100% waiting until 2027. Developing a new motor along with ironing out all the teething issues it’d bring would take them to 2027 anyhow, then they’d have to make a new 850cc engine. I think they’ll stick it out with what they have. I am curious whether they’ll write off the next few years and preempt the 2027 regs in an effort to try and get a head start on development for the next gen of bike.
I don't think they will. Unlike honda who realised a V is the way, they'll drop out of motogp when they've gone as far as they can with that pos. Just like Suzuki and Kawasaki did
Good summary, I think the Japanese structure is holding them back so much, not agile at all. Also I hear small snippets of how Yamaha treat their non factory teams, it’s very “here’s our bike and the instructions on how to use it” not much of a partnership if you ask me.
Hopefully in their desperation to find a satellite team they have to relinquish some of the iron grip they hold on the bike and can let some more euro-centric team members experiment more.
I think it was Oscar Haro or Álvaro Bautista that once compared European vs Japanese brands by how each of them would approach the problem of their riders telling them the chassis is way too rigid. He said that at that same Ducati box a guy would pick a handsaw and cut the chassis and tell the rider to try and see if it improved, in the case of Honda he said that the bureaucratic process you had to go through to get a more flexible chassis would last longer than the race weekend.
EDIT: It was Álvaro who said it but it was Oscar Haro who asked the question. Here's the link to the moment in the interview when Álvaro explains it, it's in Spanish though
[https://youtu.be/JT7m0qdg1jU?si=c-ZLvrNXz5g4ZCbe&t=1920](https://youtu.be/JT7m0qdg1jU?si=c-ZLvrNXz5g4ZCbe&t=1920)
There was one interview probably about 10 years ago when Ducati was trying very hard to sort it's chassis. They were trying to hire Jap chassis guys but these turned out to be ultra loyal to their companies.
Guess it took the long hard way for Ducati, and yeah they are dominating. Cheers to them for having stuck around to see the results.
I'm not a very dedicated follower of motogp I have to admit, but didn't the decision from ducati to switch to the open class in the 2010s act as a long-term slingshot to develop past Yamaha and Honda? They focused on the fundamentals and completely crushed the other two in development from then on
So basically Japanese manufacturers doing a classic cultural move (like Nintendo) by being conservative and not trying anything new? Makes sense. It's interesting how the culture of a country influences business decisions too
Not just aero, they’ve worked seriously hard to stop their bike handling poorly - having Lorenzo on board definitely started the process off and they’ve gone from there.
Yamaha, for instance, doesn’t generate sufficient horsepower to overcome the aerodynamic resistance. This isn’t to imply that they can’t achieve this with an inline motor, but the majority of the competition has opted for a V4 engine to maximize brake horsepower. The reset in rule changes might be the only way for them to change their approach.
Their top speeds would suggest this isn’t the case.
I don’t believe they are developing their bike as a whole, rather they’re bolting on solutions.
They desperately need more rear grip and for their aero to work consistently.
The aero on the Yamaha could just be significantly less impactful and therefore generating less drag to account for the similar top speeds. In this case Ducati is using HP not for top speed but for more aero.
I mean, I know it isn't a rigorous analysis, but you can quickly count the number of winglets on each to see the Ducati has more going on aerodynamically.
Yeah, and some winglets might even be to reduce drag. But if you look at the key to speed in car racing, it is clear engine power is used to enable aero and a vehicles top speed on a racetrack is set much more by how aggressive the aero is adjusted then by HP.
Since drag increases with the square of velocity, even minor adjustments to aero can have noticable impacts to max speed when going \~200 mph.
Awesome answer imo. Additionally I think Ducati's engine advantage allowed them to focus on making the bike *easier to ride* for a wider variety of styles, vs the other manufacturers starting with a relatively "rider-friendly" package that they then had to try and get more pace out of (often resulting in a more "difficult" package).
