Here is Part 2 of Sport Rider's look into MotoGP's Moto2 class, as we talk to four more key individuals involved with the first spec class of GP racing. Giving their observations of Moto2's inaugural season are FIM Technical Director Mike Webb, who is responsible for policing the class; MotoGP Race Director Paul Butler, who has overseen the organizational aspect of the Moto2 class; Geo Technology's Osamu Goto, who is responsible for ensuring that the control Honda Moto2 engines are reliable, equal in performance, and reliably priced; and Dunlop's Jeremy Ferguson, the man in charge of the spec tires for the Moto2 class.
Read Part 1 here: Moto2 report card - Past, present and future, Part 1.
FIM Technical Director Mike...
FIM Technical Director Mike Webb is a main person responsible for overseeing the Moto2 class to ensure that everything is handled fairly.
The responsibility for policing the class, and making sure the Moto2 engines were distributed evenly and fairly, and that there was no cheating, fell to FIM Technical Director Mike Webb.
“We download every bike every day and we can overlay them all, the critical things, rpm, speed, stuff like that, and you can very quickly see if one of them is accelerating better or has a higher top speed or doing anything or using a different gear pattern than everyone else and it stands out straight away, because we’re dealing with the same engine,” he said. “So if one stands out you go and analyze that one in depth.”
The data logger Webb uses is secure and the data securely stored, so Webb can “go back and check engine behavior on every bike and we download data from every bike every day. So I can pretty soon see if someone’s got performance advantage or not and how they’re doing it.
“I have to say, overall the actual engine performance things, the rate of acceleration and top speed, was so close all year long, it was unbelievable, much more than I excepted. So I didn’t find any huge differences. And I’m sure there are people who are going to say we changed this and we did that and we were able to do this. Well, sorry guys, there was no performance advantage whatsoever, so whatever you’re doing is not working.”
Webb saw the same things as Geo Technology; the engines were bulletproof, but the rolling chassis and electrical parts weren’t being equally well maintained. Webb said that “basically anything outside of the metal lump were suffering wear and tear from a number of crashes and just plain racetrack use. So the issues we had, and I do an issue report every week, of this is what happened and this is what the cause was, so that everyone could be up to date and preempt those problems, and 99% of it was wiring harness issues, external sensors, things like that. Basically it was crash damage and vibration, that sort of thing.
Geo Technology “was running around problem solving and it turned out the parts they were responsible, the engine and internals, were 100% reliable and it was the external stuff that the team stuff was responsible for was causing problems. And that got more and more as the season went on as that stuff got older and older and got crashed more times. That’s sort of what happened. The small teams with no budget were trying not to replace stuff and the bigger teams were just firing new bits at it, which is what you should do.”
Webb said it took half the season before the teams realized how to get the best out of these engines. “They’re Supersport engines, they are not tuned to the best they can be. They’re made for reliability and to be consistent. And I get dyno sheets off every engine that’s built or rebuilt and the difference in performance from best to worst is unbelievably small; it’s less than 1.5%. It’s incredible. So they’re all the same and the difference in making them going faster around the racetrack is learning how to best exploit that engine. You don’t rev it to the rev limiter every time because it hasn’t got any power up there. You set the gearbox to take advantage of the race track. And it’s different to Supersport or MotoGP. So the teams that learned that quickly are the ones that were really quick early on. And slowly the rest of the paddock caught up to those guys.”
As for changes for the 2011 season, Webb said the “simple answer is no. I’m doing fine tuning. Really small things from Goto and HRC side about which parts are available to be refurbished.
A better understanding of what life expectancy some bits have, things like that just to make life easier. And some little handling things. Distributing engines, logistics, things like that to make it a bit easier for the teams. Overall from what you see from the outside, no overall change.”
Race Director Paul Butler...
Race Director Paul Butler has had to handle a variety of controversial issues in Moto2's first season, including the accident that resulted in Shoya Tomizawa's death at Misano.
