Early DRR Stuff: Casey With The Good Rant

MotoGP had a shock announcement to make just days before this weekend started - That stability control was being introduced and expected to be run by all the teams as part of a regulation change, effective immediately. It’s become a standardised part of the bikes ECU’s and cuts power to the rear to the bike if they feel its sliding too much. The claim by the powers that be say that as a result, it should lower the risk of high-side crashes and because it was done of the interest of safety and there was a unanimous agreement between all five manufacturers, it was greenlit immediately. 

Funnily enough, my Podcast co-host Cameron Buckley reckoned that the teams may have been running this anyway on the side (it’s been in the works for three years according to TNT’s Gavin Emmett), but because it was unpoliceable without hard evidence, the series has just mandated its usage and be open about it, like with F1 in 2001 when out of nowhere driver aids like Traction Control, Launch Control and automatic transmission returned. Like prohibition and weed, better legal so you can regulate it than don’t and it all goes under the table.

Casey Stoner was also here this weekend visiting the paddock, and no surprise, even got a full on media session too, and he was surrounded. Naturally, he was asked all about the regulations and the prototypes we have now, and he was good value for his comments:

"It's always a very difficult, touchy subject, because the riders are going to want it one way, and then the engineers and the manufacturers are going to want it another. So there's always this sort of argument, but as we're not creating street bikes out of these ones, I don't think we should be thinking about developing the electronics as far as they've gone."

"And especially now, this weekend, they've brought a whole other level of electronics. Speaking to the riders, you can literally go and twist the throttle. You've got nearly 300 horsepower and you can twist the throttle and nothing happens. You've got the best riders in the world riding the easiest bikes to ride in the world, and I don't see this as being anything that I'm interested in.

"You have no more control over how much slide you have. Already when I was testing, just before I stopped everything, I wasn't allowed to use the clutch going into the corner, because it confused the system. So there's no more element of skill with every aspect. You literally just have to brake hard, get it into the corner, and then all the guys are talking about now, they can just literally twist the throttle, press a button, drops it down. There's just too much going on."

Find the full presser where you can, Casey reckoned it’s partly why Marc Marquez has been so dominant, because he was the last man on the grid to ride MotoGP prototypes before the shape-shifter era, and why Dani Pedrosa can hop back on a KTM and immediately be competitive. 

Me personally… I’m conflicted. There are facets of Casey I completely agree with. Yes, the sport has gone down the wrong path with ride-height devices and advanced aerodynamics. It’s become a very zero-sum game where the bikes are getting dangerously fast at 300bhp and 225mph,, and you can make a strong case that in combination with unfit for purpose tires, the series has actually become more potentially dangerous and caused more problems than it solved. 

But I also understand that the sport is always going to be a battle between the engineering element that you pay them the big bucks for - developing the latest and greatest technology to make their bike that much faster, versus the human nature of wanting to see the best rider win, and seeing that struggle as they dance on the limit and chase perfection. As I’ve said so many times on this site, it's human nature as Motorsport fans to always care most about the fleshy bit in the cockpit, or on top of the fairing, and that’s never going to change. Part of the reason why Casey retired at 27 was because the series was going away from the razorblades of the old 2-strokes he grew up with, to the relative butter knives of prototype racing, and being too much like F1.

Racers want that adrenaline kick and the difficulty that comes with the high. Engineers just want to go faster and push that technical innovation. It’s a tug of war that no-one ever wins, the current rulebook being the testament of that. Everyone knows deep down that it's bad for the racing and better off going away, but it’s not happening until 2027 because why would Ducati agree to cut off their own hand that’s made them so successful? It’s not a fair fight. In a sport where hundreds work their fingers to the bone to produce the perfect machine, it’s the rider that takes the final credit. It is, what it is.