No Fridays / 5 engines and launch control goooooone

[Birdman45]

from motogp.com


Electronics limited and Friday morning practice scrapped

Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Electronic systems will be partially limited in MotoGP and Friday morning practices removed from Grand Prix schedules as of the 2009 season following a GP Commission meeting in Geneva.

At a meeting of the Grand Prix Commission on Wednesday a number of rule changes have been made with immediate affect, ahead of the 2009 MotoGP World Championship.

At the headquarters of the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme in Geneva, Switzerland, in the presence of FIM president Vito Ippolito, the Grand Prix Commission ratified proposals put forward and agreed on unanimously by the MSMA in meetings held earlier this year in Japan and Malaysia.

The amendments to the Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix Regulations address issues raised over the cost of competing in the championship with regards to the 2009 MotoGP season and beyond.

As of the 2009 season Friday morning free practice sessions for all classes have been removed from the Grand Prix schedules and all MotoGP practice sessions (including qualifying) have been reduced to 45 minutes in length.

Electronic and hydraulic launch control systems and electronic suspension systems have been banned.

Furthermore, in the eight 2009 MotoGP World Championship races which follow the summer break, commencing with the 14th-16th August trip to the Czech track of Brno, each MotoGP rider will be restricted to the use of a maximum of five engines until the end of the season.

[SLAC]

cool we will see more of Dani Pedrosa flipping the bike

[Stu23]

Haha that was so funny i remember that well.........hoppers reaction was great !

Racing can only get better

[clarkey]

Wheelie time.....:ayyy: Be great to see them sliding around more , Haydens gonna love it

[zRoYz]

Wheelie time.....:ayyy: Be great to see them sliding around more , Haydens gonna love it

They still have traction control, wish they would give that the boot.

[clarkey]

They still have traction control, wish they would give that the boot.

So the "Electronic systems will be partially limited in MotoGP " not include traction control? Damn i was hoping for the Melandri style last corners all over :(

[Birdman45]

yeah i think they meant "Electronic and hydraulic launch control systems and electronic suspension systems have been banned."

[ozimoto]

cool we will see more of Dani Pedrosa flipping the bike

I was in the grandstand right in front of him. Hilarious.:lmao:

[ozimoto]

Don't see how launch control will make for better racing. If you don't get of the line well and your on a top bike you'll still end up at the front. Passing the slow bikes on the way is not exciting,especially since the cameras will be on the front bikes anyway.

[Birdman45]

well the difference this year may not be as big as previous years with the control tyres regarding riders ploughing through the field, they may be able to do it still, but doubt they'll be there by the end of the race. Tyre management will play a big part this year I rekon.

[WET4URacing]

more time for the local boys to prac and qual on fri

[1down5up]

all they are going to do is slow the advances in bike tech the elect/active suspen should be allowed it makes the bikes handle better and that to me means safer same with launch control... sure it was funny that time with the little spanish bloke but in a real start of a race,and if he was on the first row, it would of been carnage . some 1 could of been killed
all i wanna see is the best riders going hard at it with the best bikes the factory can produce i think engine size weight of bike and a 6 speed gear box 4 stroke normal assperated is all the rules ya need
watch dorna screw up a good thing ( if it dont need fixing dont fuck with it )

[Birdman45]

I'd suggest it did need fixing and WSBK was blowing GP off the map with way better racing. Add to that the cost involved in the things they have banned, it means we'll still have GP to watch. No use keeping the rules the same if next year nobody can afford to do it.

Friday is still on apparently, just not with qualifying etc, and they're gonna make a meet and greet riders thing out of the spare time, or so i have heard.

[2ndclasscitizen]

I'd suggest it did need fixing and WSBK was blowing GP off the map with way better racing. Add to that the cost involved in the things they have banned, it means we'll still have GP to watch. No use keeping the rules the same if next year nobody can afford to do it.

Thing is though, of all the things banned the only one that isn't in WSBK is carbon brakes.

[Captain]

Those New MotoGP Rules: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

As we reported earlier today, the Grand Prix Commission has announced a slew of new rules for MotoGP, supposedly aimed at cutting costs in MotoGP. The measures contain a mixture of news for MotoGP fans, some good, some bad, and some seemingly incomprehensible. Let's go through the measures one by one, and examine the possible impact.

