World SBK | ROUND 09 | Pirelli Portuguese Round | 07 - 09 OCT

POLE POSITION: Right
LENGTH: 4.592 Km
CORNERS: 15
RIGHT CORNERS: 9
LEFT CORNERS: 6

All times are Eastern




It probably won't happen, but Gagne, all day, all the way to the front

 

At what point will Bautista win the championship?

4 rounds left, 12 races
8x normal races
4x Superpole race

Currently:
Bautista - 394
TopCat - 335
Rea - 327
<large gap>
Rinaldi - 205

 

Dont forget to buy your limited edition WSBK boots and shoes

 

He better do it soon, cause they're gonna stupidly gonna cut away his mechanical advantages soon if he keeps walking away from guys on the straights.

 

They could just drop 35-40 pounds of lead in his leathers, issue solved.

 

The entire thing about clipping the nuts of these machines is so dumb. Every bike has it's advantages, because they're different. If you wanted to eliminate mechanical advantage - run a spec series. Until then, realize some bikes have advantages in some areas and other have them in others. That's the way it works. /Rant

 

I hope they go to a rider+bike weight. Not necessarily a min that everyone could get to, just something to reduce the gap. As it is, it’s is kind of silly. But, they have a fast bike and he is light, they should have some benefit from that.

 

I dont think they will.
My understanding is that they look at everyone riding the same brand of bike before making changes to its performance. The other riders arent going that much faster on the Ducati.

 

If that kept everyone from complaining, I'd jump at the chance if I were Ducati. The weight isn't helping him fly past people in 4th, 5th and 6th gear - it's the bike and his physical size creating a big aerodynamic advantage at high speeds.

 

They sure didn't take all the other Kawis into consideration when they zapped Johnny's RPM last year.

I just think the whole thing is dumb. We're looking for equality of opportunity, not outcome. Ducati has seemingly built the best bike overall within the rules and has the rider to take advantage of it. So it deserves to win. Surely to take advantage of it's power over the other bikes it has to give up in other areas, probably corner speed.

If the bike creating the fastest lap time was doing so with the slowest engine but massive corner speed, would it be mandated that they extend the wheelbase so the corner speed come closer to it's competitors? The whole thing is stupid.

Set the price cap, let them race. If other manufacturers are getting their asses handed to them, give them concessions via testing time etc to get better. If any leveling of the field should be done, it should be to overall decrease the lap time, not increase it.

 

Didn't Biaggi low-key throw some mega shade earlier this year at Ducati and Bayliss for a similar situation in 2008? He alleged that Ducati kept his machine at a lower spec than Bayliss', in order to avoid (cheat, would be my words) the balancing algorithms.

So... who's to say the same isn't happening. Could be Alvaro is that much better than all the other Ducs... or it might be that Alvaro's Duc is also a bit better than all the other Ducs.

 

@tophyr Bautista's also small.
He's about 5'6 or 5'7" and maybe 130-140 when he's got his kit on.

2015 foto For reference, I'm 6' and in this photo was about #240

 

He did say basically that, yes. That could be happening in any/every team. It's one of those things you'll never really know unless admittance comes. Hell, Aprilia could have been doing exactly that to Leon Camier's RSV4 back then too.

 

Besides, the Hondas are the ones with the high trap speeds. No one is calling for FIM to cut theirs nuts.

 

I'm skeptical Duc is pulling some non-sense like that. SR45 on the Duc & Rinaldi were a lot closer than AB19 & Rinaldi are now. AB19 and the Duc just "work".

 

I look at it this way...back in THE DAY...when Fogarty and Russell were duking it out if the FIM told the 2 teams, "we will issue you your jet kit and ignition timing module" there would have been fights or brawls. What they are doing is pure idiocy. Controlling competition never works. Imho

 

I'm not sure if that is true. The bike is an engine with a swingarm and front end bolted to it so does it has more limitations than a ZX10 or R1?

 

It is a spec series.

 

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