*OFFICIAL* MotoGP Sachsenring 2011 *Spoilers*

[ZDM]

Originally Posted by Tard

I saw no smiley face.
If you were well renowned for your humour I may have taken it for granted you were joking.

He's renowned for his brevity, not humor, dry or otherwise....

[ZDM]

Originally Posted by Darbone

Really good race. Shame to see Stoner lose the top step....

I've asked this before but could it be that Stoner has dialed back the TC on the Honda to accomodate his riding style (backing in the corners) to help him ride faster? The expected result of increased tire slippage would be increased wear that he's paying for at the end of the race.

And WTF is up with SPEED showing us the start 5 times at a period in the race where there are battles going on for the lead and other positions ?

I noticed Stoner's rear kick out a few times....I'm curious if he does have the TC turned down a notch or two....I thought that usual...and it did upset his pace.....he needs to put the crashes behind him and go, go, go.....
***It was a great race, very entertaining...question is next year...OK so there are more bikes on the grid....super duper frames w/ 1000cc engines....in a state of tune that is going to pale in comparison w/ the top factory/satellite teams....so just how quickly will these guys get swallowed up and become back markers....to the point of even making it dangerous to the front runners....it's not anything like Moto2.....

[rcrob]

Originally Posted by ZDM

I noticed Stoner's rear kick out a few times....I'm curious if he does have the TC turned down a notch or two....I thought that usual...and it did upset his pace.....he needs to put the crashes behind him and go, go, go.....
***It was a great race, very entertaining...question is next year...OK so there are more bikes on the grid....super duper frames w/ 1000cc engines....in a state of tune that is going to pale in comparison w/ the top factory/satellite teams....so just how quickly will these guys get swallowed up and become back markers....to the point of even making it dangerous to the front runners....it's not anything like Moto2.....

At the Mugello test the Suter Moto1 bike was 6 seconds a lap off the pace set by Stoner. Rumor is that Stoner was two seconds a lap faster on the 1000cc bike so that would make them about 8 seconds a lap slower than the leader. A little math using the fastest lap from this race means that @ Mugello they would hit lappers in the middle of the 13th lap...

Lets hope the CRT bikes are a bit faster than that by next year...

[tye1138]

Originally Posted by rcrob

All right Tye, I will call you on this statement. Explain yourself in detail exactly what you mean because frankly you are WAY off. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and either let you clarify or back pedal, which ever route you think might be best for you, and then I will give you the reasons why you are wrong.

Well, considering I don't have a degree in carbon fiber structural design, my guess is I'm wrong.

What IS the answer then?

[tye1138]

Originally Posted by Matt_P

^read this:

The rest of it is good too:

Yea, its good stuff.

They've got themselves into a bind with the design and they are never going to get themselves out. I was kinda shocked they even mentioned the word deltabox as it would be down-right stupid for them to backpedal that much. They have vast experience building bikes using trellis style frames, so build an effin' trellis bike thats stiff! The guys in Moto2 do it all day long, why can't Ducati do it in MotoGP? Yea, sure the forces are greater and you want less flex, I got it, but the whole frameless design using the motor as a flex point is a flawed concept. Now all of a sudden you have to bring in too many variables and you need super top-end guys like adrian newey to figure it out and frankly, Ducati can't afford them.

Motors are easy, I think Ducati can out-build the Japanese in the motor department because they're willing to use the desmo and I do think it works well on high-RPM standard 4 strokes. Plus, paying for a motor guy from Ferrari to help them, is way less then finding someone like newey...

[J.C.]

Originally Posted by ZDM

I noticed Stoner's rear kick out a few times....I'm curious if he does have the TC turned down a notch or two....I thought that usual...and it did upset his pace.....he needs to put the crashes behind him and go, go, go.....

It's quite a commonly known fact that Stoner uses very little traction control.
Confirmed by his peers when they had an opportunity to look at his data in this article - Stoner's secret? "He doesn't lean

[rcrob]

Originally Posted by tye1138

Well, considering I don't have a degree in carbon fiber structural design, my guess is I'm wrong.

What IS the answer then?

There is nothing wrong with the concept fundamentally. Clearly there is a problem in the execution somewhere along the line, they just haven't found it yet.

But with regards to your statement, there is no relationship between the material stiffness and the materials reliability. As long as you keep your design so that the stresses don't exceed the materials stress limits everything is golden. I did talk about this before with Matt, but when you are talking about a motorcycle chassis the stiffness is not the material's stiffness it is essentially a spring rate of the design. There are a couple of parameters that the designer can control, material parameters and geometric parameters. Together they make the basis for the chassis stiffness. Considering Ducati's current situation, they have either one or two geometries available to them with the GP11/GP12 depending on whether the GP12 has the same airbox design as the old GP11 or if it has been revised with the new bike. Lets assume that Ducati for the moment is stuck with one particular shape for the chassis because the tooling for the chassis and any associated components would not be done in time to sort anything out. Now Ducati wants to change the stiffness of their chassis but they cannot change the shape of their design. Lets assume that they want a more compliant chassis, how do they do that? First you have to consider the material. Now all composites are made up of two or more parts and their properties are a combination of their constituent parts. Add to that the fact that materials like carbon fiber have different material properties depending on the direction the load is applied, i.e. the properties (such as stiffness) along the length of the fiber are different than across the width of the fiber. In practice what this means is that the designers can alter the stiffness of the structure by changing the matrix, reinforcement and the orientation of the reinforcement. So Ducati has their chassis design that they want to make more compliant (less stiff), typically the percentage of resin is not really changed since it adds weight without much strength although the transverse stiffness is primarily matrix driven. So the first thing that Ducati can do is change the orientation from anything from zero degrees (axial) to 90 degrees (transverse) on any number of layers in order to increase compliance of the structure. As long as the stresses are kept below failure criteria they can go to all 90 degree orientation if they wanted (although that would defeat the purpose of using carbon fiber). Then there are different stiffnesses within carbon fibers that they could change, so they could go to a lower modulus fiber. And if they are still not able to achieve the compliance they wanted they could then start substituting other fibers such as Kevlar into the lay up to increase compliance. Again, the limiting factor there is the stress, not the stiffness.

