motogpmd wrote:TwoStroke Institute wrote:motogpmd wrote:Ok, anything in the modern professional era? Not saying there isn't examples, I just don't know of any. Certainly not in the last 30 years.
Lawson on the 89 NSR500. Rainey on the Yamaha's he won title on. Kenny Roberts Jnr on the RGV500. But by far any away te best example of a rider with inferior machinery was Jorge Lorenzo with his Derbi 125 in 2000 and something was about 6HP down and he had to ride that over the limit every lap of every GP.
I don't agree with you regarding Lawson, Rainey or Roberts Jnr. Those were all competitive machines in my view. I can't honestly recall anyone calling them inferior. Might as well add Schwantz's Suzuki. And Rossi's 2004 Yamaha. And Stoner's 2007 Ducati. So we are back were we started. But now this becomes an argument about semantics: what does inferior equipment mean? How do we define it? Not sure I want to go down this path, it'll just be another endless debate, because there is no objective measure of a bike's track performance, independent of the rider.
It was well known and reported at the time (including by Eddie himself as mentioned) that the '89 NSR was beyond a handful. Erv Kanemoto still rates that Championship as a high point in his career to this day.
Rainey's team secretly switched to a ROC chassis to get the bike to handle better, and it was always down on power to the Hondas, Wayne was just one of those guys who never gave up. It's hard to quantify how good or bad the bike was, but to switch to another supplier's chassis seems to indicate it was pretty bad.
KRJR's bike handled well, but was slower than any of the competing factories' bikes - he won on consistency a la Hayden '06.
Rossi's efforts on the '04 Yamaha are the stuff of legend, though likely some of that at least comes from the assumption that it was close to as bad as the '03 bike was, which is debatable.
Stoner did ok on the '07 Duke, but it was hardly the underdog that season!
Nonetheless, these achievements are necessarily weighed against the failures of the other riders.
What we witnessed last year was a rider and machine in perfect symmetry, complimenting each other and showcasing each other's strengths. What always occurs is that these events happen in relation to the situations of the other riders at the time. For me, it is both the extent of this symmetry and it's inverse relation to the (attempt to quantify) problems of the other riders that makes this interesting. I personally hate the debate, but have to admit that the exercise is worthwhile because we are really trying to understand the nature of success.
) but have that rider's team-mate achieve poor results on teh same bike (remembering that if one achieves good results, then the bike cannot be inferior) does it then fall taht the second rider is inferior?
