Highside

The one thing on every MotoGP insider’s mind these days is finding ways to save money. The global financial crisis was incredibly effective at highlighting the extreme costs that go into running a competitive prototype bike, and the effects it had in the 2009 season sent teams, managers, and organizers scrambling for ways to bring the price of running a team in MotoGP back within the realm of feasibility.

The first casualty of the high costs came from Kawasaki’s withdrawal in the 2009 pre-season. Once the season began, concerns began to grow about the financial stability of some of the satellite teams–concerns which manifested after Team Scot Honda had to release Yuki Takahashi after seven races. Just one round later, panic began to take hold as the Grupo Francisco Hernando team withdrew, leaving the MotoGP grid at less than 18 riders for the first time in many years. Financial difficulties weren’t limited to teams and riders alone, as the Hungarian Grand Prix was cancelled, with the Balatonring’s construction halted from lack of funds.

The 2010 season has unified teams and organizers together in an effort to try and cut the costs and prevent any more withdrawals, and the most influential decision made thus far has been the limit on the number of engines a team can use in a season. Before 2010, there had been no limit to the number of times an engine could be rebuilt, which led to one of the most prohibitively expensive costs of the series: flying the engines back to the factories after every race to be stripped apart, cleaned, and re-assembled. The need for this came from yet another prohibitively expensive practice: in an effort to squeeze every last fraction of a second out of the engines, constructors were building their engines out of incredibly lightweight, fragile materials that were constantly breaking down after each race weekend. All of these factors combined to create a need for engine limitations, and it’s brought us to where we are today.

The new regulations require each rider to use only six engines for the entire season. Engines are monitored by the series organizers to ensure that no engine is being stripped down and rebuilt, which has completely cut out the need to fly the engines halfway around the world every other week. The regulations have caused each factory to redesign their engines, building for performance and durability together now, and this has created the unfortunate Catch-22 of the season: in an attempt to cut costs, the regulations have forced each team to spend more money on designing new engines. These costs are not permanent, however–improvements made in increasing durability this year will carry over into future years, and if all goes according to the plan, costs will begin to fall in 2011.

The penalties for breaking the new regulation are still in flux, with the most recent revision being finalized this past weekend at the Jerez race. As it currently stands, any rider who starts a race using a new engine beyond his originally allotted six will start the race from the exit of pit lane, ten seconds after the race begins. This penalty is a bit strange, however–pit lane exits vary from track to track, and the severity of the penalty varies widely for each location. Nowhere is this more concerning than at the Valencia circuit, where, as Nicky Hayden pointed out in an interview on the subject, any rider starting from the exit to pit late “would lead into turn one.” Having an advantage like this at Valencia, the final circuit of the season, could cast a dark shadow over the whole race.

Cutting costs is hardly a perfect science–for many teams, it’s diametrically opposed to the culture MotoGP has bred into them for the past decade. Yet, everyone in the paddock realizes that, for the sport to survive, cuts need to be made. We can only hope that all the loose ends will be tied up before they come into play.