MotoGP 2016

[gixxer72]

Moto 3 will be as awesome as ever. Its a little scary just to watch the race, I dunno how those guys do it.
I have a feeling Moto 2 is going to be excellent this year as well. Jump starts ruined this race, but there are a lot of riders that will be in the mix.

Qatar is an interesting track. It isn't really the best benchmark to base the entire MotoGP season on. I'm keeping the faith that it will get better, but I don't necessarily think this was the worst MotoGP race ever. From what I've read here so far, Paul has made the best point. Its very hard to pass perfection...and with the Michelins seemingly having no problem to go the race distance, there is going to be a lot of perfection this season.

Lorenzo really irks me, its a love hate thing. If he isn't fast, he typically throws in the towel and settles for 4th or 5th. Its very smart for the championship but boring for the viewers. I need to switch gears and try to appreciate his precision when watching him, otherwise I get bored. No one like to watch someone manage a gap, but you can't forget about how impressive that is.

Moto2 and 3 rarely disappoint. It seems the boring racing is limited to the big bikes generally. And not just MotoGP. AMA superbike was a snoozefest when it was Spies/Mladin winning every race. WSBK has the potential to go the same way with Rea/Sykes (although for the moment that series is pretty fucking great). It starts to become very 'nascar' just watching the leader(s) turn laps, no matter how precise and talented the riding is.

No idea what the answer is to fix GP, but the current rule changes didn't do a fucking thing for exciting racing. More budget controls/caps would probably work, but would be detrimental to new tech and trickle-down maybe. Instead of talking about great racing in GP, people focus on shit like the 46/93 drama or that 99 hasn't resigned yet. Sad.

[tls25rs]

Other than the loss of the trickle down engineering to the production based market I would love to see the electronic aids go away and tires that wear out throughout the course of a race be brought back to the MotoGP races. Let the riders actually have to control the overly powered bike and manage a set of tires so they actually had some traction at the end of the race in order to race with. It might get exciting to watch then.

One of my favorite memories was watching Nicky Hayden on the RC51, pretty sure it was in Phoenix, finish a race sliding the bike everywhere and when he came in off the track it wound up he was riding on the cords of the rear tire without crashing. That showed some skill IMHO. Not to say that any of the top four riders in the MotoGP race couldn't do that as well but it would add some flavor to the pretty bland racing of late.

I'm guessing if Iannonne (sp?) had stayed up the race might have been a little more interesting. He seems a little more willing to push for the win than worry about championship points at this point of his career. Now that I think about it changing the points allocations for finishing could make it more dicey. Rewarding the win enough so that just consistently finishing top 5 won't win you the championship might entice riders to risk it a little more rather than play follow the leader in the points chase.

[OreoGaborio]

Whole lotta points in here I agree with...

It seems that tire tech is finally catching up with the rest of the bike technology. Usually one aspect of the bikes is the "weak sauce"... be it tires, chassis, suspension, electronics, engine, etc... It seems as though leveling the playing field in the engine and electronics categories and making those the "weak sauce" categories in order to make for cheaper & safer racing means that more teams can race, but the races aren't quite as exciting to watch.... not when you've got that much perfection on track, as Paul put it.

[Tekime]

I'd love to see how things heat up if they only awarded points for 1st..

Definitely wish Iannonne stayed in there longer.. gotta admit those Ducati's were beautiful out there while it lasted.

[tls25rs]

I'd love to see how things heat up if they only awarded points for 1st..

That'd definitely make it interesting. Not sure interesting how but definitely interesting.

[Imbeek]

I highly doubt they would want to do this, but in some auto racing, the start grid is inverse of the previous race's finish...that would make watching moto GP more exciting!

[carsick]

That works much better with roll cages. Imagine starting the EX wave behind the AM. I imagine we'll see some real racing yet this year. Iannone seems willing to go for it.

[Tas]

I'd like to see Shane, Eric, and Scott start from the back in Ex. Suspect it would look similar to Rossi's start last year.

[Jason P.]

AI29 and MV25 will be ones to watch this year for sure.

Who knows if Yamaha is going to bring Rins up through Tech3 now since BS is moving to KTM next season.

Will be in Assen this June for that round

[loudbeard]

Watching warm ups, we'll have and exciting day of racing if the wet weather continues.

[OreoGaborio]

Same here... gonna be interesting!

[loudbeard]

Iannone is a bad man, love watching that guy ride. Let's hope he keeps it upright today and he'll be in it at the end.

[Imbeek]

Holy cow Ducati bowling team!

[OreoGaborio]

[loudbeard]

That was nuts. Hope that incident doesn't neuter Iannone but that was some boneheaded shit for sure.

[OreoGaborio]

See the sarcastic from Dovi as he's sliding on his ass?

EDIT And Marquez crashes onto the podium

Marquez crash - Gfycat

[Tekime]

Madness! So upset about Vinales though he was putting down a fine race.

Mandatory bike switch??! That swap really tweaked things out I was really hoping for a Rossi/Marquez/Vinales showdown!

Oh and Espargaro doing some offroading

[isaac_]

I didn't understand the mandatory bike switch. Did it have something to do with the life of the tires?

[MaRce1o]

I was cheering for Viñales myself too

[motoarch]

I didn't understand the mandatory bike switch. Did it have something to do with the life of the tires?

Yes. Scott Redding had one blow up in practice.

[OreoGaborio]

Yeahhh, that bike swap, while super entertaining, KILLED it for Rossi. His second bike CLEARLY wasn't where he wanted it to be. I was really pullin for him, too. I wanted to see a dog fight at the front with MM.

[jwm2k3]

Youd think a billion dollar tire company could make something that didnt suck...

[scottieducati]

And the race is reduced to a farce. A dry race is supposed to be done on your #1 bike and there would've been a whole race battle for the lead. Instead we got a pit stop that decides the race (in one way or another). I guess that's cool if you like F1. What a fiasco.

[Dmitry]

MM said after the race that his #1 bike was much faster and he had no confidence in #2, so he was just killing time till the pitstops... If it wasn't for the bike change it would have been MM checking out from lap 1 because he would have started on a faster bike

Maniac Joe has some 'splaining to do, I'm sure the convo after the race was very animated, even if only understanding couple words if any it was probably pure comedy gold

Family Guy - Speaking Italian - YouTube

[Paul_E_D]

It was a fiasco in terms of complicated rules, but what choice did they have? You can't just send guys out to imminent tire failure. It is a prototype class with constant changes to technology. Sometimes it's not going to go smoothly. This wasn't the first time they handled it this way, so it's not like they were making it up as they went along like AMA used to do.

FWIW the race was still better than the WSBK parades of late. As much as I loved to watch Chaz and Ducati smoke the I4s, it was not exciting racing at all.