motogp - 250s and moto2

[deej]

Sat here watching rossi and lorenzo putting on a hell of a show in qualifying and also y'days free practice has got me thinking about the future

All the current front runners have all come up through the gp scene ranks,125s and 250s to motogp. That is where the more successful riders have come from and this is very apparent this weekend with kallio taking over from stoner and running consistenly in the top 7 and being a second a lap quicker than hayden. The guys who have come over from wsbk's are nowhere near the front,the exception being edwards who I believe raced 250s when he was younger. It seems obvious that you need a stroker style of riding to ride these new 800 motogp bikes so what's going to happen in the future when 250s are extinct and replaced by highly tuned cbr600rr engines in prototype chassis. Where and how will the likes of bradley smith learn to ride bigger bikes that have them prepared to ride a motogp bike or will the moto2 class open up opportunities to people like crutchlow who have experience of tuned il4 600cc engines

Your thoughts please

[badgerKDD]

With the way Dorna are talking about running a second 1000cc series alongside the Moto GP bikes who knows where new riders are going to sit. It seems to me Dorna are just panicking because the field for Moto GP is diminnishing every season and WSBK is gaining in popularity, they are just throwing cost saving ideas about but not really concentrating on long term solutions. If the series as a whole is to continue maybe they need to consider how riders will move through the ranks and try and keep some form of uniformity in engine developement, be it more il4 in style or 2 stroke related.

[Scotty]

It's probably one of the reasons that Toseland's struggled so much this year, until he joined MotoGP he'd only ever ridden proddy bikes where there isn't that much to adjust, so he's never had to learn too much about complex set-up, but now he's not managing to stay on terms with Edwards who does have 250 experience. Look at the grids nowadays, they're full of Italians and Spaniards who come through the ranks of "proper" racing bikes, and it's only now that we have three lads doing the same that there's any real hope for the future. I read recently that a decision was taken around the early 80s to concentrate domestic British racing on production-based series, which has had the benefit of producing some of the best Superbike riders in the world, but even great riders like Toseland, Hodgson, and Byrne have never really produced the goods at GP level, and there have doubtless been many really talented British riders who've missed the GP boat over the years because they've spent far too long riding sodding 600s round Mallory Park instead of getting out and having the opportunity to race proper GP bikes. The decision by the ACU to drop 250s from the BSB programme was short-sighted - and nobody can tell me that they had advance notice of Moto2... Troy Bayliss never set the world alight in MotoGP, aside from an unexpected win out of the hat at Valencia in 06 that probably surprised him as much as anyone.
Will British riders do better in Moto2? Sure, the engine characteristics will be a little more like what domestic riders are used to, but the flip side is using what's basically equivalent to a MotoGP chassis with multi-adjustable everything that they'll have no experience of. It will be a welcome return to some more innovation from chassis manufacturers from various countries and it'll be interesting to see what they come up with. Bring it on...

[deej]

exactly, we were talking to niall mackenzie on monday at our trackday and he was there with his son whos 16, i asked if they were taking taylor to spain next season for more experience. niall said he would do if they had the cash but they havent, theyre going to try and do a few spanish championships at the end of the season to hopefully got some exposure for sponsorship for next season he did also say that if they cant get him there next year then they might have missed the boat as he'll be 17 which is old for spanish championships