Ducati Team's Valentino Rossi (Photo: Ducati Corse)

The Two Preseason Mysteries

Two tantalizing questions remain: Is Ducati building a completely new engine? And what was the red-light glitch that limited the Hondas to four-lap runs in Sepang?

If Ducati was just tweaking the frame they would not be saying that the new bike would not be along until Estoril or Le Mans. They have to be building a new engine. Some paddock regulars speculate that Ducati might finally be going to a tighter V-4 engine, but my best deep insider says no, Ducati has decided at the corporate level to live or die by the 90-degree L-4. A 70-ish degree V would require a major redesign and balance shaft, and that, even for a factory, might mean a longer delay than two months.

If my source is right (and he usually is), it is probable that Ducati may have, in spite of affirming that its current GP12 is a full 1000cc bike, opted for a 930cc displacement and an ultra-short stroke in a quixotic attempt to overcome greater displacement with more revs. To the trained but naked ear along the back straight at Jerez, it sounded like the Ducati L4s of Rossi and Hayden were revving their guts out but still being discretely yarded by the Hondas and the Yamahas.

It also sounded like Ducati tester Franco Battaini was turning less revs. Perhaps he was on a quickly cobbled up version of an engine with a 48.5 mm or so length stroke

Mystery two concerns the reason for the warning light in the instrument panel of Dani Pedrosa's Honda that caused HRC to sit out the second day completely and reduce runs to four laps on the final day at Sepang II. One rival team director told me that he suspected that the problem had to do with the gearbox. He based this on the fact that Honda emptied their garages of all but their highest ranking Japanese technicians, the same ones, he said, who are entrusted to service the seamless gearbox. The other possibility is that, seeing that Yamaha were matching their best runs along the long Malaysian straights at the first tests, Honda may have increased the revs for Sepang II and run into friction (heat and oil pressure) problems.

That could also explain why all but the key Honda technicians were sent out of the garage while the engines were looked at after the opening day in Malaysia.

If Honda runs true to course, someday around the year 2030, a retired non-Japanese Honda technician will let it slip, and on that same occasion we may even find out what really happened with that supposed sticking throttle problem at Motegi 2010.