i’d much rather see smaller, more efficient motors in future motorcycles. that still kick serious ass and sing to the soul… i see an 848 in my future.

great race writeup, david!

The circumstances of the crash wouldn’t have been possible on a 125, which was a high-speed loss of control sufficient to send Kato into the barrier.

“Respected motorcycle journalists such as Dennis Noyes and Michael Scott have said much the same thing. And Honda has an awful lot of sway in the MSMA, if Honda pull out, that’s a third of the grid gone.”

“Respected” journalists are quite capable of a herd mentality (cf: the NYT, Wash.Po., etc. on the subject of Iraq in 2002-03) but nowhere did I read that Honda threatened to pull out of MotoGP if the switch to 800 wasn’t adopted or that they get extra votes in the MSMA; if Yamaha, Suzuki, etc. had thought it against their interests, why did they also vote for the switch?

“I stand by my assertion”
Knock me over with a feather…

Interesting statistics on the crashes. Of course, there’s Stoner’s switch to Ducati in there, which were (from memory) 6 front end losses in 2006 vs 0 in 2007. As you can see, race crash numbers are not strictly relevant to your argument, as you said that the change was to improve safety due to highsides.

The fact is that the highsides have been tamed, not by the reduced capacity, but by the advances in electronics. There is a case to be made that the reduction in capacity has speeded up the advance of traction control, but it is only part of an inevitable progression towards ever greater use of electronics to control the rear wheel.

On the other hand, the case could be equally made that the electronics had to become more complicated to deal with the reduced fuel capacity.

To believe that Carmelo Ezpeleta sleeps any more soundly because of safety issues is to be naive in the extreme. Ezpeleta’s sleep is disturbed only by the rise and fall of viewing figures worldwide, and especially in the key markets of Spain and Italy. If Ezpeleta really cared about safety, he wouldn’t have sanctioned Qatar running at night, or the inclusion of Laguna Seca or Indianapolis on the calendar. And he’d be having a long, hard look at Mugello, for as spectacular as that circuit is, it’s terrifying to see just how little runoff there is on that circuit.

It’s also not just armchair pundits who believe that Honda was behind the switch to 800cc. Respected motorcycle journalists such as Dennis Noyes and Michael Scott have said much the same thing. And Honda has an awful lot of sway in the MSMA, if Honda pull out, that’s a third of the grid gone.

You rightly point out HRC’s disastrous 2007 season, only finishing 2nd in the championship. However, I’m sure that when they sat down at the start of the season, they weren’t thinking: Let’s make a real mess of this season, who cares anyway, it’s just motorcycle racing…

The reasons behind HRC’s poor season is more likely to be rooted in arrogance, and Honda’s internal organization. HRC clearly believed they had the best strategy for winning the 2007 MotoGP championship, and insofar as they beat Yamaha, they got it right. However, they didn’t figure on Ducati coming along and imposing its own set of rules on the series, and walking away with it. It was a complete misjudgment.

I may, of course, be wrong in all this. But I stand by my assertion that the change to the 800cc formula was at best an irrelevance, and at worst, a surefire way of increasing costs and complexity. It had very little to do with safety.

“You don’t crash on the straights”

Except for events like the one that provided the catalyst for the switch, Kato’s crash into the barriers at Suzuka. A complicated case, but obviously lack of runoff room was the biggest factor in his death, and the faster the bikes, the more runoff room you need.

The intertubes’ conspiracy theorists* will never be convinced of course, but Ezpeleta probably sleeps soundly at night because the numbers show the 800s to be safer. If anything, Ezpeleta probably smirks at these “bogus” complaints, because for every one of them there is the opposite gripe that the 800s are too safe and that the racing has become processional and not as good as the 500s.

*HRC’s 2007 season really should embarrass everyone who claimed the 800 switch was dictated by Honda for their advantage. But of course no one has turned in their amateur pundit license.

- If it was meant to slow them down on the straights, it hasn’t helped much. Here’s a list of top speeds at Qatar:

2004 Max Biaggi 334.4
2005 Carlos Checa 328.7
2006 Dani Pedrosa 330.2
2007 Casey Stoner 324.7
2008 Marco Melandri 334.4

If the capacity reduction worked at all, it worked for one year only, as Melandri has already matched Biaggi’s 990 top speed record.

- You don’t crash on the straights, you crash in the corners. As top speed on the straights has come down, so corner speed has gone up, increasing the severity of crashes.

- The reduction in the number of highsides has little to do with the reduction in capacity, but rather with the increase in electronics. Even with the 990s, there were a lot fewer highsides.

There were reasonable arguments for switching to an 800 cc formula. But the one that was used, the safety argument, was totally bogus in my opinion.

What if it was meant to slow them down on the straights? That was achieved, and allowed the runoff room to stay adequate, as opposed to letting the 990s continue their steady progress in speed and thus make the tracks more dangerous.

Just looking at the number of highsides, the safety improvement gained by the switch to 800cc is undeniable.