Elimination of a spec tire rule! Most people correlate the end of Stoner's 2007 Ducati dominance with the intro of the CF frame but it also coincided with moving of Rossi to BS and the elimination of bike-specific tires with the spec rule the following year.

Maybe Rossi's 2008 development input to BS tilted the balance of the resulting spec tire from the Duc's hard to heat needs to a those that benefited the Japanese style GP bikes. There also was the rise of Lorenzo as a big talent so more true competition for the win.

There is a pic from Mugello of the GP12 naked at One of the Ducati GP12 test bikes arriving at Mugello. Note s... on Twitpic and from a side profile it is almost exactly the same as their superbike with a nearly horizontal front cylinder and huge amounts of empty space between the front wheel and the crankshaft. No wonder why they are having a hard time loading it to get heat into it. However, this same layout in the superbike is working just fine against strong competition with the easy to warm up spec Pirelli tires. I think their problem is not the CF frame but how the orientation of the cylinders keeps the heavy parts of the engine very far back from the front axle and low. The lower the C of G the less load transfer under braking and acceleration and the less heat that goes into the tires. The further back the C of G is reduces the weight on the front in the first place. Each bad characteristic compounds the other. Not good.

Looking at the RC211V at Soup :: More Honda RC211V Insider Pics and the M1 at http://www.motorcyclenews.com/upload...ges/225306.jpg you can see that Ducati's mass centralization is poor and and possibly their resulting high yaw moment of inertia makes the bike slow to turn simply from a mass distribution perspective regardless of C of G position or steering geometry. Its like adding insult to the injury of above and explains both of Rossi's problems of hard to heat tires and a hard to turn bike.

It also makes their decision to go with the same subframe-chassis style design for the new production superbike much more reasonable. With the Pirelli tires heat generation is not an issue and maybe the reduced load on the front tire helps with reduction of front tire wear late in the race. Now the low and rearward C of G is a benefit and not a problem! I suspect that production road and even club race tires are more like the Pirellis then the BS so us mortals won't have to worry about warm tires as we go to the cafe or turn a lap at the local track on our 1199.

Chris
US Moto2 Bike