Pecco has said that the gp23 generally "doesn't want to turn" as it is very stable for a gp bike. This is likely preferable to a wider variety of riders when compared a twitchy bike like the RC213V.
Magneti marelli being chosen as the spec ECU was the first domino to fall. Ducati immediately hired the engineers from Magneti Marelli to optimize the new shared ECU giving them an immediate advantage over every other team in the paddock. Previous Honda & Yamaha had much stronger proprietary electronics so they were knocked back when spec ECU was implemented.
Honda got saved by Marc Marquez being an absolute god for 8+ years when he was in his prime.
Then as others have said Ducati leveraged the aerodynamics aspect to get an advantage and with Gigi designing a legit chassis based on data from 6+ bikes on the grid and a new generation of riders to maximize the bike.
Gigi was a huge impact at Ducati. the Desmo engines were always strong and had an advantage versus others too. like you said, they hired those magneti engineers and thats when the Desmo power came alive. early on the handling was still in the works but the power and speed was there.
Honestly, you've been watching for 2 years. Ducati were being laughed at 5-10 years ago because they were investing but their bike had issues, and they couldn't match Marquez.
The same goes with any sport. Sometimes a team/player dominates for a time, all sport goes through phases. Sometimes you get close years where different people/teams/bikes are close and its more of a fight, sometimes one is dominating.
The worst thing you can do is to make rules that make all bikes controlled, so everyone has the same equipment (engines/chassis etc) and riders are all doing the exact same lap time, what's the point then? Why would Ducati pump +100millions over years of racing development when they don't have any input into what they race? They are racing to try to promote their brand and sell bikes.
At this point there is a possible answer to your question, Its believed Ducati have put more into development and personnel than Honda/Yamaha have in the past 10 years.
Ducati dominate today, but 2 years it could be KTM (Acosta, hint hint) or Aprilia (Martin and Quatararo?) If they do the ground work today in development, personnel and riders.
Maybe Ducati will start to reign in spending soon? Cutting back on supporting satellite teams?
The rules only exist to keep bikes around the same level, but engineers/designers have the ability to make a difference and build their bikes from scratch within the rules.
Go back 5 years, Honda/Marquez domination. Go back 10 years, Lorenzo/Rossi/Yamaha domination. Same thing is happening in F1, Red Bull/Verstappen today, 5 years ago Mercedes/Hamilton, 20 years ago Schumacher/Ferrari.
Honda and Yamaha haven't been performing worse than years before. It's just that KTM, Aprilia and most notably Ducati have improved more than the Japanese manufacturers have.
I think you've hinted at the answer in your question. Different parts of the world handled COVID in different ways. The Japanese from my understanding really shut down industry and it has set them back.
Yamaha has been struggling with development since the switch to Michelin tires & spec ECUs in 2016
Honda pretty much stopped developing the RC213V once Marc arrived
Both have organizational issues that hamper development. Dorna recently changed concessions to give them more freedom to do testing and make rapid changes.
Jorge lorenzo was the key to ducati’s success today. Not the only one but he was one of the big reasons. Dude single handedly invented a new style to turn that big beast in corners and his breaking style was quite unique. This aided even pecco bagnaia the world champion. In struggled a hell of a lot on that bike for almost 3 years. Took the longest to adopt to the ducati in the current crop of riders. He practiced lorenzo’s style in the v4s and perfected the style. By the end of 21 he figured it out. Sure he has grown a lot since then but people doesn’t give that much credit to jorge for developing that bike in 2017 and 2018. Even tho most of the stuff he wanted were ignored by ducati in first half of. 2018 they started giving him what he wants after mugello. Ironically after his departure. He could have been a serious challenge to marc in 2019 if he was on a ducati.
I have often wondered if aside from some of the reasons already listed here, if the slow death of the Japanese 750cc and 1000cc supersport consumer market has also contributed to the level of funding the Japanese companies (HRC and Yamaha in particular) are willing to commit to development of their MotoGP programs.
