Indy GP Images Ducastista Don’t Want To See
Sad thread going on over at the Ducati.ms forum, called appropriately enough, “Ducati Pile Up” — Apparently for a few Ducatista, the fowl weather and heavy rain at the Indianapolis Grand Prix was not the worst of their day but rather just the beginning…
Head over the thread to read more.
Duck, Duck, Goose… Hayden Signs with Ducati
After much speculation, today Nicky Hayden officially signed on as the second rider for Ducati’s Moto GP team for next season. The switch ends a tumultuous multi-year saga of disappointment and frustration for both Hayden and his former Honda Repsol squad.
From Roadracing World’s Newswire:
“We are really happy to have Nicky join us,” declared Claudio Domenicali, Ducati Corse CEO and Ducati Motor Holding Product Director. “We are certain that his never-say-die attitude, riding style and character will be great additions to our team in 2009. I would like to thank HRC for allowing Nicky to start testing our bike immediately after the Valencia Grand Prix. I would also like to thank Marco Melandri for his professionalism during a difficult year, which was below all our expectations. Unfortunately his feeling with the Desmosedici was never good enough to allow him to ride as well as he can. We wish him all the best for the future.”
Perhaps I’m being overly nationalistic - heaven forbid in a sport entirely built around it - but I for one am definitely looking forward to seeing The Kentucky Kid in Marlboro Racing Red atop a roaring Desmosedici next season. Welcome to the world of the Ducatista Nicky…
Thoughts on The Indianapolis GP
Some serious props have to go out to the nineteen men who braved the elements and started on the Indianapolis Moto GP grid yesterday. I can’t think of a race in recent memory - on at any level - that had such poor weather conditions. It looked like these guys were riding on a patch of land in the Bering Straits during rainy season. It was just an absolute mess and unfortunately a completely missed opportunity to captivate non-riders in America…
Obviously the weather is outside human control, but I doubt anyone who wasn’t already a Moto GP fan before the race started will remember anything about the race itself — Except perhaps for the poor conditions. That’s a shame.
This weekend’s race represented a real opportunity to hook the American public on sportbikes. Finally the best of the best in the world were going to be showcased live on the same weekend that the NFL was playing. This meant that there was a TV friendly audience already sitting on their couches with their remotes in hand. Yet NBC and it’s race-coverage team dropped the ball. This wasn’t compelling television by any stretch, rather it was a completely in-the-know affair where non-riders were never ‘let into the sport’ but rather kept on the outside looking in. Nobody even mentioned that at the first sign of foul weather the NASCAR big boys flag the race and wait it out. Yet here, with two less wheels and a heck of a lot less traction, these nineteen brave souls were flying around the most hallowed racetrack in America while throwing caution to the wind and everyone acted as if it were routine.
Lets see any average rider - heck any average driver - go 175 miles per hour down the front strait in a thirty to thirty-five mile an hour cross wind and not end up in the gravel. What these guys were doing was absolutely incredible and yet watching it on the tube felt not only anticlimactic but dramaless.
Of course that was before the utter confusion unfolded once Dorna red flagged the event… Roughly forty minutes into an hour broadcast the race was called and for the next twenty minutes or so nobody seemed to know what was going on… “The red flag is out, we have a winner, oh wait maybe we don’t, ok we do, hang on are they going to race again?… Let’s go to commercial”…
As if the non-riders in the audience weren’t confused enough during the actual racing, now our beloved sport looked clueless at best. The NFL, with whom the GP was competing for eyeballs, would never showcase so much chaos on such a national stage with seemingly no definitive answer until fifteen seconds before the hour broadcast was over.
Obviously circumstances outside of anyone’s control contributed to confusion, but as a viewer it seemed pretty clear that everyone at the track knew it was raining and that it was going to continue raining - the weather clearly wasn’t a surprise by any stretch - so shouldn’t there have been a plan put in place for how and when a red flag would come out and ultimately a clear way to articulate what that plan was to a sporting television audience that undoubtedly, thanks to the NFL, was the largest to ever have the opportunity to watch a GP race live here in the States?
