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Slavvy posted:most of his titles were achieved under a crippling machine handicap I am real skeptical of this. Like, I think the honda is maybe much worse for anyone else in the last few years. But I have a hard time believing that marquez was better enough vs. the end of rossi's prime or lorenzo that he would beat them on a much worse bike. Stoner won in 2011, then was basically injured out of the championship in 2012. But Pedrosa in 2012 was second so the Honda can't have been that bad right before Marquez joined and won in 2013. And then he's either literally the best ever or the Honda was quite good when he won a record 13 races in 2014. 2015 he lost to Lorenzo but finished second. 2016, maybe? But at that point this has to be at least partially on Marquez as a development rider and he still won in 2016 in similar fashion to how he'd won the prior few years on what was not a bad bike. Then the yamaha falls off a cliff and lorenzo moves and rossi's performance really starts to degrade and he's really competing with dovi who just isn't the same class of rider (still love dovi though). Like, marquez is insane and certainly deserves to be in the best-ever conversation but the idea that his bike has been bad is one that I just don't agree with. Not good for other folks? Maybe. But not good for Marquez? No way.
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Apr 12, 2022 20:34
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builds character posted:I am real skeptical of this. Like, I think the honda is maybe much worse for anyone else in the last few years. But I have a hard time believing that marquez was better enough vs. the end of rossi's prime or lorenzo that he would beat them on a much worse bike. Ok, let's go through them one by one, because a lot of your points can also support my argument: 2013 - closely fought season, marc really only won because pedrosa annihilated himself with injury. Rossi had just returned to yamaha, lorenzo was not in the greatest condition, ducati were a wasteland. The honda was definitely the best bike there as they still had the advantage of being the only factory with a seamless gearbox. Both hondas do well, marquez wins because pedrosa is made of balsa wood. 2014 - this was the classic golden season. They had the best bike and the best rider dialled in by the best-drilled team and dominated utterly 2015 - yamaha make a large step forward, lorenzo starts to dominate the wins while rossi is relentlessly on the podium. Marc repeatedly crashes trying to win races where a podium was realistically the best outcome because the yamahas were clearly quicker on most days; marc's immaturity exacerbated the situation and puts him too far down in the points. Pedrosa has a mediocre season, the other hondas are an utter waste. Probably the second best bike on the grid, marc is unable to make the difference enough to get the title 2016 - crushing straight-line disadvantage to both the yamaha and the ducati (there is a video of him exiting the final corner at silverstone in front of lorenzo, who then literally just passes him on the throttle before they can reach the line but I cbf finding it rn). The new tyre mix clearly suits those bikes better, the front-biased honda is struggling because even the hardest michelin isn't hard enough at the time and the bike fundamentally can't take advantage of the michelin rear. Random front washouts are chronic for everyone but honda has it worst. The ducati makes a step forward as both dovi and iannone win races finally, battle for podiums regularly. Lorenzo and rossi are both in win contention but it's clear every team is struggling to understand the tyres and no clear challenger emerges. Marc makes a dramatic speech in front of his team a few races in, saying the championship is lost unless their traction issue is fixed; honda move mountains to return some small amount of rear grip, marc makes the difference by repeatedly saving the front on multiple occasions. Crutchlow has a few other moments, every other honda is a waste. Second or third best bike on the grid. 2017 - lorenzo leaves, rossi stagnates, yamaha lose their way with binales. Nonetheless he wins several races, the bike is clearly capable of good but uneven performance. Dovi, a guy who we both know isn't anywhere near as good as marquez, wins half a dozen races and pushes marc to the final round. The ducati is a clearly superior bike on many occasions but only dovi has everything sorted enough to do anything. Marc again makes the difference via a few key crunch performances, all the other hondas are a waste. Second best bike on the grid by a clear margin, this wasn't at all disputed at the time. 2018 - lorenzo comes good, dovi continues as he is, the ducati is clearly once again the best bike. Yamaha are lost. Marc wins via consistency, with the two ducatis robbing points off one another and other shenanigans. Second or third best bike on the grid (it's hard to discern what yamaha's actual problem was at this time) 2019 - honda bring a new, much more tractable engine. Marc dominates, the other honda riders improve drastically, ducati stay at a similar level. Arguably tied for the best bike there. I think this all makes sense. Honda built a bike to exploit bridgestone's magic front and ignored the mediocre rear. The switch to michelin makes that chassis philosophy totally obsolete, except marc can continue to make the difference. The 'best' setup for him ie heavily front biased is also the only setup that's viable on the old honda, because it simply can't take advantage of the michelin rear. Imo his 2020 injury was partly the result of honda attempting to 'fix' this problem via electronic management and other tweaks, rather than accepting that a fundamental major redesign was needed. His absence highlighted their obsolete philosophy, they have now built a more rear biased ducati style bike and the other honda riders have improved notably (except alex but sucking is his job). With the current tyres this philosophy is the best one because the michelin fronts still kind of suck and can't be relied on....unless you're marc. I think the above paints a story of a rider who wins handily when he's on the second best bike, and dominates utterly when he's on a par with the others. The only other person in recent memory who won a championship on a suboptimal bike is stoner on the ducati, and a similar situation held there ie everyone else said it was the worst bike ever and he just made it happen. I think the current honda is at the very least on a par with the ducati and the suzuki. Hence I think he will win the championship.