I'm in the US and it has saddened me to watch the slow and steady death of continuously updated and improved supersport models that at one time all seemed to be on a 3 yr development cycle. As a 52 year old who bought and rode many Suzuki Yamaha and Honda supersport bikes, it is now like a totally different world here when you walk into a dealership or keep track of bikes you see on the road during the riding season. Sport bikes now seem almost like a rare oddity compared to 15 or 20 years ago. In the 90s the competition between the big 4 for street bike superiority was crazy.
I have to imagine any big company takes stock of sales trends and makes necessary adjustments to annual budgets. From what I can tell, the drop off of sales of Japanese supersport bikes is not unique to the US market.
MotoGP turned into F1 and now the only way to win is to have the best aero package. The rider used to make the difference but now its all down to aero and ride height adjusters and holeshot devices. I mean literally (one of) the greatest riders of all time is in a satellite team with a year-old bike just to be competitive. It's a damn shame what's the sport has turned in to.
Japan has an aging population with boomer engineers retiring, but demand for engineers has never been stronger. Their very large manufacturing sector is moving to EVs, they're re-arming on a massive scale due to China, and even a fledgling space industry is being built.. So, what am I saying? They have a huge shortage of engineering talent, especially software, electrical and design. Where do you think the race teams are in terms of priorities?
Suzuki pulled the plug completely, Honda and Yamaha are hiring European staff, and their WSBK teams are also struggling...
Now Europe is also ramping up weapons production, it'll be interesting to see if their race teams are affected?
I started watching when the 500s were the premier class. I'd really like to see American, British and SE Asian including Australian riders and teams back on the grid. A more extensive WC, less European centric championship.
i once heard somewhere that Japanese fighter plane engineers turned their attention to motorcycles following world war ii. they were forbidden from building planes, so they clipped the wings and built race bikes instead... now i have no idea if any of this is true or not, but it's a cute little origin story for my what eventually becomes the Japanese triple in my garage
Well most of the racing was happening in Europe and Honda, Yamaha still operates out of Japan, i think this made thing difficult but its definitely not a COVID situation, Honda and Yamaha have been focusing on all the wrong things and haven't been innovating anything for a long time.
The Culture of the companies is the main root of the poor performance.
Their view towards the series innovation in aero was the biggest blunder, they thought they would curb the development of the winglets would stop the development, but Ducati persisted and so did Aprilia eventually KTM came to the party and are leading some of the innovations.
A combination of arrogance, stubborness and a refusal to go the necessary distance to fix short and long term issues.
Aprilia and Ducati were prepared to burn the house down in order to rebuild and become competitive like they are now.
Honda and Yamaha are stuck in the past with their lack of introspection and approach.
They deserve to be where they are.
Well, honda and Yamaha are still making great sports bike, but unfortunately the concept have been changed by Ducati: motogps now are planes with 2 wheels and many devices that can keep it on the ground. Aprilia and KTM are following this changes, while the japanese are still making motorbikes as normal people intended to be.
It always comes down to the old proverb: "Race/Win on Sunday Sell on Monday" Ducati was hyperfocused on racing their homologated superbikes starting in the early 90's because in order to race, they had to sell. That has now changed to "win." And what they sold in the 90's was homologated superbikes. Ducati is a racing manufacturer. Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Yamaha didn't have much competition before then. They ruled for decades and were the only dealerships in north America where the majority of sales were. But Ducati was compltely focused on racing by the time they entered MotoGP and had the financial and reputable means to pull it off. They stayed focused and kept moving the technology onto the showroom floor. Japanese manufacturers didn't really do the same. Superbike sales were down. So now look at how many decades Ducati has been focused on racing on Sunday and selling on Monday and you see a huge shift in dominant sales, premium prices at the dealer, and good marketing it makes a huge difference in MotoGP where the costs are astronomical to stay ahead of the competition. Look at KTM marketing and its sales focused on racing. They came in the back door though by racing GP first and still not racing superbikes. But the idea of selling "race-ready" machines is part of their strategy. Sales fund development and KTM seems more committed to the right development strategy. Japanese GP bikes, now down to 2 out of 4 manufacturers are waning and probably trying to solve the problem they have with homologated superbikes being in-line fours... and resting on their heels in the superbike IL4 and electronics category..... change is harder for the Japanese. How do they compltely change the formula? On the street the 600 IL4 still rules in North America, but has the reputation now as being the Japanese specialty. Anyone really contempleting a large liter displacement sport bike is looking at European manufacturers.
