRMC]

You're taking a fairly limited amount of data and jumping to conclusions based on it.

Jumping to conclusions? You really do think I (and everyone else) is an idiot don't you?

Again, ignoring what i have posted. I'm not sure if you do it intentionally or you just don't give anyone else any credit for having put the effort into thinking through their point of view.

I posted some stats that I thought were of interest. Someone else drew some conclusions from them. I refuted those conclusions and stated my own along with some more data. As I stated earlier, stats without context are just data and have no meaning. I would not use the same set of data to compare another set of riders unless the context made sense. You have been trying to apply the stats to other riders in ways that you know will not make sense and in ways that I have not done. Just because this data doesn't make sense in some imaginary context does not mean that it isn't useful information here.

I really get the feeling that you are arguing for the sake of it as though no one else can have a valid opinion around here.

And I think that's a very questionable claim. It seems that part of the reason 800s were quicker through the corners than 990s was the physics related to the mass of the moving parts in the smaller motors, and if that's true, it will repeat itself again. I haven't seen anything responsibly claimed by anyone suggesting that the drop from 22 liters to 21 liters was a threshold event, while the drop a year earlier from 24 to 22 wasn't. What will be different between 800s and 1000s is the quality of power, because the pump being run with that fuel is different, and there are reasons to believe that the quality of the 1000 power will be advantageous, and the limitations imposed by downside of that configuration as well.

But see, the drop from 24 to 22 never left a bike running out of fuel on the cool down lap Nor were bikes being leaned out at the end the the race like they are today. That 1 liter did have a huge effect. It hasn't been so obvious because the teams have stepped up to the engineering challenge.

In order to believe that the 1000s will produce more power you have to believe two things. First that the bikes have unused fuel left after the race and second that the bikes aren't already running very, very lean. If either of these things is not true, there is no power to be gained through dispacement.

Of those, the first we know is not true as we have seen riders running out of gas on cool down and victory celebrations on the bike have nearly completely disappearred. The second, we have pretty strong eveidence of from the riders who have mentioned the ECU limiting their power in order to get them through the race.

You talk about the quality of the power but I really have no idea what that means. Perhaps you mean the

 

[TTTom]

...The 21L limit is huge. The 800s are extracting all of the power available from that amount of fuel. Corner speed isn't going to change with a switch to 1000cc, the bikes are going to run exactly as they do now. There is simply no way to extract more power from the fuel they have. More to the point, 81mm bore is going to limit RPMs to the where there will be absolute parity between the 1000s and the 800s. I guarantee you that they will be no faster.

Apparently Ducati agrees with you... they're currently working on a new 900cc motor, picking that as the best compromise under the 2012 rules

 

[House]

Jumping to conclusions? You really do think I (and everyone else) is an idiot don't you?

Again, ignoring what i have posted. I'm not sure if you do it intentionally or you just don't give anyone else any credit for having put the effort into thinking through their point of view.

I posted some stats that I thought were of interest. Someone else drew some conclusions from them. I refuted those conclusions and stated my own along with some more data. As I stated earlier, stats without context are just data and have no meaning. I would not use the same set of data to compare another set of riders unless the context made sense. You have been trying to apply the stats to other riders in ways that you know will not make sense and in ways that I have not done. Just because this data doesn't make sense in some imaginary context does not mean that it isn't useful information here.

I really get the feeling that you are arguing for the sake of it as though no one else can have a valid opinion around here.

Woah, big fella! Just so it's clear what we're talking about, here is our exchange, and I have put in bold what I see as the heart of the matter:

Regardless of the stats you use, Stoner has out-performed Pedrosa in nearly every category. The fact is, Stoner is no more of a crasher than Pedrosa and yet, again, he is known as one. Unfairly. Both Pedrosa and Stoner have 11 crashes.

None of these stats mean anything until you start factoring in tires and bikes, and even then only if you can somehow quantify the mysterious Stoner-Ducati marriage. If one of them had been stuck on the Suzuki the last four years would his lesser results then prove he's worse than the other?

That is a really pointless path to go down and I'm not really sure what you are getting at. Pedrosa had more resources thrown at his effort than Ducati has ever seen and yet, he still came up short.

We could start conjecturing about what would have happened if rider X had been on bike Y but I don't really see the point. We could also start getting into whether Stoner's results on the Ducati are caused by magical fairies , but again, I'm not seeing the point. The fact is, both were on factory rides; Pedrosa with a factory that had been dominating the championship and Stoner with a factory that had never one the title.