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Apr 13, 2022 01:58
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Slavvy posted:Ok, let's go through them one by one, because a lot of your points can also support my argument: But marquez is really good? Like, it's him stoner, lorenzo and rossi in the modern era, no? This is from wikipedia, just so we can see all his results at once.  *13 best bike - win *14 best bike - win 15 2nd best - came in 3rd *16 in the first nine races he wins 3 of his 5 overall, three 2nds, two 3rds and a 13th. I'm awfully skeptical that any bike is the best at this point. I think (maybe I'm misremembering?) this is around when Ducati just starts going bonkers with straightline speed but before they realized they had to be able to turn too. But it's also when either Pedrosa starts really hitting the end of his career or when the bike has been developed for Marquez and nobody else and this is really where I start having a hard time with figuring out how much is bike and how much is Marquez. Because I kind of want to give the bikes two ratings - best bike overall and best bike for Marquez. So, for example, I think the Ducati here would have been maybe best bike overall but maybe not but if you put Marquez on the ducati it would have been an absolute rocket ship (similarly, imagine a prime-era lorenzo on the current suzuki). Anyway, I have a hard time saying whose bike is best this year but it's certainly not the yamaha and rossi and lorenzo are the only riders of quality that can really compete with Marquez. *17 wait, this is the year where if you'd given Marc the ducati it would have been truly absurd. sorry. Anyway, yeah here he's not best but he's I think a clear second and, more importantly, he's just a much better rider than dovi and his bike is, I think, better than the yamahas plus rossi is getting old and vinales is uh, vinales. *18 I firmly believe that if Ducati had just given Lorenzo a little pillow to rest his belly on at the beginning of the season he would have won going away. I also agree that the ducati was best. But for whatever reason they just wouldn't listen to lorenzo about setup until it was too late. Dovi again just isn't talented enough but here's where I think you can see what happens when someone with similar talent and a better bike races against Marquez. He loses (just like everyone else does). It's just that there aren't many folks with similar talent. *19 I think the ducati and honda are probably pretty comparable here, but again, Marquez is Marquez and Ducati doesn't have Lorenzo anymore. Having gone through that, I feel more comfortable saying that Marquez is certainly good enough to win with not-the best bike against the folks who aren't as talented as he is, and that there's a very limited pool of those folks. Really just Lorenzo and Rossi that he's had to race against. But on the rare occasion that he's gone up against someone who is as talented and is on better machinery he's consistently lost (and that's really just happened with Lorenzo on both Yamaha and Ducati once Ducati got Lorenzo's bike set up with what is again one of my very favorite things ever, a little pillow for his belly). He's just absurdly talented, even for a motogp rider, and he can ride the bike in a way that nobody except maybe stoner? could but I don't think he's good enough to win against the folks with comparable talent on a worse bike. It's actually really interesting, going back to 2001 we've had only Rossi, Lorenzo and Marquez winning titles, with two from Stoner and one from Nicky Hayden. But that's just a ridiculous stretch and I think to judge Marquez you have to do it against his peers, of whom there are only two or three if you want to include Stoner.
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Apr 13, 2022 21:23
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I think instead of writing massive essays it might be easier to look at what Lorenzo could do on the Yamaha and Ducati versus the Honda. You can say what you want about the earlier years but the Honda has clearly been a turd the past few years that only Marquez could ride.