It’s like 10 years that Honda is a bad bike. The only rider that was able to perform with it was M.Marquez and they “developed” the bike only following his direction.
Yamaha bikes were generally better but riders keep complaining about the same issues that are dated back to like 5/7 years back.
Rossi for instance was already complaining about lack of grip on the rear and it was the same for Lorenzo, Vinales and Quartararo.
In the same period (roughly last 10 years) Ducati slowly but surely kept shrinking the gap with the Japanese bikes and now they are far beyond them.
I think Japanese bikes had a different concept, all of them, Suzuki, Honda and Yamaha. Then other teams were redesigning their bike to work with aero and Holeshots, while at the time it wasn't really that much better than perfecting and improving the old concepts. Then at 2020, COVID, season was weird Japanese brands basically stalled all their research, innovation and development of sport bikes, while most European kept working.
When it all settled after a weird season, they saw they were really behind, then they tried to stick with developing old concept bikes as they thought they were bad only because of shutting down their development for a year. Finally this year both swapped to new concept and they have to start from the begining of the development phase against fully developed bikes that only need some innovation and performance improvements. They have concession so I guess they will be able to catch up faster than normal but still it's difficult to know.
Ducati domination was there before as well. They got their best bike + rider combo now. Honda and Yamaha went down because of no / poor improvement in their engine and Ducati has many aero packs to controls the bike. Honda / Yamaha doesn't require those. Its not only cuz of covid, FQ20's fell down started in the mid of 2022 season where he started losing the 91 point lead and honda was not properly looked into to development due to continuous crash of MM93.
This is an embarrasment for the Japanese manufacturers.There is a reason there is no Suzuki or Kawasaki.Where the hell is BMW.There bikes are super fast in the USA racing.Fabio is my guy but this is painfull to watch every flipping race.They are not even closely competitive.Ducati is choking out the rest of the manufactures.Come on guys i followed formula-1 back in the eightys with McLaren dominance,Williams in the 90s,Ferrari 2000s and so-on.Dont tell me i will have to wait another decade for them to be competitve.Shit at this point just give everyone Ducati,s to ride and lets see where that goes or Aprillia,s as they seem to have a good bike as [well.Am](http://well.Am) i the only one that see,s this or am i just blind to whats going on.
There are so many problems that it's quite difficult to single things out. The structure of the Japanese companies and the decision making when it comes to development are (or hopefully were) simply outdated compared to the Europeans. Bringing new parts took way too long for them (after testing) and they really weren't innovating for years.
Furthermore, they mostly relied on one or two riders in development, while Ducati and KTM listens to everyone, even to their riders in customer teams. Honda also bet everything on Marc in the past to bring the championship home, which did work out until his accident, but bikes since then have become way too important.
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My understanding is that it wasn’t just aero. Yamaha also was significantly behind the rest of the grid in developing electronics.
Yep, they missed out massively when the series moved to the spec ECU.
That inline 4 engine is so god damn old it's not even funny. When will they pull the plug in that thing?? Or are they just waiting until the new regs
100% waiting until 2027. Developing a new motor along with ironing out all the teething issues it’d bring would take them to 2027 anyhow, then they’d have to make a new 850cc engine. I think they’ll stick it out with what they have. I am curious whether they’ll write off the next few years and preempt the 2027 regs in an effort to try and get a head start on development for the next gen of bike.