By that logic you can't give Rossi much credit for winning the 01-03 championships, since he was riding for the HRC factory team that had won 6 of the previous 7 championships. And his 2004 championship isn't nearly as notable as many people claim because he was on a factory team, and on top of that still had his guys. And his blowout loss to Stoner in 2007 can't be excused, because he still was on that factory team, and stuff like tires really doesn't matter (since Pedrosa isn't granted that excuse).

You didn't really read my post carefully. My point was that Pedrosa, while perhaps not getting the treatment Rossi did, still had the full factory effort behind him and so disregarding the stats is just silly. The stats require context to be information otherwise it is just data. However, I think the context for the stats I showed is pretty well set and I don't think that there is any reason they can't stand on their own. Introducing what-ifs based on a total lack of information such as the reasons for the Stoner/Ducati performance is wasted effort since we cannot possibly understand the causes.

So anything you can't quantify statistically just doesn't matter? Well, okay...

There's no arguing with the basic stats, Pedrosa hasn't performed at the same level as Doohan and Rossi while at HRC; hell, in certain respects he hasn't performed at the same level as Criville and Hayden, even though he was their clear #1 and the focus of their efforts while they weren't. But until one looks at all the details and puts that in a competitive context, it's just oversimplified numbers. I'm not a believer in Dani Pedrosa, but I think one should try to be fair about it.

You just keep missing it. The context is set. I was never comparing Pedrosa to Rossi or Doohan. Pedrosa was being compared to Stoner and in that context, the stats are valid and speak for themselves.

I don't agree with the conclusion you seem to draw from your cited (and uncited) stats, which really just come down to Stoner winning more races over the last three years than Pedrosa. Yes, we all know that, and it's absolutely fine to be of the opinion that Stoner is better than Pedrosa. But to suggest that his greater number of wins is proof of that isn't so fine, because you don't factor in some critical details. Pedrosa may have "had more resources thrown at his effort than Ducati has ever seen", but those didn't include Bridgestone tires over most of that period, did they? Or the 3rd-party electronics that Ducati and Yamaha used?

And you claim that you were "never comparing Pedrosa to Rossi or Doohan", but you were quite willing to offer that Pedrosa was "with a factory that had been dominating the championship and Stoner with a factory that had never one the title". So who won all those Honda championships then?

What I see is the machinery balance being slowly equalized since 2007, and over that time Casey winning fewer races and falling in the points, and now having fallen behind Dani in the championship. As for hypotheticals, would Casey have won the championship and ten races in 2007 had Hayden or Melandri ended up on his Ducati instead? Even if he'd replaced Nick at Repsol? I can't see it, yet those ten wins are pretty critical to your stat pile. Sounds like you can't see that, can't see why it matters, which is pretty much saying the only thing that could have happened is what did happen. And that's definitely something I can't comprehend...

But see, the drop from 24 to 22 never left a bike running out of fuel on the cool down lap Nor were bikes being leaned out at the end the the race like they are today. That 1 liter did have a huge effect. It hasn't been so obvious because the teams have stepped up to the engineering challenge.

In order to believe that the 1000s will produce more power you have to believe two things. First that the bikes have unused fuel left after the race and second that the bikes aren't already running very, very lean. If either of these things is not true, there is no power to be gained through dispacement.

Of those, the first we know is not true as we have seen riders running out of gas on cool down and victory celebrations on the bike have nearly completely disappearred. The second, we have pretty strong eveidence of from the riders who have mentioned the ECU limiting their power in order to get them through the race.

You talk about the quality of the power but I really have no idea what that means.

I think you're oversimplifying things there. Ideally, whatever fuel the bike is carrying shouldn't come back to the box after the race. Fuel control systems have become extremely sophisticated, so they manage that down to a very tight margin. Spies ran out of gas in his 24-liter tank in WSB last year, the same size of tank mandated by the rules there for the last decade, and the same size as they used to run in MotoGP before 2006.

I am not an engineer or mechanic and don't have that level of understanding of motors at all, but I have to believe that a motor with 25% more displacement, a relatively longer stroke, and turning up to a max rev ceiling maybe 10% lower will make a different sort of power, and not exactly the same power just because they're limited to the same amount of fuel. When I talk about the quality of power I'm talking about the difference between a four-cylinder screamer and long-stroke torquey twin, that sort of thing - it isn't just down to the quantity of power but the quality of power, how much it makes and where. Given that the motors of 2012 don't even exist today, I just don't see how you can claim there is no advantage to be gained in building a 1000. It won't be what it might have been if the rules allowed more fuel and a larger bore, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If Dorna et al were so damned good at creating a perfectly balanced formula, why would they go through this expensive change just to make the racing better, if in the end it won't do a damned thing in that regard?