The Moto2 class presented new challenges for race direction. With 40 very similar motorcycles all craving the same patch of tarmac, something was bound to happen and often did. It was up to race director Paul Butler to minimize the issues and keep the program flowing smoothly, which wasn’t always easy. His worst day was at Misano when Shoya Tomizawa died in racing accident that could have happened in any race. Butler was criticized for not stopping the race and for how quickly corner workers removed the fallen riders.
“My job is to decide whether to red flag or not based on the advice I receive,” he said at the time. “The crashed motorcycles and the debris was removed very quickly and therefore there was no reason to red flag.”
Misano was on Labor Day weekend, well after the problems at the beginning of the year when crashes were more prevalent. “I think it was basically just a settling-in period. We’ve seen at the end of the season, the last few races at the end, we were relatively incident-free and I think that we can go into next year, since we’ve got a far more experienced field in terms of the guys racing with each other and being used to the equipment, we can see a lot less incidents.”
The 40-rider grids were believed by many, including Butler, to be too many. “I think that in terms of manageability and paddock space, everybody agrees that 40 bikes is too many,” he began, “and 40 bikes was not the target, but it’s kind of a measure of the success of the thing.”
The first corner could be a lottery, with sometimes unsettling results. For 2011, Butler said the grids for all three classes would be three across, same as MotoGP, which would alleviate some of the Turn 1 crowding. “I’m not sure that it makes it significantly safer, but I think it will give the riders a little more space,” Butler said.
Inevitably there was contact and inevitably the riders, sometimes the entire field, would be brought in for a talk. Again, this was more a problem at the start of the year, “because I think that you’ve not only got the issue of riders getting used to racing against each other, but they’re also trying to get familiar with the motorcycle. They did have the advantage of a greater amount of testing because the restrictions were off until the beginning of the season because it was a brand new formula.” Most of the teams were testing with Supersport engines, so when the series began “there was lot of shaking down to be done and therefore there were several briefings to remind to respect one another and give the other guys space.”
He added, “From the point of entertainment, there isn’t any question about it, because all the doubters that I know, and I know quite a few that were doubtful about it working, they are now totally convinced that it provides a fantastic show.”
Butler believes that with most of the riders and teams returning, “they’ll continue to progress and we’ll have fewer issues in terms of on-track action. I think it will continue to be done. I’m not sure what Geo Tech are doing as far as updating the engines, I believe they’re going to be largely the same. Dunlop will have learned some from the season. but I think that in general it’s shaping up to continue to be really competitive and exciting.”
Geo Technology's Osamu Goto...
Geo Technology's Osamu Goto is responsible for ensuring that all of the field's spec Honda engines are equal in performance.
Geo Technology’s Osamu Goto is responsible for ensuring that the control Honda Moto2 engines are reliable, equal in performance, and reliably priced. We spoke to Goto at mid-season, when he’d been through a full cycles of engine changes—each rider gets a new engine every three races—and again at the end of the year. What he found in the second half of the season was that the reliability remained ironclad, but problems outside of his control surfaced. The issues weren’t with the powerplant, but with parts of the motorcycle, mostly electrical, the teams were expected to maintain.
“This is basically a component failure,” Goto said of the problems, most of which were seen on the smaller and less experienced teams. Through FIM technical director Mike Webb, Goto cautioned the teams to “please maintain such connectors, harness, switches, and relays, these kind of electric components.” At the end of September Goto and his staff created a document with common failures, without naming the specific teams, and distributed it to all the teams as a cautionary note. “We try to encourage them to maintain a good level of chassis components related to the engine. In fact, zero engine mechanical failure this year.”
There were overheating issues with a few teams early in the season, but those were chassis and fairing related, and were resolved. Part of the fix was Geo Technology suggesting different venting solutions.
There were also gearbox issues that were related to the various shifter strategies.
If there was an area he’d like to improve it’s the clutch. Goto isn’t a fan of the control Suter clutch, but they have a three-year contract. But for championships other than Moto2, Goto is developing a clutch in concert with F.C.C., a Japanese clutch manufacturer. “We could use from next year in Supersport and Spanish championship, maybe Italian championship. But unfortunately we can’t supply for the Moto2 World Championship.”
