I think your right duke. My mind was just wondering in to la la land for a moment. The very same land were Kate Winslet says "Troy your the best ever, would you like orange juice with your full English breakfast" :biggrin:
Because he's got bottle, I'm not saying the rest of the field don't but if anybody's going to do well on the ducati how it is now it takes riding to the edge and over it in some instances by the looks of it. I personally think Cal has the right never say die attitude and still has a career to mold and a status to achieve. Plus he's a brit which last time I checked so am I. If I was Italian I'd rather Dovi be on it, but I'm not. Thats a factory seat whichever you slice it and I'd rather a Brit get the opportunity personally.
If you read Stoner's recent interview, he said the problem with the Ducati is that it needs a completely different set up and way of riding every week. You have to learn to ride it again at every circuit as it's never the same two weeks running. Not sure who that would suit best. I bet every rider thinks you just need to wring it's neck but i suspect that doesn't work either.
One thing's for certain, the only bloke to make the Ducati work was Stoner, and that was probably due to the tyres suiting the bike as much as anything else, notwithstanding his immense skill of course. Everyone else has failed on the Ducati, it pretty much destroyed Melandri's career, and looks to have done the same for Rossi. So what on earth can convince Crutchlow that he's the guy to tame it? Money, of course; he's going for the full works pay cheque. There can be no other reason.
Yes but please also bare in mind that Stacey Moaner say's himself he has never had any idea about bike set up and has no clue what's what when it comes to suspension. I'd rather see Cal stay where he is (on a more competitive bike) and let Dovi do his best with Ducati.
Rubbish. If you also read the interview/article in BIKE mag about Stoner when he first came to the UK, you will find he had to spend time getting his own bike right by himself as his father's attitude was to tell him to just get on and ride it but Casey knew that alone wouldn't be enough to win races.
I think i can safely say he never has. I may not be a big fan of Stoner but i can appreciate that he has a special talent which would seem to be unique to him.
Alan Jenkins told me CS hasn't got a clue about bike set up considering he designed the aero for the Desmo he's pretty close to the factory and I believe him more than any paper quotes
Well there's something about Stoner that made him fast, that's something we all have to agree on. And on the Ducati it worked for him alone, save a brief flurry for Capirossi. None of which helps Crutchlow. If he goes to Ducati under current conditions I can only see it as a big mistake. Except the conditions will never be the same.
At last something i have said for years! To be fair he rides round probs untill he shags his tyres out. Thats why he's not running away with it this year which TP and co predicted he would do, hence he's 3rd in the championship on a new bike without Dannys data from the 800's to work from.
Rossi's knowledge of suspension and set up have done frig all for Ducati either have they. So what can we gleen from that. That there is a fundamental flaw in the design of the bike. Somethink the Honda RC211V or Yam M1 didnt have when Rossi was credited with " sorting them out" . So all he and Burger off do, is mess with a few of the changables i.e. suspension swingarm lengths ,pivot point and crack of his arse bits. So how is he a greater Development rider than Stoner. My bet is he will get back on the Yam and be fast again, if not he's got shite so what use could he have possibly been to Ducati . If Stoner did just one test that would answer everything. Heres hoping.
I reckon the problem with the Ducati is a fundamental flaw in the engine design/configuration which just won't allow the tyres to work properly. No amount of messing with the set ups will sort that.
Stoner and Ross I both said the same thing. The Ducati is inconsistent. So Stoner can't set the bike up and neither can Rossi. Suggests the problem is the bike, not those the two most talented guys out there. My money is on Jenkins knowing feck all in comparison to those two. Either way, I would like to see at Philip Island, 2013, CS doing 4 laps on the Honda, Ducati, Yamaha and CRT bike of his choice. I bet he would raise a few eyebrows with his times.
If there is any substance to this idea that the issue with the Ducati is inconsistency then 2 questions arise. #1 Wouldn't they have lucked into a good setting at least once. They cant have missed the good setting just by chance every time can they ? #2 Wasn't the main reason stated for moving away from the trellis frame that they were inconsistent in manufacture ? The superbike must be similar in characteristics to the GP bike with not much less power and it is the best handling bike in that championship. It has a Trellis ( apparently inconsistent ) frame yet appears to handle pretty close to "on the money" every week. Also consider that in that championship the tyres are far from beyond reproach but this is not a show stopper for Team ducati. You can be certain that very clever people in Bologna have pondered this question of the different fortunes between the two disciplines. They will understand the physics and the feedback data to the N'th degree yet there is something that stops them making the breakthrough. Either this is because those people are not as clever as they need to be ( very unlikely) or a parameter outside of their control is the deciding factor. My guess is Tyres and or restrictions on the testing allowed to increment their way to success. I dont believe the number of chassis they have tried is large in the grand scheme of things. Remember how many iterations Honda took over the years to get it right and with a factory of huge resources. Somebody once famously said that "Honda had more people designing footpegs than ducati had employees"
It's all about the tyres. If you have control tyres and they don't happen to suit your bike, you're fecked.
