Austrian MotoGP *** SPOILER ALERT ***

[Ulvetanna_imp]

Everyone had clear ones except Lorenzo that. Saw, and his was gray and much bigger than everyone elses and actually looked part of a larger shell.

Winglets for the bikes are banned for next year. Announcers claimed somehow the winglets were making the Ducatis faster but in qualifying the top five riders were separated by a span of only .333 second, two Yamahas and two Ducatis and a Honda all crossing the line within 1/3 second.

So clearly the winglets, which add drag, were not a factor overall and have rightly been eliminated. Worth a try but chassis and ECU tuning are obviously working and are more in the spirit of a motorcycle race.

Winglets for the bikes are banned for next year. Announcers claimed somehow the winglets were making the Ducatis faster but in qualifying the top five riders were separated by a span of only .333 second, two Yamahas and two Ducatis and a Honda all crossing the line within 1/3 second.

So clearly the winglets, which add drag, were not a factor overall and have rightly been eliminated. Worth a try but chassis and ECU tuning are obviously working and are more in the spirit of a motorcycle race.
So this is truly a MotoGP **Spoiler Alert**

Winglets for the bikes are banned for next year. Announcers claimed somehow the winglets were making the Ducatis faster but in qualifying the top five riders were separated by a span of only .333 second, two Yamahas and two Ducatis and a Honda all crossing the line within 1/3 second.

So clearly the winglets, which add drag, were not a factor overall and have rightly been eliminated. Worth a try but chassis and ECU tuning are obviously working and are more in the spirit of a motorcycle race.
So this is truly a MotoGP **Spoiler Alert** well done, sir
Another bit of interesting information was the disclosure that the bikes' ECUs' would automatically begin to cut power if the fuel level dropped below a certain value, in order to assure the bikes would finish the race.

That is something to ponder because the ECU program is certainly possible to change 'on the fly' or could be programmed to shift gradually based on a whole variety of parameters, such as miles/kms raced, tire temperature, position on the track per the GPS data, and so on.

It was very, very odd that the Ducatis began to pull away slowly in the last few laps. That is exactly the opposite of what one would expect, especially with Iannone running soft/medium. Normally the harder compounds run a bit slower early on, then as they heat up and wear, the grip is maintained better for the duration of the race.

Since the Yamahas qualified just as fast as the Ducatis, practically speaking, there's not a real power deficit, and in fact all four bikes were running nearly equal lap times for many laps. As the fuel burns off one would expect lap times to stabilize or even decrease but this didn't seem to happen on this particular track.

I really do have to wonder just what kind of progams are being used, and how this may have affected the performance of the Yamaha bikes. It was BOTH Lorenzo and Rossi that dropped back at an equal rate. Both bikes had an identical drop-off in performance at exactly the same point in the race?

There are some, I am sure, that would agree that in the past, this would look like team orders.

These days, team orders can be given wirelessly by a computer geek and the riders may have no idea why their bikes just got a smidgen slower...or perhaps the low fuel power reduction was not programmed accurately.