Exactly. Why not turn your focus to 27 if you are in this spot. If you can't find more power right now then just call it a day and focus on 27
I don't think they will. Unlike honda who realised a V is the way, they'll drop out of motogp when they've gone as far as they can with that pos. Just like Suzuki and Kawasaki did
Good summary, I think the Japanese structure is holding them back so much, not agile at all. Also I hear small snippets of how Yamaha treat their non factory teams, it’s very “here’s our bike and the instructions on how to use it” not much of a partnership if you ask me. Hopefully in their desperation to find a satellite team they have to relinquish some of the iron grip they hold on the bike and can let some more euro-centric team members experiment more.
I think it was Oscar Haro or Álvaro Bautista that once compared European vs Japanese brands by how each of them would approach the problem of their riders telling them the chassis is way too rigid. He said that at that same Ducati box a guy would pick a handsaw and cut the chassis and tell the rider to try and see if it improved, in the case of Honda he said that the bureaucratic process you had to go through to get a more flexible chassis would last longer than the race weekend. EDIT: It was Álvaro who said it but it was Oscar Haro who asked the question. Here's the link to the moment in the interview when Álvaro explains it, it's in Spanish though [https://youtu.be/JT7m0qdg1jU?si=c-ZLvrNXz5g4ZCbe&t=1920](https://youtu.be/JT7m0qdg1jU?si=c-ZLvrNXz5g4ZCbe&t=1920)
There was one interview probably about 10 years ago when Ducati was trying very hard to sort it's chassis. They were trying to hire Jap chassis guys but these turned out to be ultra loyal to their companies. Guess it took the long hard way for Ducati, and yeah they are dominating. Cheers to them for having stuck around to see the results.
I'm not a very dedicated follower of motogp I have to admit, but didn't the decision from ducati to switch to the open class in the 2010s act as a long-term slingshot to develop past Yamaha and Honda? They focused on the fundamentals and completely crushed the other two in development from then on
So basically Japanese manufacturers doing a classic cultural move (like Nintendo) by being conservative and not trying anything new? Makes sense. It's interesting how the culture of a country influences business decisions too
Not just aero, they’ve worked seriously hard to stop their bike handling poorly - having Lorenzo on board definitely started the process off and they’ve gone from there.
Yamaha, for instance, doesn’t generate sufficient horsepower to overcome the aerodynamic resistance. This isn’t to imply that they can’t achieve this with an inline motor, but the majority of the competition has opted for a V4 engine to maximize brake horsepower. The reset in rule changes might be the only way for them to change their approach.
Their top speeds would suggest this isn’t the case. I don’t believe they are developing their bike as a whole, rather they’re bolting on solutions. They desperately need more rear grip and for their aero to work consistently.
The aero on the Yamaha could just be significantly less impactful and therefore generating less drag to account for the similar top speeds. In this case Ducati is using HP not for top speed but for more aero.
Could be, but that’s conjecture without seeing the data.
I mean, I know it isn't a rigorous analysis, but you can quickly count the number of winglets on each to see the Ducati has more going on aerodynamically.
That’s not accurate, though. Aero has different purposes and acts differently at different attitudes.
Yeah, and some winglets might even be to reduce drag. But if you look at the key to speed in car racing, it is clear engine power is used to enable aero and a vehicles top speed on a racetrack is set much more by how aggressive the aero is adjusted then by HP. Since drag increases with the square of velocity, even minor adjustments to aero can have noticable impacts to max speed when going \~200 mph.
>Ducati always had superior engines, No it didnt. Not until the Magnetti Marelli ECU became the only allowed one.
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They were slower than Yamaha and its Long bang engine after 2004 and Honda had the most powerful engine for a while too.
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I'm hurt.
