What the blue blazes CRT machines? Cathode Ray Tubes with wheels? Cenny Roberts Track?
1000ccs, what's up with that? 800 then 900 not enough after the switch to four strokes? I guess two strokes are completely out now, but didn't they used to have smaller classes like 250cc for two strokes or was that something other than GP? Do they have a corresponding four stroke class? You can probably tell I'm curious but way out of touch with racing.
Allie , the CRT (Claiming Right Teams) bikes are a prototype chassis with a 1000cc production based engine ( basically a superbike engine - an evovled road bike engine) in a flash frame .
They are slower than the prototype bikes ( "cutting edge technology engines , frames , suspensions , electronics ) and cheaper (because most of the engineering in the engines has already been done by BMW , Aprillia etc ) . They have been brought in to bolster the grid numbers and lower costs . They will be the GP bikes of the future . Affectively , there are now two classes in the premier class .
The prototype bikes are horrendously expensive ($40 odd million to run a team for a year) so numbers on the grid shrank to about 17 bikes . The CRT's are supposed to fix this , but they are relatively slow , (prolly lucky to pull 340 kph (the flash ones are doing 355 to 360 kph) .
If one of these bikes does beat a "flash murray" bike , then it's engine can be claimed by the team it beats , for 20,000 Euro .
Yeh , I know ??????
It's s'posed to discourage teams spending zillions in engine development .
All 3 classes (500 , 250 and 125's) were 2 strokes , but are all now four strokes .
Namely , Moto3 (250 cc single cylinder , in place of the 125's) , Moto2 (600cc Honda control engine in a prototype chassis , in place of the 250's) and MotoGP (now 1000CC and no more than 4 cylinders , in place of the 500's) .
The 500 two strokes were the first to go due to increasing pressure from the "market place" to cease 2 stroke production . Emmission , noise etc .
These were replaced with 990cc four strokes (any configuration of engines - v's or inline and any number of cylinders) . These were immediately faster than the stroker's .
A lot of the tracks soon became more dangerous because they now didn't have adequate run off areas , air fences etc , for the new faster bikes .
The answer was to reduce the capacity to 800cc because they would be slower .
But they weren't .
These bikes had to be ridden to their absolute limit and provided relatively boring racing due to having a "lack" of power to overtake . And all so incredibly close in performance , etc .
Enter bizzarely expensive and complex electronics and almost immediately , they were quicker than their bigger forerunners .
Insanely expensive though .
Now , enter the 1000's which have engineering limitations (bore and stroke , fuel capacity etc) so they would be slower and cheaper .
But they're not . (Bloody engineers and their cleverness) .
They are more powerful again so should provide more scope for passing (and they have) .
More goodly now , the racing .
They've also introduced a softer control tyre which warms up quickly but goes "off" towards the end of the race to make it more exciting (and they do) .
Hope this explains things a bit .
Don't worry about it all to much , just enjoy the "awesome" .
This year should be a cracker . The first race(s) were .
Cheers , Simon .
we don't get air until tomorrow...
I don't think they show it live...
GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!