Now when you consider Ducati's problems I think that they are not simple and can't necessarily be blamed on one particular thing. I think right now the problem Ducati is having most is getting heat into the front tire. Without getting the tire up to working temp they are never going to get "feel" sorted as the two are pretty inter-related. Then when you start thinking about what feel is (a harmonic problem) and how it relies on every component in the system, it is a pretty daunting task. Remember what we are talking about here with regards to the Ducati GP bike and the context of "not working", this isn't a superbike that wobbles around the track, it is a top level GP machine that even though it isn't on par with the Honda and Yamaha machines it races with, it is still a very good machine capable of some very fast laps.

[davy.j]

Originally Posted by tye1138

Well, considering I don't have a degree in carbon fiber structural design, my guess is I'm wrong.

What IS the answer then?

So if you really didn't know what you were talking about......why did you say it?
Or is it you just had to try & put me down yet again?
Getting really bored with your crap mate.


.

[freighttriain]

Originally Posted by davy-j

And what if Ducati had built Stoner a brand new bike & thrown shit bucket loads of money at it?
Reckon the result would have still been the same...?
All Stoner ever asked them for was to stop the front end going the opposite way to the corner, he handled the rest himself.
They couldn't even get that bit right.
.

i hear ya... i was just thinking that it was odd to see Rossi doing as well as Stoner when it comes down to it... i mean if not for taking the title?.. then it all doesn't matter really...

Thinking about Stoner on the Ducati.. i was thinking that he reminded me of Schwantz back in the day on the Suzuki...
The Suzuki had no business doing as well as it did under Schwantz' ass...
As well i believe the Ducati had no business taking victories if not for the way Stoner rode the thing... no business at all...

From the years '88 - "93... Schwantz had 23 victories... Rainey had i think 24... but Rainey took 3 titles. Why?... consistency...
Schwantz could not stop the win it or bin it riding style... sound familiar from the past few years?... Stoner on the Ducati?..
Stoner will go down in history as the one with the most victories in the 800 era, but with only one title to show for it so far...
Put Stoner on a bike that doesn't suck?... look at '11 on the Honda...
I always wondered what Schwantz would have done on a good bike... and i'm still wondering...

As far as Ducati not giving Stoner a new bike?... they did... '08... they just didn't seem to listen to the negative feedback as much....
perhaps due to the fact that Stoner still took victories on it...
I wonder if Ducati is still in the same frame of mind... i wonder how many of these changes are REALLY what Rossi has asked for. i think the first thing Rossi probably asked for was...
Can i have a frame like the M-1?... or perhaps like my old Honda?...

Do i think that Stoner would be faster on the 11.0 .. the 11.1... or whatever Ducati calls it by the end of the year?... absolutely...

Do i think that Ducati is spending all of these new fortunes on Rossi .. and giving Rossi what he and Burgess have requested?... no...

Ducati has proven to be way to stubborn in the past... and it seems to continue... toss the carbon-box.. air box combo.. whatever it is... toss it straight in to the f'n bin i say... Build a frame... add some forks and wheels... and let's get the f**k on with it...
my $.02...

[tye1138]

Originally Posted by davy-j

So if you really didn't know what you were talking about......why did you say it?
Or is it you just had to try & put me down yet again?
Getting really bored with your crap mate.

Put you down? Holy cow bro, turn the knob down a tad.

I wanted rcrob to tell me what he thought. He wrote 4 paragraphs of material to say the same thing I said in 2 sentences: "Thats because what is needed is impossible to do without compromising the structure of the carbon fiber too much. You can weave carbon fiber a million different ways and generate different structures, but at a certain point, you will reach the threshold of stiffness to reliability".

What I said is almost a direct quote from a very good engineer on the subject, I'm not just makin' up shit as I go along. I can't remember where I read these things, but they get stuck in my head so I posted it. I think it was from a motorcycle engineering mag MotoTech from 2008 when they were talking about designing the first carbon fiber frameless GP bike. Good mag too, well worth the read, very technical for us nerds.

Anyway, now all of that is out of the way, I thank rcrob for giving a more detailed in depth description of the situation. I spend so much time reading about F1 and watching videos about how F1 builds their components, I kinda understand what's going on now, but I don't care enough to do research and be an expert, thats what rcrob is here for! LOL