Casey Stoner thinks a lack of commitment to aerodynamics in 2017 was the point at which the Japanese factories in MotoGP were \u201cleft behind\u201d by the Europeans.<\/p>\n
Ducati made the first big push on aerodynamics in MotoGP<\/a> in 2015, and this expanded in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regulations were introduced for 2017 on safety grounds which intended for the winglets on the premier class bikes to be contained within the main bodywork of the fairing.<\/p>\n But the European manufacturers interpreted this differently to the Japanese, with Ducati bringing the kind of pod-shaped wings it still uses a derivative of in 2025, while Honda and Yamaha brought much smaller designs that effectively widened the main fairing to make space for the winglets within.<\/p>\n Two-time MotoGP World Champion Stoner believes a reluctance from the Japanese manufacturers to invest in aerodynamics at that moment led to their current position where both Honda and Yamaha are trying to develop themselves back to the front of MotoGP after several years of uncompetitiveness.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been tough for the Japanese factories,\u201d Casey Stoner<\/a> told the MotoGP world feed broadcast during FP2 on Saturday at Misano.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw many years ago, when the rules were close to being put in, I believe that they \u2013 Honda and even Yamaha \u2013 had developed the bike to be without aerodynamics and all this kind of thing; then the rules just seems to crumble and disappear and turn up the next year and everyone\u2019s still got winglets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo, I think they just got left behind at that point, they weren\u2019t developing it, they weren\u2019t continuing in that direction, and they\u2019re just clawing themselves back now, I suppose.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how much they wanted to invest, I suppose, in getting themselves back further up the grid; because it is a big investment, especially with aerodynamics, it\u2019s where the major costs of it comes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think they were cautious on how much they really wanted to invest with their time and budget in that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cAll of them seem to be coming back a little bit, to a certain degree \u2013 Yamaha\u2019s still struggling, but Honda have certainly made some waves in the last several races and seem to be pushing themselves further up the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n Stoner spent some time in the Honda HRC<\/a> box, in which he won his second world title, on Friday on Luca Marini<\/a>\u2019s side of the garage.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got no obligations anywhere inside this paddock, so it\u2019s pretty much just me walking up and down pit lane, and I watched some things out on-track and when I do see things I can just give a little bit of advice here and there,\u201d Stoner said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, honestly, they\u2019re the ones doing the job, so that was nothing to do with me yesterday, that was them doing what they came here to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of time for everyone there at the Honda garage, I had some fantastic years there and have what I still consider family in that side of the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cSo, I appreciated everything Honda did and gave me, so I was just in there visiting them and letting them know what I saw on-track.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Casey Stoner thinks a lack of commitment to aerodynamics in 2017 was the point at which the Japanese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,21588],"class_list":{"0":"post-143022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-casey-stoner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}