MotoGP rules state that each team rider is allocated 6 engines for the racing year. If the rider uses them up, they can opt for another engine, but are penailsed by starting from pit lane 10 seconds after the flag has fallen in subsequent races. This is all in the name of cost saving, though quite how it’s saving costs I really do not know. Time was (before this stupid rule was introduced) that a used or damaged motor would be crated, sent back to the factory, refreshed and returned to the team at a later date to be used again.
“But this is costing too much money,” the boffins said, “Teams can do this as often as they like and we need to cut costs.”
So, the so-called “6 engine” rule. NOW, if a team trashes an engine, or wears one out (remember, they are prototype motors, not designed to last a super-long time), it is simply scrapped and a new motor is put in the bike. Imagine the cost of building and testing a NEW engine as opposed to refreshing an old one. As Steve Parrish pointed out on the MotoGP telecast the other night, this rule has the potential to INCREASE costs rather than reduce them.
So, with Lorenzo’s very public meltdown of an engine in qualifying on Saturday, it got me thinking, “I wonder how the teams stand in terms of how many engines they have left for the rest of the season (last Sunday’s race was 8 of 18). So I asked the question on one of the better-informed forums I inhabit and was pointed to this link which details exactly where they stand right now.
Plainly, people like Lorenzo and Stoner are in some sort of strife having used up a fair proportion of their allocation already. Quite how this is going to affect Lorenzo’s run-away lead in the championship is anyone’s guess. The Yamaha engines, in particular, are apparently pretty fragile, and all of the engines are operating at the limit of metallurgy and reliability as the manufacturers try to squeeze more and more horsepower out of a constrained package.
But it gets worse. Suzuki’s Alvaro Bautista has already used up FIVE engines and Capirossi 4 and the season’s not half over yet. Now there is talk that the organisers might relax the rule for Suzuki to save them the embarrassment of being penalised for most of the races yet to come. They can’t afford to lose another manufacturer (despite the persistent rumour that the FIM is hounding BMW to commit to MotoGP for 2011, yes!) so the concession looks like it is going to be made.
How will the other manufacturers view this? Well, it is SAID that this concession will be made with their approval, though I find that a bit far-fetched. I guess they don’t see Suzuki as a threat (let’s face it, they’re not going to win a MotoGP race anytime soon), but making an exception this early in the season to a rule that wasn’t going to be changed, come-what-may, does seem pretty dumb.
Let me pose you a hypothetical. Let’s suppose that Lorenzo gets to near the end of the season and he’s out of engines. What are they going to do? Deprive the champion-elect of the opportunity of winning a title he richly deserves because of the fragility of his motors? And where will Yamaha stand on this? After all, they supply 4 bikes to a grid of 17 (nearly a quarter). Wouldn’t they be entitled to say, “Make the same exception for us as you did for Suzuki or we won’t come back next year.” Make no mistake, MotoGP stands to lose far more from not having Yamaha on the grid than the other way round. Yamaha make more money out of selling flutes each year than they make out of selling bikes and flutes are a damn sight cheaper to make and they don’t blow up in public.
This little issue, simmering below the surface as it is at the moment, has the potential to blow up in the FIM’s face at least as spectacularly as Jorge’s motor let go last Saturday. It’s a stupid rule and it needs to be changed.
And here’s a final irony. Rossi’s enforced absence through injury might yet prove to be his saving grace later in the season as he’s sitting pretty as far as engine use at the moment.