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Apr 14, 2022 00:44
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builds character posted:-snip- This is the kind of back and forth shittalk I live for ngl. I get where you're coming from and I feel like we're both looking at different sides of the same coin. It's very difficult to disentangle bike vs rider, and the above example of Lorenzo going to Honda is extremely unkind imo. The bike has a philosophy which means it's biased in certain ways. Your setup compromise has to meet in the middle between the two extremes of what they bike needs to work well, and what the rider wants. The Ducati is very flexible and allows a for a really wide range of viable compromises. The old Honda seemed to only be competitive if it had Marc's compromise, which only Marc could ride. It had other, more 'normal' modes that crutch and taka and Alex ran and I think those guys as 'normal' riders with a 'normal' setup did considerably worse than their counterparts on the other brands. In that sense it's hard to rank the bikes at all cause there's so much uncertainty and squishy meat involved. Otoh the Yamaha is quite easy and friendly to ride but has an extremely narrow compromise window - either you ride like Lorenzo or you go slow. I think this makes it a relatively crap bike, but that compromise is nonetheless a championship winning formula. I think it goes back to the fundamental tension between an 'extreme' bike being potentially the fastest on any given day, because it can exploit any advantage it has more than the others vs an all-rounder which will be statistically excellent over a season, but not particularly impressive in any one given race. I think this was basically the story of last season, where bagnaia was untouchable on his day but when he was in trouble, he was really in trouble. My takeaway is that the new Honda has a broader range of viable compromises but is still 'extreme' enough in it's bias toward stop-go lines to be competitive over one lap. I think that on the days the bike isn't working great, Marc will make the difference, on the days it works well he'll be untouchable because he's functionally on a Ducati. Slavvy fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Apr 14, 2022 |
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Apr 14, 2022 03:49
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italian quid posted:I think instead of writing massive essays it might be easier to look at what Lorenzo could do on the Yamaha and Ducati versus the Honda. You can say what you want about the earlier years but the Honda has clearly been a turd the past few years that only Marquez could ride. I get paid per word, sorry. Lorenzo on the Ducati was terrible until he got his belly pillow. And then he was amazing. Marquez has been injured the past few years though? Since 2019 which is now three years ago. Anyway, I think that's part of my point - that Marquez is a ridiculously talented but in a way that makes me ask "is this bike actually bad or is it amazing for marquez and bad for everyone else?" Slavvy posted:This is the kind of back and forth shittalk I live for ngl.  I don't disagree with any of this except I don't know if Marc can last the season. But if Marc can stay healthy I think he's still unequivocally the most talented guy on the grid. I'm only sad that he didn't take the opportunity when he was teammates with Lorenzo to really lean into being the bad guy. Like just a little wink or something after he gave a particularly corporate soundbite and smile would do it. Something to show he knows what he's doing. I know he's too professional for that but it's still what I want.
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Apr 14, 2022 15:28
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There was the press conference where they asked him about Lorenzo and he said when a great champion comes to a great team like repsol Honda the expectation is wins and podiums
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Apr 14, 2022 19:32
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Marc is the best racer I've ever seen at playing the psychological game and if he says something there's usually a reason behind it. I think with Lorenzo he was more than happy to just build up the expectations enough to let him hang himself with results.
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Apr 14, 2022 19:53
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Marq was robbed
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Apr 23, 2022 18:17
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I didn't watch qualifying but I did see a clip of him landing on his head again
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Apr 23, 2022 19:06
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You should watch both Q1 and Q2. Great motorcycle racing. I was Simon hater #1 when he first started commentating. But, I've never appreciated a man more than I did today, during Q1. Simon, keeping it real.
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Apr 24, 2022 04:45
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dema posted:You should watch both Q1 and Q2. Great motorcycle racing. Yeah Simon has always been a good oval office that way, he just needs to take the potatoes out of his mouth. The way he talks is to the nz accent as the cowboy on the Simpsons is to the texan accent, he's basically a caricature. And Marc was fucken robbed, the yellow flag rule is so idiotic it's like it was dreamed up by people who don't know anything about racing.
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Apr 24, 2022 04:53
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lmao the Moto3 finish. Sergio Garcia fell over coming into parc fermé
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Apr 24, 2022 12:09
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Jack Miller you dumb shitter.
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Apr 24, 2022 13:41
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BitcoinRockefeller posted:Jack Miller you dumb shitter. lol
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Apr 24, 2022 13:52
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What a mess Moto2 turned into.
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Apr 24, 2022 18:31
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Are all three races worth watching?
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Apr 24, 2022 19:05
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Skreemer posted:What a mess Moto2 turned into. I think there's going to be more than a few people pushing to get rid of the 1 bike rule after today
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Apr 24, 2022 19:06
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https://i.imgur.com/GSIwJ4S.mp4
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Apr 24, 2022 20:26
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BitcoinRockefeller posted:Jack Miller you normal Australian Fixed
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Apr 24, 2022 23:03
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That guy standing in the moto2 crash screen cap did a nifty jump out of the way when the other guy crashed.
