F
or a decade or more, Dorna
has been working at dumb-
ing down MotoGP, with two
targets in mind. One is to reduce
costs. The other to even out the
competition – or, to put it another
way, to cut the technical advan-
tage held by the factories.
The factories resisted manfully;
the CRT bikes introduced in 2012
were Dorna's riposte – a warning
shot to bring them to heel. Dor-
na chief Carmelo Ezpeleta was
clear: if the factories wouldn't
play ball, he would switch Mo-
toGP entirely over to the produc-
tion-engined clunkers.
This year's Open bikes are
the result, as well as themselves
being prototype for one-size-fits-
all dumb-down rules coming in
2016. They've been around for all
but half a season. So how is the
Open category working?
"Brilliantly" is the answer from
just one of the garages fielding a
bike to the new rules, where be-
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
DUMB AND DUMBER
P136
