The Moto2 class was questioned...
The Moto2 class was questioned when first unveiled by the FIM and Dorna, but has since earned its place in MotoGP.
The Moto2 class was met with no small amount of skepticism and derision when it was first announced. How could a class with a spec engine, tires, and ECU’s replace the 250cc class which gave the racing world champions through the ages, most recently Jorge Lorenzo?
World championships were meant to be fought with cutting-edge prototypes, not off-the-shelf chassis fitted with anemic Honda 600 motors. No longer would Aprilia fight with Honda or Gilera or, at one time, Yamaha and many others. That spectacle would be replaced by a pack of 40 nearly identical bikes, and perfectly identical engines. The thinking was this was not worthy of the world championship title.
But 250’s were far too expensive and, in the final year of the 250cc class, there were two manufacturers and truly only one, Aprilia, that was heavily supporting the class by leasing very expensive machinery. Yes, Honda won the world championship with Hiroshi Aoyama, but that was as much the fault of the Aprilia and Gilera (a rebadged Aprilia) riders, who couldn’t shoot straight. “Hiro” could, and gave Honda its final title.
None of the top four finishers in the final 250cc World Championship contested the inaugural Moto2 class. All graduated to MotoGP. Moving down a class was Spaniard Toni Elias, the MotoGP race winner racing a Moriwaki Honda for the Gresini Honda class.
Elias started strongly while others struggled. He cemented the championship with a string of four wins in five races starting in Germany, the eighth of 17 races. The title was clinched in Malaysia, with three races to run. He finished seventh in Australia and no points in the final two races—he qualified third and first—and still won the title by 70 points.
“He just looked comfortable out there at the beginning of the year when a lot of guys looked really on the edge,” said American Kenny Noyes, who contested the 2010 season for the now-defunct Jack & Jones by Antonio Banderas team and found a seat with the BQR squad for 2011. “I felt like he definitely just had the mindset and the experience and the whole thing to put it together from the beginning of the year.”
There's no doubt that Moto2...
There's no doubt that Moto2 has provided some exciting racing, with 40 riders closely grouped together in speed and lap times.
From the point of view of race director Paul Butler, who listened to the doubts in the beginning, it was “quite exciting in that it’s thrown up some new talent, which I wasn’t sure that it would in the beginning, because I figured that—as quite a lot of people did—250 two-strokes were quite challenging things to ride. And I guess that the guys who had that experience would be dominant in Moto2. And although Toni Elias pulled off the championship, a bit further back we actually got to see quite a lot of talent adapting to bigger bikes, since the ones that kind of shone came out of 125.
“So it seems to be doing what it was designed to do, but I suppose we won’t really know until we’ve had a little longer and get that some of that talent graduating up to MotoGP. From the point of entertainment, there isn’t any question about it. Because all the doubters that I know, and I know quite that were doubtful about it working, they are now totally convinced that it provides a fantastic show.”
Halfway into the season, Elias was disenchanted with the class, finding it too dangerous. But he made the point that it was the best way to transition to MotoGP.
“I spoke with Toni (Elias) quite a lot and clearly this is scary, because you’ve got 40 riders, because you’ve really got to give everything you have to be in front,” Tech 3 team owner Herve Poncharal said. “The differences are nothing. When you have 20 riders less than a second, which has often been the case, clearly you have no time to rest. And this is very demanding riding, but also physically and mentally. And Yuki (Takahashi) told me the same. This class is so difficult, so difficult. But it is difficult because you’ve got 40 good riders on 40 almost equal machines. And everybody is eager and hungry. And this is what we like in the sport. We don’t want a class where everybody is two seconds to the other and everybody can just go around and tour. Clearly it’s a good learning class, it’s a good educational class. But I don’t see somebody doing five years there because you could be completely destroyed by that."
Elias got out as quickly as possible. His first world championship earned him the right to move back to MotoGP with the LCR Honda team. Any number of riders are more than willing to fill the breach.