First up is the revised weekend schedule, which sees the Friday morning practice dropped, and the other practice sessions severely shortened. A race weekend will now look as follows:

Friday
13:05-13:45 125cc Free Practice 1
14:05-14:50 MotoGP Free Practice 1
15:05-15:50 250cc Free Practice 1

Saturday
09:05-09:45 125cc Free Practice 2
10:05-10:50 MotoGP Free Practice 2
11:05-11:50 250cc Free Practice 2
13:05-13:45 125cc Qualifying Practice
14:05-14:50 MotoGP Qualifying Practice
15:05-15:50 250cc Qualifying Practice

Sunday
08:40-09:00 125cc Warm Up
09:10-09:30 250cc Warm Up
09:40-10:00 MotoGP Warm Up
11:00 125cc Race
12:15 250cc Race
14:00 MotoGP Race


This change is both good and bad news for MotoGP fans. More specifically, it's good news for racegoing fans, and bad news for TV audiences. Fans actually attending races may be losing out on track time, but they are likely to be gaining something else instead. Rumors abound that the Friday morning will be turned into some kind of open paddock, or pit lane show, allowing fans a much better chance to get close to their heroes, and see the teams at work up close.

TV audiences, on the other hand, get the raw end of the stick. The shortened sessions on Friday and Saturday afternoons mean half an hour less MotoGP action on TV, and that's in areas such as Spain and Italy where both days of practice is televised. With the loss of Eurosport, Friday practice will go untelevised in most countries in Europe, and Saturday qualifying has been reduced by 15 minutes. The loss is not huge, but it is significant.

It may turn out to be significant for the teams, however. The money they save on reduced maintenance due to lower mileages may well be turn out not to be saved, but lost in sponsorship. Sponsorship deals are measured using exposure, using TV minutes as a starting point. By cutting the qualifying by 15 minutes, the Grand Prix Commission has basically cut exposure by 12% in most markets, and a little less in markets where Friday practice is screened. MotoGP may need to save money, but what they really can't afford to do is lose more sponsorship.

Increasing Costs

The next group of measures is aimed at reducing costs, but is unlikely to do any such thing:


From the Czech GP, a maximum of 5 engines can be used in 8 races. No changing of parts will be permitted except daily maintenance.
Only 2 post race tests at Catalunya and Czech GP for development purposes using test riders only are permitted.

To take the last point first, cutting the number of post-race tests from the 5 currently scheduled down to just 2 will surely save on maintenance. And if the rule had specified only current competitors, then even more might have been saved. But by specifying that only test riders may be used, then a whole chain of logistics is invoked which starts to increase tests once again. The riders have to be kept on retainer; they have to be flown to and from the track; and perhaps worst of all, there are very few test riders who are capable of running a fast enough pace to generate useful data. If a rider is 3 seconds off race pace, he will not be pushing the chassis hard enough to find the problems the riders will run into at race pace.

The adoption of a single tire has made this point even more critical. Before, riders could fix problems with a different tires, altering construction and compound to mitigate some of the worst effects of chatter, for example. But a single tire means that handling chatter means altering headstock, chassis and swingarm flexibility, to dampen the vibration. And speed is the only way of exposing these problems, as Yamaha found at the beginning of 2006. And so more simulations will have to be run, and more testing will have to be done to compensate for the lack of testing by current racers on current racetracks. What looks like easy savings soon gives way to more spending to compensate. Peter is robbed, to compensate Paul.

We have discussed the minimum engine life proposal at length and ad nauseam previously, but will go over the principal arguments once again. The intention of the rule is to get the factories to detune their engines, so that they last longer. The effect of the rule will be for the factories to increase testing and development of their engines, so that they last longer while still producing the same performance. The fear of losing will mandate that the money saved on maintenance goes straight into R&D.

The policing of this is difficult, if not downright treacherous. Which parts may be opened and which parts may be replaced will be argued over endlessly, as will the exact circumstances of every transgression of this rule. And depending on the severity of the penalty, it might even be worth disregarding it entirely, and just using as many engines as you like. After all, if your (one-race) bike is significantly faster than the (multiple-race) competition at Brno, then why worry about being put to the back of the grid, especially if it's just 6 rows deep? You can make your way through the field, and pick up the points you need anyway. Will it work like this? We can't be sure. Are the factories evaluating this as an option? You can be absolutely certain.

Banning The Future

The other measures in the rules are not so much an attempt at cost cutting, and more of a signpost for the future direction of MotoGP. Here's the full list of prohibitions:

Ceramic composite materials are not permitted for brake discs or pads.
Electronic controlled suspension is not permitted.
Launch control system is not permitted.
To begin with what is at first glance the most puzzling, the banning of a technology that is neither used, nor even under consideration for MotoGP. But the ban on ceramic disk brakes are aimed firmly at 2010, when the Grand Prix Commission is likely to ban carbon brakes. Without a ready alternative, the hope is that the teams will turn to steel disks, so that a one-bike-per-rider rule can be imposed, and the teams can also save the quarter of a million euros they drop on brake parts. Whether they do, or whether they spend more money looking at alternatives which aren't ceramic composites, remains to be seen.

