Interesting Comparison

[f1manoz]

Last weekend's World Superbike round at Assen provided the first chance this year to directly compare the pace of production based WSBK machines against the prototype MotoGP racers - with startling results.
MotoGP raced at Assen two and a half months ago and - whilst the GP itself was wet - the preceding practice and qualifying sessions took place under near identical weather conditions to the SBK event, allowing direct comparisons between the lap times.

So, let's start with some facts:

1) WSBK pole sitter Frankie Chili's best lap was just 1.1secs slower than MotoGP pole sitter Loris Capirossi - despite Chili riding a two-year-old Ducati 998RS with around 50 less horsepower and weighing around 20kg more than Capirossi's Desmosedici V4 prototype.

2) Chili's time would have put him11th on the MotoGP grid! The following is a list of the riders and teams he beat on his 'street bike':

Ukawa (Honda + 0.055secs), Hayden (Honda +0.124secs), Bayliss (Ducati +0.273secs), Haga (Aprilia +0.314secs), Kagayama (Suzuki +0.727secs), Hopkins (Suzuki +0.841secs), Hofmann (Kawasaki +1.298secs), Tamada (Honda +1.477secs), McWilliams (Proton +2.122secs), Pitt (Kawasaki +2.497secs), McCoy (Kawasaki +2.533secs), Kiyonari (Honda +2.833secs) and Aoki (Proton +5.298secs).

3) Under the 107% rule, using Capirossi's time, the top 22 WSBK riders at Assen would have qualified for the MotoGP race. That includes both Foggy Petronas machines ridden by Troy Corser and James Haydon! Corser was just 0.1secs slower than McCoy's Kawasaki.

4) Top Suzuki qualifier, Gregorio Lavilla - riding a GSX1000R - was just 0.6secs slower than top Suzuki MotoGP qualifier, Yukio Kagayama.

5) Top Kawasaki qualifier, Ivan Clementi - riding a ZX7 RR - lapped 1.1secs slower than top Kawasaki MotoGP qualifier Alex Hofmann. But, Clementi was faster than both Andrew Pitt and Garry McCoy - despite his significantly smaller engine size.

It's worth mentioning that Assen requires both horsepower and handling, which should shift things further in MotoGP's favour - the gap between WSBK and MotoGP could actually be closer at many other circuits.

All of which is a bit embarrassing for many GP teams - the rules may state you need to build a prototype, they don't say it needs to be slower than a production bikeÂ…

For the likes of Suzuki and Kawasaki, whose MotoGP machines don't appear to be much quicker than their WSBK designs, it is especially baffling.

Presumably, when designing their prototypes, they could have used all their WSBK experience, then employed expensive materials/manufacturing techniques which were impractical on production based racers to improve the bike further - of course changing enough engine internals to satisfy the prototype rules.

So where are they going wrong...?

Firstly, building a GP prototype can't be underestimated, but the teams' SBK experience and data gathered should - as the Assen results prove - have given them a good base to start from.

Maybe they've simply outsmarted themselves? Instead of a step-by-step evolution of what they know works they've tried for a revolution and ended up giving themselves too many 'unknowns' to work with.

Only Suzuki and Kawasaki can answer that question, but they must surely wish they'd taken the approach used by Ducati - who claimed pole in both series - by using chassis and engine technology they understand intuitively.

Meanwhile, with WSBK rapidly imploding under the strain of controversial new rules, maybe Carl Fogarty and his Petronas backed team consider a MotoGP move more seriously...

Picked this up off my personalised Yahoo page.

[marcus]

excellent , well done F1manoz , certainly a good read

[chunder]

Bloody hell, that Kwak is a bag of bolts if it is getting beat by the FP1, as they readily admit thath the Foggy bike is nowhere near the pace. Great stuff guys, and how about Frankie, all that speed on a near historic bike, what a genius!

[asha]

nice comparison, v interesting (and somewhat dissappionting for GP fans!)

[TheMan]

Great reading and very interesting stats. would have been interesting to see the average race times compared to a dry Motogp race. Also I don`t beleive it is dissapointing for GP fans as we are only in year two of developement of the new 4 strokes and the tyre manufacturers haven`t developed tyres to suit these bikes properly yet. Also goes to show that there is some talent out there in the WSBK doesn`t it. All the same track conditions can really only be compared on the same day, as many variables determain the grip level and speed of a circuit. Do not get me wrong I am not being negative towards this thread there is just more to be taken into account than the fact the weather conditions were similar. Keep up the good work F1.

[asha]

ya well we cant compare previous years because they changed the track length last year!

[Schummy]

Puzzling and embarrasing, I think!

[Gerrit]

Not really- tyres are the deciding factor at the moment. WSB and MotoGP machines are limited to the same rim sizes and thus tyre sizes. This limits the amount of power you can apply in turns. The Bridgestones, which were at best mediocre last year, have made a vast improvement for this season, as both Tamada on the RC211V and McWilliams and Aoki on the KR3 proved, the latter in particular- with no further development since Valencia 2002, the KR3 is, on average, lapping 1 second FASTER than last year at all the tracks it was used this year.
With the tyres the limiting factor and both WSB and MotoGP machines using similar tyres, the deciding differences are weight and horsepower- and the latter is only decisive on straights. All that extra power of the GP machinery is only of use for a few seconds, all of which explains why the WSB lap times are not very far off those set by the full GP machinery. Plus, more and more GP engine and chassis technology is being put into the streetbikes which are used for WSB, so the differences there are not all that great either.