MOTOGP » Control electronics?

Tell me if I am wrong, they wanted to reduce the fuel tank capacity to make the bikes slower, if they don't use traction control nobody would finish a race, this did happen at the begining of the season when Yamaha were so afraid of not finishing the race they had to drop the power of the M1 to allow Rossi to finish the race.

G.Irish. Good point, well put. No-one wants to see riders hurt, but this is a dangerous game and the riders are well aware of it. If this electronic control contiues then where will it end? Virtual racing where 9 year olds who have the quickest thumbs in their year at school will be world champions?

I think you're right, the real problem is the 800's making TC more critical. To get the lap times the riders need to get on the gas sooo early, they would be highsiding into orbit every lap.

I think the riders would be okay with the risk with or without traction control. But the stated reasoning for banning TC is to improve the show and it doesn't improve the show very much to have a bunch of riders missing races due to injury.

Perhaps it wouldn't be too bad because even without traction control the 800's wouldn't be as difficult as the 500's. My view is just that it would not be the panacea that some think it would be, and I think people are looking back at the 500's through Rose colored glasses.

I liked the example of Michael Shumacher riding Stoner's 07 bike during testing at Valencia. Having never ridden it before he was only 5 seconds off race pace at 1:37 within a few laps. In the pre-race warm up Stoner was around 1:33 and Kurtis Roberts was about 1:35. The engineers had adjusted the TC so Shumacher could pin the throttle all the time and the electronics would take over.
I'm not sure what should be done to make MotoGP more exciting or fair. I think it should be kept as an open ended prototype race as much as possible. But I'm dying to see who has the real throttle control in a race with no electronics. Maybe they could throw a few in here and there...

I cant see how this standard ECU idea will work, every bike has different power charactor requirments, the Ducati produces its power higher up the revrange than say the Honda, so one suitable for the Honda will start knocking off when the Ducati is still in its power band, I know from my own experience that the ECU from an Honda Hornet will not work correctly on a Fireblade. Are there any electronics experts out there who can exlain how it will work?

At the min the manufacturers build a bike around electronic control systems so no your not able to just unplug it the bike would be a nightmare,take 80% of the electronic's away then build the bike around that .TC was never a safey thing its there because manufacturers could get faster lap times without the aid of a great rider!!don't want to see riders hurt but its part of bike racing the throttle is adjustable its up to them.we all remember watching the racing and looking at your mate or wife/girlfriend/kids or maybe up at god and saying how the hell did he just do that well thats gone reduce the electronic or give the same to all and just maybe we'll be saying them words again

The racing isn''t exciting these days. Runaway aren''t fun to watch. Do something about it, please.

Slow Joe,
You can't hang a percentage on reduction of such complex technology, also very difficult to verify if factories comply with it.
I agree with you on the injury thing, 2007 had over 400 crashes in all classses (I read a number like 487 somewhere) including potential career enders for Locatelli, Sekiguchi (and Elias?). It is not a safe sport and will never be.
The violent highsides you saw in the end of the 500 era were a combination of the characteristic of the twostroke engine combined with the stiffness of the developed radial tyres,
the powerband of the 800 fourstrokes is different.

Too much electronics has spoiled the spectacle of the rider using only his skill to take the machine to its limits. What a joy it was to watch Doohan and McCoy slide the bike and smoke the tyres on their 500''s. We still had the pleasure of seeing riders do this on the 990''s before they became electronically controlled, same with WSB''s. Now 800''s and WSB''s are stuffed with electronics, how often do you see a smoking tyre. Top level bike racing has been dulled in the name of progess. Doohan always used to say, his traction control was his right wrist, lets get back there again.

Yes...

We all want the rider to win, not the electic gizmo. Tires are one thing as they are production based and each year they up the ante, but when it comes to electronics, I for one don''t want to see the day when you get on; hold the throttle wide open and the electronics do it all for you. We are very close to this already.