Imola: a circuit steeped in history. An organic, sinuous ribbon of tarmac that weaves it’s way up and down and around the suburbs of the town. A real rider’s track. That should be a recipe for close, exciting raction. Not this weekend. In reality I found the racing pretty dull.
After my previous thoughts that modern racetrack design was not best suited for close contests in the motorcycle world, my views were confounded by scenes at Imola this weekend. As with Motorland Aragon, Chaz Davies set off from the lights and was never to be seen.
You could say it was to be expected; Ducati rider wins in Ducati’s back yard. Just what Dorna would want to bring in the punters. Much has been written about the change to schedule this year but so far the crowd figures don’t seem to be affected much. The three day figure for this weekend was 68,227, up from 65,005 last year. In Assen the figures were down 5,000 but that was probably affected by the inclement weather. It is something to keep an eye on over the season but it would be great to see a boost to track attendance.
On the track most people in the paddock are surprised that Yamaha are not challenging for podium places. They have clearly designed and built a stunning road bike and their re-entry to the WorldSBK paddock is not being treated as a side show or an after thought. Whilst Crescent Racing is technically a private team they have full support from Yamaha. So far, however, they haven’t been able to transfer the potential to results. What people may have forgotten is that Lowes started the season injured. Winter testing was therefore just really running time to get base settings. That added to the usual learning process for a team with a new machine means they have been playing catch up since the start of the year.
This weekend engineers from electronics firm Magneti Marelli visited all the teams in the paddock using their engine management system and Yamaha MotoGP engineers were seen in the Superbike team’s pit box. The R1 clearly has some pace. The qualifying results in Aragon and Assen show that…but it so far isn’t sustainable over a full race distance. With all new race projects the difficulty comes with marrying chassis and electronics development. When the riders give feedback it can be difficult to know whether a change to chassis set up or to the electronics strategy is the way forward. Track time on race weekends this season hasn’t allowed for a measured approach and it appears that when some changes have gone in the wrong direction they then become compounded by changing the other elements in an attempt to solve the fundamental problem.
It was clear that over this weekend the Yamaha team made some progress. Alex Lowes reported a big improvement in the set up of the machine between Saturday and Sunday and felt a bit more confidence to push harder. From 13th on the grid he rode to a solid 6th place finish in race two. Unfortunately Guintoli had a pretty big get-off on Saturday, breaking his ankle although hopes to ride in Malaysia in just over a weeks time. To engage the current much-used cliché they are moving in the right direction step-by-step. For sure there is more to come.
Personally I had a healthy weekend. Normally I am fortunate enough to be supplied with a scooter to get around at weekends. It is a little 50cc Peugeot that has been on the go for a few years but has never been registered for the road. To get around at Imola you have to go out of the paddock onto the public roads. Now, flouting the rules of the road is often seen in Italy as a sport in itself but I didn’t want to take the chance of getting collared by Senor Carabinieri at the furthest point from the paddock. So it was a weekend on the hoof. With the wonders of modern technology my smart phone app could tell me that I walked 33kms come Sunday evening. For the rest of the season I would like to be carried around in a golden chariot please.
Photo by GeeBee images
