etusch wrote: ↑10 Jun 2024, 08:39
When a bike goes fast only on staights, in fact it is not a good bike. And not needs a fast rider though. ( When a suzuki overtakes a Ducati everywhere but ducati pass it back on straights, this is only anoying and not feel like racing ) It is clearly questionable that even during quartararo bagnaia wdc fight, ducati was not best bike out there. If you bring it with rider side I can say that now best bike is Aprilla but they don't have the rider. No it is not. ( Aprilla don't have good rider enough to fight for wdc, according to me ) But bike is also not good enough.
Especially if ducatis speed comes from aero, for sure that it is not a good bike for now too. ( I don't think it is only aero, I say this for just showing my point)
And tyre is also another big affect on this racing thing. We can not know if tyre were different, who will be fastest.
I agree with what you're saying in principle. The caveat is that a bike that is faster in a straight line can make a huge difference and win races more easily than a bike that handles well. We saw that many, many times with Marc and Dovi years ago - Marc would work all around the lap to pass, and then Dovi on the Duc would just pull a gap again on the straightaway and Marc would have to do it all over again. It's a huge advantage.
Even this year, you can see the GP24 pulling a gap on Marc while on the GP23, and supposedly these two bikes aren't that different. I was shocked that even while drafting close to Enea, Marc still could barely keep up with him at Mugello.
Anyway, I think part of the argument about whether Ducati was dominant since 2017 or only after 2021 is masked by a shortage of rider talent. MotoGP is not like F1, where many drivers will do the same laptime if they were in the same car. Riders will push to be close to the fastest rider, no matter what bike he's on. When Marc was out for the year in 2020, it was almost like "where did our reference go? How fast can we go? We don't know anymore, because Marc is gone". I remember throughout 2020, it was almost as if nobody "wanted" to win; they weren't sure how fast they could go or needed to go. I think you see that in the results as we had many many different winners that year. Was there a best bike that year? Was it the Suzuki, the Yamaha, or the Duc? or KTM? It wasn't very clear like in years before.
Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