Like ceramic brakes, electronically controlled suspension is little used currently in MotoGP. But once again, the single tire rule makes this a more attractive proposition. Some teams have experimented with it, but it is far from commonplace as yet. The purpose of the ban is little to do with what is currently happening in the paddock, and more as serving as a poster child for the Big Change coming, and one that is presaged by our final rule, and perhaps the most ridiculous one.

Launch control. Banning it seems like a perfectly sensible move, putting the emphasis on the rider once again, rather than the skill of the data engineer. As soon as you start to think about the practical implications, however, any semblance of common sense goes straight out the window. Question number one, and frankly, the only question that matters, is whether this can be enforced, and judging by the experience of Formula One, the answer is a big fat no. Even with a spec ECU, the cars leave the line with no wheel spin and without stalling, all getting away more or less as they lined up on the grid.

Without a spec ECU, policing launch control is going to be impossible. How will the scrutineers, the people charged with enforcing the rules, be able to distinguish between a "safety" engine map, or perhaps a "rain setting" engine map and launch control? Does a failure to lift the front wheel off the line indicate that launch control has been used, or just outstanding bike and throttle control? Without a complete understanding of the working of every ECU currently being used in MotoGP, and the engineering and computing knowledge to extract both the obvious and the hidden intent in any engine maps and embedded software, finding a launch control program is going to be a hopeless task, and doomed to failure at the very start.

But the point of the launch control ban is of course not to ban launch control. The point is to test the viability of imposing controls on electronics, and how that will work out in practice. Both Carmelo Ezpeleta and Vito Ippolito have spoken out against the increasing use of electronic controls, as have any number of riders. As ever, though, the devil is in the detail, and just how to achieve the intended goal is the million dollar question. After all, engineers love nothing better than a seemingly intractable problem, and imposing rules just provides the kind of challenge they thrive on.

However the ban on launch control works out, there is every reason to fear that the ban on electronics will be instigated anyway. It will be instituted for reasons of cost, and will unleash either an orgy of spending in an attempt to bypass the ban while staying inside the letter of the law, or else precipitate the withdrawal of yet more manufacturers, as the value they see in MotoGP as an R&D platform is reduced considerably. Suddenly, taking part in MotoGP becomes nothing more than a marketing exercise, and a way of boosting a manufacturer's image.

The problem here, of course, is that a race only has one winner. Of the four manufacturers in MotoGP, three are destined not to have a MotoGP champion, leaving those three to question the value of their MotoGP program. If you're using MotoGP to promote your brand as a high-performance product, and you get your behind kicked by your competitors, then why continue to throw good money after bad? Why not, like Kawasaki, pull out and find another way to promote your brand?

And ironically, this is the only way that costs will genuinely be cut in MotoGP. MotoGP racing costs what it costs because the racing department can persuade senior management that the marketing value provided by MotoGP matches the 50 or 60 million dollars that it takes to win a championship. If senior management decides that it is no longer worth that investment, they will not reduce that investment, they will simply cut it altogether. More bikes disappear from the grid, and the championship loses more and more of its luster with every departing manufacturer.

Fortunately for those that remain, every manufacturer that leaves increases the chances of winning for those that stay. Less competition means that instead of needing an extra three tenths, they only need one tenth, and the relentless pace of progress slows. Slower progress means less R&D costs, and makes satellite bikes more competitive, and cheaper to produce. If last year's bike is only a tenth slower than this year's bike, rather than half a second, then more teams might be interested in last year's bike, and grids might start to grow again.

Just as lap times stagnated during the 1990s, with Michelin's domination of the tire situation, then picked up again once Bridgestone stepped up to the mark, so it is likely to go with MotoGP. The thing that drives up costs in MotoGP is not technology. The thing that drives up costs is competition, and the relentless pursuit of victory. But then again, that's why they take part, and we watch.

[Birdman45]

I any of them have any sense, they'll all NOT use launch control and say nothing...... whoever marches off the line and leaves everyone for dead will surely be checked out after the race, regardless of if it was a good start or not. LOL

[Cedric]

Hopefully the end result of these cutbacks due to the current economic climate will make for some closer racing but tell you what, if they dumped these F1800s and went back to relatively old tech 990s I'd be far happier.. We can dream, can't we??

[WET4URacing]

F1800s ????? new ford??

[Cedric]

amalgamation of F1 and 800s... due to the processional nature of the racing..