We spoke with six key individuals—Team Avintia-STX rider Kenny Noyes, Monster Tech 3 team owner Herve Poncharal, FIM Technical Director Mike Webb, MotoGP Race Director Paul Butler, control engine supplier Geo Technology's Osamu Goto, and control tire supplier Dunlop's Jeremy Ferguson—to get their thoughts on the first year of Moto2 and what the future holds.
Kenny Noyes initially started...
Kenny Noyes initially started out strong on the Promo-Harris/Jack&Jones Moto2 effort in 2010, but a lack of development put the team further and further behind as the season progressed.
Kenny Noyes made the leap into the Moto2 World Championship after several years racing in the Spanish nationals. It would prove a tough transition.
The only American—he lives in Barcelona, where he and his wife own a café—to race full-time in Moto2, Noyes was teamed with Joan Olive on a team sponsored by Danish menswear maker, Jack & Jones, with Spanish actor, and Zorro portrayer, Antonio Banderas as the team’s patron, for lack of a better term.
From the very start the team was playing catch-up. Theirs was the only team to use the British-made Promo-Harris chassis, a chassis that was developed around the Yamaha R6 engine, and that presented problems. The pre-season tests didn’t give them enough time to sort out the bike’s problems and, with only two riders, the pool of available data was too small.
“I was never really happy with the way the bike turned and it felt heavy for such a small bike,” Noyes said, despite starting the season well. He led the Moto2 race in Jerez and was on the pole at the following race in Le Mans. “So we thought, ah well, maybe that’s how this is. But then when everybody else started getting it figured out and started getting, specially the corner speeds up, that’s when we started struggling.”
“At the end of the season I tested the Suter and it’s just completely different. It felt razor sharp. It felt really easy turning. When you go into the corner and let go of the brakes, it felt like it dug into a groove and turned. So I think that’s the main part we couldn’t get it right. And maybe it’s something to do with, it’s a little too complicated for me, but it’s something to do with the engine position and the geometry. We tested so many different things and we just moved the problem around.”
The problem was most acute on the faster tracks, like Mugello and Phillip Island, which he said “was the hardest race I’ve ever done, like the most difficult. It was just practically unrideable with the wind and the cold weather. For me to make Turn 1, I had to be 10 mph slower than the other guys. It was terrible.”
What made it worse is that Noyes could see other riders at the same lean angle making a tighter radius “and also you could totally see where they could get on the gas. And when you’re right behind somebody and you’re doing pretty much the same corner speed, and you can see they’re starting to get on the gas, because they have a better turning radius, so they get the bike pointed sooner than you do. And then you can see them start to get on the gas. If I got on the gas at that point, it would push wide, it would push the front out wide and I’d have to wait a little bit. And you wait a little bit to get on the gas and you just pay for it all the way down the straightaway.”
The three most prominent chassis makers are Suter, Moriwaki, and FTR, “those are three options you can win with. It’s hard for me to say, I tested the Suter and I loved it, but I haven’t tested the FTR or the Moriwaki.”
After the Promo-Harris/Jack&Jones...
After the Promo-Harris/Jack&Jones team unexpectedly folded last November and left Noyes without a ride, the American was rescued by several North American sponsors and the BQR team to run a third FTR chassis in the 2011 Moto2 Championship.
He’ll get his chance to race the FTR this year. Late last November, Noyes got hit with a double whammy. First came shoulder surgery, which was expected, but would require an extended convalescence. But as he was leaving the hospital, he was told his team had folded. Jack & Jones had pulled their budget. Team owner Dani Devahive thought it best to let the riders free to pursue other options, rather than keep them dangling while he searched for funding.
“We had everything set up and really sweet,” he said, adding that the team had brought in Noyes’ mechanics from the Spanish championship, and was going with the Suter frame. “We were just looking beautiful and now it’s looking like it’s not going to happen.”
Luckily for Noyes, a couple of North American sponsors in Fogi Racing and GP Tech plus Spanish construction company Avintia stepped up to allow BQR (who already had a two-man squad in Yonny Hernandez and Esteve Rabat) to field a third machine for Noyes. The team switched from its own design chassis to the FTR unit for 2011, with Hernandez and Rabat running under the Blusens-STX banner and Noyes in a separate Avintia-STX team.
Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team...
Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team owner Herve Poncharal (talking with rider Colin Edwards) is running his own Moto2 team with a chassis designed in-house by Edwards' crew chief Guy Coulon.
Herve Poncharal can’t separate his role as IRTA’s representative on the Grand Prix Commission from that as the owner of the Tech 3 team which ran Colin Edwards and Ben Spies during the 2010 season.
Poncharal was in the 250cc class for ten years, with Frenchman Olivier Jacque winning the title in 2000, the team’s final year in the class, “So (Moto2) was for me a big thing to be involved in the replacement class for the 250, because I know how much 250 has been successful, I know how much 250 has been good for the sport.
“Clearly the three points we had in mind when we created that class to replace 250 was prototype; apart from the engine it’s a full prototype, competitive; we didn’t want to be 10 seconds from the 250, and cost reduction; cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. On that third point we know that if you wanted to win in 250 you had to go with a factory-lease Aprilia, which was the lease, so it means at the end of the year you have to give it back to the factory. You had to pay a €1.2 million euro ($1.585 million) lease. I think now per rider costs, I would say a maximum of €300,000 euro per rider. OK, maybe €400,000 if you have only one rider and you have a lot of crashes or things like this. But I mean 300 is a good figure, average figure. And then you own it, apart from the engine.
“Let’s say even in year one if bought a lot of things, it costs €400,000, the following year it’s going to cost you €150,000, because you already own a lot of things. The suspension are not finished, you just have to do the overall maintenance. You can keep some wheels, the brakes you have. A lot of things you have. Even if you have the change the chassis the overall investment is not a lot. If you take it year one we are already minimum three times cheaper. But if you take it on a three-year basis it’s going to be a lot cheaper. Because most of the teams, we now own everything. We own our 2D data acquisition system; we own as I said, the wheels, the suspension, the tire warmers, everything. So even if want to start with brand new bike, you buy a new chassis, but if it’s just the chassis and swinging arm, it’s not going to cost you a lot.”
Poncharal signed Japanese Yuki Takahashi and Italian Raffaele de Rosa for 2010. Takahashi won the Catalunya GP, which was unexpected.
“If you would have asked me in February in 2010 you would have asked me, will you win a race, I would have told you in my dreams, yes, but will we? I’m not sure,” he said. “So that was above expectations. But on the overall result, I’ve been quite disappointed with the up and down.”
For Poncharal, racing is about challenges and the team’s challenge in 2010 was that they were the only team building their own chassis. Designed by Colin Edwards' crew chief Guy Coulon, a Grand Prix veteran, the aluminum chassis proved to work well enough to allow Takahashi to win at Catalunya.
“What we decided to do, to go with our own bike, you need to have two riders that are into completely that frame of mind,” he said. “That accepts the fact they have to be strong enough in their heads to say ‘I can do it with that’ and not look at the others. But if you don’t really believe in that and if you always look at which bike the guy in front has and wish to have that bike, we won’t go anywhere. OK, last year I did the rider selection myself. So I only have to blame myself and I think the riders, Yuki showed that he is very good. He won a race, he finished second in Czecho and he did a few really good results earlier in the race. Raffaele never really adapted himself to the Moto2.”
For 2011 Poncharal made sure that his riders were in the right frame of mind. His feeling is that his two riders, young Brit Bradley Smith and Italian Mike di Meglio “are very committed. I’ve been very clear with them when we discussed with various riders of ’11. Don’t come if you don’t believe in the project. Don’t come if you think Suter or Moriwaki or something like this will be unbeatable. If you come you have to believe in the project and believe in yourself. Because we can make almost a new bike every month. We can make a tailor-made chassis for you, what you need. We have a lot of quick reaction possibilities. We will be very flexible on many things, so this is a bonus. And it will help all of us to do so something.”
Stay tuned for Part 2 of our "Moto2 Report Card—Past, Present, and Future" story with comments from FIM Technical Director Mike Webb, MotoGP Race Director Paul Butler, control engine supplier Geo Technology's Osamu Goto, and control tire supplier Dunlop's Jeremy Ferguson.
Read Part 2 here: Moto2 report card—Past, present, and future, Part 2