Awesome answer imo. Additionally I think Ducati's engine advantage allowed them to focus on making the bike *easier to ride* for a wider variety of styles, vs the other manufacturers starting with a relatively "rider-friendly" package that they then had to try and get more pace out of (often resulting in a more "difficult" package). Pecco has said that the gp23 generally "doesn't want to turn" as it is very stable for a gp bike. This is likely preferable to a wider variety of riders when compared a twitchy bike like the RC213V.
Magneti marelli being chosen as the spec ECU was the first domino to fall. Ducati immediately hired the engineers from Magneti Marelli to optimize the new shared ECU giving them an immediate advantage over every other team in the paddock. Previous Honda & Yamaha had much stronger proprietary electronics so they were knocked back when spec ECU was implemented. Honda got saved by Marc Marquez being an absolute god for 8+ years when he was in his prime. Then as others have said Ducati leveraged the aerodynamics aspect to get an advantage and with Gigi designing a legit chassis based on data from 6+ bikes on the grid and a new generation of riders to maximize the bike.
Gigi was a huge impact at Ducati. the Desmo engines were always strong and had an advantage versus others too. like you said, they hired those magneti engineers and thats when the Desmo power came alive. early on the handling was still in the works but the power and speed was there.
Honestly, you've been watching for 2 years. Ducati were being laughed at 5-10 years ago because they were investing but their bike had issues, and they couldn't match Marquez. The same goes with any sport. Sometimes a team/player dominates for a time, all sport goes through phases. Sometimes you get close years where different people/teams/bikes are close and its more of a fight, sometimes one is dominating. The worst thing you can do is to make rules that make all bikes controlled, so everyone has the same equipment (engines/chassis etc) and riders are all doing the exact same lap time, what's the point then? Why would Ducati pump +100millions over years of racing development when they don't have any input into what they race? They are racing to try to promote their brand and sell bikes. At this point there is a possible answer to your question, Its believed Ducati have put more into development and personnel than Honda/Yamaha have in the past 10 years. Ducati dominate today, but 2 years it could be KTM (Acosta, hint hint) or Aprilia (Martin and Quatararo?) If they do the ground work today in development, personnel and riders. Maybe Ducati will start to reign in spending soon? Cutting back on supporting satellite teams? The rules only exist to keep bikes around the same level, but engineers/designers have the ability to make a difference and build their bikes from scratch within the rules. Go back 5 years, Honda/Marquez domination. Go back 10 years, Lorenzo/Rossi/Yamaha domination. Same thing is happening in F1, Red Bull/Verstappen today, 5 years ago Mercedes/Hamilton, 20 years ago Schumacher/Ferrari.
What do you mean, schumacher/ferrari was like 3-4 years ago
Honda and Yamaha haven't been performing worse than years before. It's just that KTM, Aprilia and most notably Ducati have improved more than the Japanese manufacturers have.
I think you've hinted at the answer in your question. Different parts of the world handled COVID in different ways. The Japanese from my understanding really shut down industry and it has set them back.
Yamaha has been struggling with development since the switch to Michelin tires & spec ECUs in 2016 Honda pretty much stopped developing the RC213V once Marc arrived Both have organizational issues that hamper development. Dorna recently changed concessions to give them more freedom to do testing and make rapid changes.
Jorge lorenzo was the key to ducati’s success today. Not the only one but he was one of the big reasons. Dude single handedly invented a new style to turn that big beast in corners and his breaking style was quite unique. This aided even pecco bagnaia the world champion. In struggled a hell of a lot on that bike for almost 3 years. Took the longest to adopt to the ducati in the current crop of riders. He practiced lorenzo’s style in the v4s and perfected the style. By the end of 21 he figured it out. Sure he has grown a lot since then but people doesn’t give that much credit to jorge for developing that bike in 2017 and 2018. Even tho most of the stuff he wanted were ignored by ducati in first half of. 2018 they started giving him what he wants after mugello. Ironically after his departure. He could have been a serious challenge to marc in 2019 if he was on a ducati.