Though every effort was made to standardize the engines—the variance in power throughout the season was 1.5%—some riders were never happy.
“Riders always say they need more power, even MotoGP is not enough power,” Goto said. “Rider is the easiest way to reduce lap time and just straight open the throttle. And riders also, even if 1000 horsepower, they say not enough power.”
The target for power was thought to be 150bhp early on, but those numbers couldn’t be reached reliably. The accepted power number then became 140bhp, but the actual figure is much closer to 120-125bhp, according to several people with knowledge of the figures.
“For me, the engines they all felt the same,” Kenny Noyes, the ex-pat American and only full-time Yank in the series, said. “I never felt, ‘That’s a good one. This is a fresh one and it feels better.’ They all pretty much felt the same from race one to race three, so I thought that was good.”
When a rider complained about a lack of power to Geo Technology, the issue was referred to the FIM’s Webb and “most of the cases the throttle opening point was too late,” because of rider skill, “and therefore top speed is different.”
Because Dunlop was the supplier...
Because Dunlop was the supplier for Moto2's spec tires, Jeremy Ferguson had a lot of responsibility to ensure they were up to snuff.
In his last year in charge of Dunlop’s racing activities worldwide, Jeremy Ferguson had to make sure the tires in the Moto2 class were up to snuff.
The British firm won the contract as the spec tire supplier, which, in retrospect, was the easy part. Their most relevant spec tire experience was in AMA Superbike, where they finished their first year as the control tire supplier at the end of 2009. It wasn’t surprising that they copied the AMA tires for Moto2. Asked how close the Moto2 tires were to AMA, Ferguson said, “Quite close. Obviously dimensionally different, but quite close.” Which explained the chattering complaints.
Early in the Moto2 season riders complained of chattering, similar to what was initially heard in AMA. But once they learned how to make the most of the down-power Honda spec engines, and the teams learned how to set up the chassis, the complaints largely disappeared. “There’s obviously a difference between the ability of the top teams, engineers and people than the guys at the back,” Ferguson said. “That’s for sure and it showed. But the fact that there was many different riders and chassis manufacturers winning races through the season, I mean I can’t remember exactly how many there were, but nearly every chassis won one race and and quite a lot of riders won a race.
“But it’s clear the really professional ones like Gresini, obviously, had an advantage and of course they were if you like, more the official team for Moriwaki, so they had more input for Moriwaki as well. I mean not so easy for people like Tech 3 or Bimota or these other people. They’re very small teams. They haven’t got the same expertise as the top teams on any MotoGP.”
The difference in power between a Yoshimura Suzuki and a spec Honda Suter was 80 or more horsepower. The result was that the tires sometimes didn’t get enough heat in them to work properly. “Clearly when there were places the temperature wasn’t what it should be for that track normally, those circuits we had a time when they weren’t getting up to grip temperature,” he said. “Obviously, if anything, I suppose in some places I suppose we were a bit conservative and we’ve learned a lot obviously from those races,” he said. “You’ve got to recall we started from zero basically. I mean, we had to make the tires for Qatar, for example, before we’d done a proper test with anybody on anything.
“We used, I think, seven diff specs of front tires and nine diff specs of rear tires in the course of the season. I mean, clearly when we started from zero, we were probably a little bit more conservative than we might be next year, but generally not. We were quite happy with the performance and the results and obviously the racing was very close and I think for the first year, yeah, good.
“We probably dropped two specs of front tire quite early in the process and everybody was happy to keep the same front at virtually every circuit,” he said.
For 2011, Ferguson said “we’ll just probably go a little bit softer in some places than we did,” though the problem always exists of dramatic temperature changes. It happened late in the season in Estoril and previously at Phillip Island. “The important thing is any compound has got to have a good spread of working temperature and it can’t be miles away from the other one.”