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Apr 25, 2022 00:11
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I believe that is exactly why you don't stand next to a crashed bike.
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Apr 25, 2022 02:18
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Mir was robbed. And holy smokes Rins has been watching old Darryn Binder re-runs these last 2 races. Moto2 was insane, as you can see by the clip above.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:38
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Miller is the epitome of the word Jackass when he's riding. If I was him and those LCR rumours were even remotely true I'd loving sign.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:48
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italian quid posted:Miller is the epitome of the word Jackass when he's riding. He'd be far better off on a pramac being Ducatis crutchlow, developing the bike and bringing in points in a lower pressure environment. Unfortunately Ducati management don't think that way. Wrt: LCR I kinda doubt it? It would mean Alex getting pushed out and that seems unlikely; there's no way he can take taka's seat because that's just about a whole separate team unto itself and that seat is basically guaranteed to go to ogura anyway. Plus he has a terrible history with Honda. If it happened he'd do well imo but I think it's just negotiation posturing.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:57
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I agree he can't handle the pressure of being in a factory team, especially Ducati. he would be a good fit for Pramac as a development mule but whether Ducati management is smart enough to actually go for that who knows.
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Apr 25, 2022 04:12
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Ciabatti's face has convinced me that was his iannone moment and he's out. They seem incapable of avoiding emotional decisions.
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Apr 25, 2022 04:36
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Ducati will definitely make the worst possible decision.
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Apr 25, 2022 04:37
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Russian Bear posted:Ducati will definitely make the worst possible decision. They already did that, he left for Honda and won the title immediately Then they did it again, he went to Honda and then retired due to injury Then they did it again and he retired and has now come back on a lovely Yamaha
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Apr 25, 2022 04:43
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To be fair punting Dovizoso was the right call from my point of view. He never really did anything amazing and would usually just place the Ducati where it deserved to be, I think people got way too excited over the fact that he managed to hold his own against Marq a few times. Whether Ducati punted him for that reason or some insane incomprehensible other reason is tough to say though. Firing Lorenzo on the other hand was outright criminal.
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Apr 25, 2022 05:13
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I would consider being the only person to run Marquez all the way to the last race a thing he did that was amazing. I think beating Marquez in almost every last corner duel they had, including in the rain, was amazing. I think iannone losing the front and torpedoing dovi, taking them out of second and third place, was amazing. Imo if the Ducati 'deserved' to be somewhere, why did all of the supposedly non-mediocre talents come and go without much splash? yet plodding old dovi came second in the championship 3 times even when his teammate was an on-form Lorenzo. Criminally underrated rider. Ducati punted him because of emotional baggage with the boss + a failure to adapt to the new rear tire, which is a much fairer criticism and probably why he's not in the pantheon of all time greats.
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Apr 25, 2022 05:59
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As the commentators said at the time, Miller and Mir are two of the hardest braking guys in the field. A braking duel lap after lap like that was always going to end in disaster. Jack definitely needs to go back to Pramac, it’s not as if that would be much of a step backwards (if any) in terms of competitiveness right now anyway I also have a soft spot for Dovi and it’s a real shame guys like him and Morbidelli are stuck on poo poo bikes ROFLBOT fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 23:32
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Jack Jack go back Banana-fana Pramac
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Apr 26, 2022 02:55
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Oooof Quartararo’s balls https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMH0cUJI8ho
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Apr 30, 2022 07:59
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Have any of you been to watch the races in person? What was your experience and would you recommend going? I myself would have the opportunity to go and watch the Kymiring GP but I'm not sure if it's worth the tickets and drive.
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Apr 30, 2022 12:16
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Neat random realisation watching MotoGP this weekend and looking at Fabio's team history in the lower classes, he has scored 666 points in MotoGP. El Diablo indeed...
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Apr 30, 2022 14:04
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How is Ducati going to faff it up tomorrow with Pecco.
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May 1, 2022 04:46
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Bearing in mind he set that scorching time on a track still damp in parts, and weather reports apparently say track temp will be high 40 to low 50°C, so I'd expect the Yamaha to cease functioning entirely, the Ducati to destroy it's tires halfway in and Alex Marquez winning the race.
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May 1, 2022 04:58
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Alex Marquez actually looked like he knew how not to crash last weekend.
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May 1, 2022 05:17
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Gotta feel for Oncu there. Worked his rear end off all race only to end up just off the podium. Moto3 eh? *shrugs*
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May 1, 2022 10:44
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