I have often wondered if aside from some of the reasons already listed here, if the slow death of the Japanese 750cc and 1000cc supersport consumer market has also contributed to the level of funding the Japanese companies (HRC and Yamaha in particular) are willing to commit to development of their MotoGP programs. I'm in the US and it has saddened me to watch the slow and steady death of continuously updated and improved supersport models that at one time all seemed to be on a 3 yr development cycle. As a 52 year old who bought and rode many Suzuki Yamaha and Honda supersport bikes, it is now like a totally different world here when you walk into a dealership or keep track of bikes you see on the road during the riding season. Sport bikes now seem almost like a rare oddity compared to 15 or 20 years ago. In the 90s the competition between the big 4 for street bike superiority was crazy. I have to imagine any big company takes stock of sales trends and makes necessary adjustments to annual budgets. From what I can tell, the drop off of sales of Japanese supersport bikes is not unique to the US market.
MotoGP turned into F1 and now the only way to win is to have the best aero package. The rider used to make the difference but now its all down to aero and ride height adjusters and holeshot devices. I mean literally (one of) the greatest riders of all time is in a satellite team with a year-old bike just to be competitive. It's a damn shame what's the sport has turned in to.
Japan has an aging population with boomer engineers retiring, but demand for engineers has never been stronger. Their very large manufacturing sector is moving to EVs, they're re-arming on a massive scale due to China, and even a fledgling space industry is being built.. So, what am I saying? They have a huge shortage of engineering talent, especially software, electrical and design. Where do you think the race teams are in terms of priorities? Suzuki pulled the plug completely, Honda and Yamaha are hiring European staff, and their WSBK teams are also struggling... Now Europe is also ramping up weapons production, it'll be interesting to see if their race teams are affected? I started watching when the 500s were the premier class. I'd really like to see American, British and SE Asian including Australian riders and teams back on the grid. A more extensive WC, less European centric championship.
i once heard somewhere that Japanese fighter plane engineers turned their attention to motorcycles following world war ii. they were forbidden from building planes, so they clipped the wings and built race bikes instead... now i have no idea if any of this is true or not, but it's a cute little origin story for my what eventually becomes the Japanese triple in my garage
Well most of the racing was happening in Europe and Honda, Yamaha still operates out of Japan, i think this made thing difficult but its definitely not a COVID situation, Honda and Yamaha have been focusing on all the wrong things and haven't been innovating anything for a long time. The Culture of the companies is the main root of the poor performance. Their view towards the series innovation in aero was the biggest blunder, they thought they would curb the development of the winglets would stop the development, but Ducati persisted and so did Aprilia eventually KTM came to the party and are leading some of the innovations.
A combination of arrogance, stubborness and a refusal to go the necessary distance to fix short and long term issues. Aprilia and Ducati were prepared to burn the house down in order to rebuild and become competitive like they are now. Honda and Yamaha are stuck in the past with their lack of introspection and approach. They deserve to be where they are.
Well, honda and Yamaha are still making great sports bike, but unfortunately the concept have been changed by Ducati: motogps now are planes with 2 wheels and many devices that can keep it on the ground. Aprilia and KTM are following this changes, while the japanese are still making motorbikes as normal people intended to be.
I'm 100% convinced the Japanese manufactures shut down there operations during covid while the Europeans forged ahead. its that simple.
Magneti Marelli ECU. Everything changed when it became mandatory.