Hayden to Ducati… Sure Sounds Like It
As the old expression goes, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”… Apparently during a pre-event press conference at the Indianapolis Grand Prix, Nicky Hayden more or less confirmed his rumored switch to the Ducati Moto GP team next season, saying,
It’s no secret. Everybody knows where my next stop is going to be, but officially we’re waiting to do it the right way, until the releases come out, because there’s teams and stuff. (via Road Racing World)
Usually I don’t comment that much on Moto GP madness - that’s better left to sites such as MotoGPMatters.com, who dedicate their lives to it and do a smashing job - but in this case, I’ve got to say I’m greatly looking forward to seeing what Nicky can do with a Desmosedici.
At this point in time only a handful of folks seem capable of riding the machine to its limit (as opposed to say Marco Melandri) and after years of being tormented by Honda, much like Valentino Rossi was towards the end of his Honda career, I just wonder if moving on isn’t the best thing for Hayden. The bike seems to suit his style imho and more over I can’t help but wonder if we’re witnessing a modern day Hailwood moment in the making (i.e. his 2nd go-around with Ducati) - could Nicky be the next great rider who later on in his career moves to Ducati and sees success? Certainly would be fun to see…
Pretty Nifty
Every now and then you come across something on the web that just smacks you in the face as ‘oh so cool’ because you realize that computers have come a long way in such a short time… While checking the Ducati boards tonight I ran across this amazingly good looking gif animation of the now heavily debated last corner bump between Valentino Rossi and Sete Gibernau at the end of last weekend’s MotoGP race in Spain. After reading countless columns and web forum postings about the incident I still have no idea if it was legal, just or even fair and I certainly have no idea whos fault it was. What I do know that it did make for some pretty fantastic television and perhaps that’s really all that counts when you get to the highest level in the land.
If you’re interested in reading a really nicely written review of the whole episode, I strongly suggest you check out fellow motorcycle blogger Alanf’s MotoGP Smackdown… entry. Well worth the price of admission 
The New MotoCzysz Red Bull Bike
After writing several previous posts about Michael Czysz’s MotoCzysz MotoGP Motorcycle I wanted to throw a shout out to Travis over at Motorcycle-Blog.com who today posted a scope on the soon to be announced Red Bull USGP paint scheme for the C1. Honestly I have no idea where he saw the press release because as of tonight I can’t get the MotoCzysz website to load in my web browser at all. It appears to be terminally down from where I’m sitting. That notwithstanding I find it a bit ironic how even though I’ve seen the bike in person, now being able to see it all dressed up for racing season makes the bike seem all the more real. Given how previous bits of information on the bike have spread across the ‘net like a brushfire, I’m sure thousands of folks will undoubtedly be drawing their own conclusions as to whether or not they dig the new paint scheme. It strikes me that at first blush the colorization of all the particular parts of the bike have begun to mask its true individuality which I think is a bit of a shame. It’s such a creative attempt to be different on so many levels that I’m a bit sorry to see that they’ve stylistically made it appear so similar to the rest of the field. Of course, I imagine that picking out a color scheme for the bike might have been the most constrained activity that Michael and the gang at MotoCzysz have been presented with thus far. Every major motorcycle manufacturer who’s out there racing - and even some that aren’t - have already staked their claim to so many of the most prominent colors and no amount of engineering excellence can work around the associations that fans make between certain color values and certain bikes.
The Ducati MotoGP GP5 Introduction
You have to hand it to those stylish Italians, they sure know how to unveil a new race bike for the upcoming MotoGP season. Today they introduced the new Desmosedici GP5 on top of the Grosté glacier in the Dolomite mountain range in Northern Italy. Hopefully this year they’ll have a killer racing season to go along with the rather amazing looking Photo Op picts. Between this event, the renewed emphisis on the Il Motogiro d’Italia and the 999 vs Lockhead F104 stunt, somebody in the Ducati PR department in Bolognia sure seems to have figured out how to maximize the brands exposure in their more recent Ducati.com Press Releases. Of course getting these gorgeous picts into the mainstream press still seems to elude the Bolognia Boys. What a shame. These are the kind of photos that sell sexy appeal and should be in all the moto mags. Not all those 1-page spreads of sexy Italians pushing their bikes through the streets and looking like they’ve just run out of petrol.