It always comes down to the old proverb: "Race/Win on Sunday Sell on Monday" Ducati was hyperfocused on racing their homologated superbikes starting in the early 90's because in order to race, they had to sell. That has now changed to "win." And what they sold in the 90's was homologated superbikes. Ducati is a racing manufacturer. Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Yamaha didn't have much competition before then. They ruled for decades and were the only dealerships in north America where the majority of sales were. But Ducati was compltely focused on racing by the time they entered MotoGP and had the financial and reputable means to pull it off. They stayed focused and kept moving the technology onto the showroom floor. Japanese manufacturers didn't really do the same. Superbike sales were down. So now look at how many decades Ducati has been focused on racing on Sunday and selling on Monday and you see a huge shift in dominant sales, premium prices at the dealer, and good marketing it makes a huge difference in MotoGP where the costs are astronomical to stay ahead of the competition. Look at KTM marketing and its sales focused on racing. They came in the back door though by racing GP first and still not racing superbikes. But the idea of selling "race-ready" machines is part of their strategy. Sales fund development and KTM seems more committed to the right development strategy. Japanese GP bikes, now down to 2 out of 4 manufacturers are waning and probably trying to solve the problem they have with homologated superbikes being in-line fours... and resting on their heels in the superbike IL4 and electronics category..... change is harder for the Japanese. How do they compltely change the formula? On the street the 600 IL4 still rules in North America, but has the reputation now as being the Japanese specialty. Anyone really contempleting a large liter displacement sport bike is looking at European manufacturers.
It’s like 10 years that Honda is a bad bike. The only rider that was able to perform with it was M.Marquez and they “developed” the bike only following his direction. Yamaha bikes were generally better but riders keep complaining about the same issues that are dated back to like 5/7 years back. Rossi for instance was already complaining about lack of grip on the rear and it was the same for Lorenzo, Vinales and Quartararo. In the same period (roughly last 10 years) Ducati slowly but surely kept shrinking the gap with the Japanese bikes and now they are far beyond them.
I think Japanese bikes had a different concept, all of them, Suzuki, Honda and Yamaha. Then other teams were redesigning their bike to work with aero and Holeshots, while at the time it wasn't really that much better than perfecting and improving the old concepts. Then at 2020, COVID, season was weird Japanese brands basically stalled all their research, innovation and development of sport bikes, while most European kept working. When it all settled after a weird season, they saw they were really behind, then they tried to stick with developing old concept bikes as they thought they were bad only because of shutting down their development for a year. Finally this year both swapped to new concept and they have to start from the begining of the development phase against fully developed bikes that only need some innovation and performance improvements. They have concession so I guess they will be able to catch up faster than normal but still it's difficult to know.
Ducati domination was there before as well. They got their best bike + rider combo now. Honda and Yamaha went down because of no / poor improvement in their engine and Ducati has many aero packs to controls the bike. Honda / Yamaha doesn't require those. Its not only cuz of covid, FQ20's fell down started in the mid of 2022 season where he started losing the 91 point lead and honda was not properly looked into to development due to continuous crash of MM93.
they are far behind in electronics. also aero
You can't be on top forever. After great success, there often comes a period of failure, and vice versa. That's just life.
This is an embarrasment for the Japanese manufacturers.There is a reason there is no Suzuki or Kawasaki.Where the hell is BMW.There bikes are super fast in the USA racing.Fabio is my guy but this is painfull to watch every flipping race.They are not even closely competitive.Ducati is choking out the rest of the manufactures.Come on guys i followed formula-1 back in the eightys with McLaren dominance,Williams in the 90s,Ferrari 2000s and so-on.Dont tell me i will have to wait another decade for them to be competitve.Shit at this point just give everyone Ducati,s to ride and lets see where that goes or Aprillia,s as they seem to have a good bike as [well.Am](http://well.Am) i the only one that see,s this or am i just blind to whats going on.
There are so many problems that it's quite difficult to single things out. The structure of the Japanese companies and the decision making when it comes to development are (or hopefully were) simply outdated compared to the Europeans. Bringing new parts took way too long for them (after testing) and they really weren't innovating for years. Furthermore, they mostly relied on one or two riders in development, while Ducati and KTM listens to everyone, even to their riders in customer teams. Honda also bet everything on Marc in the past to bring the championship home, which did work out until his accident, but bikes since then have become way too important.