Shimoda

He needs to get his starts dialed in, they are to weep!! His starts weren't great on the FC bike, also bad on the PC and now on the HRC bike too, so it is maybe something with his technique.

He looks overly cautious on the track sometimes. It’s tough to tell on starts, but that’s my guess. 

He rides good. His starts are the problem. 

I just took a look at the lap charts and lap times. Here’s some of his stats:

change from lap 1 position:

A1: 10 to 4th, SD: 10 to 4th, A2 race 2: 15 to 3rd, A2 race 3: 7 to 2nd.

He appears to have decent speed, but I will say this anything he has the worst reacecraft. If you can’t get start after 5 gate drops, I don’t think it’s suddenly going to change. Often times it’s not because he can’t get a jump, it’s because he gets pushed around and is too afraid to do anything back

Tonight was a perfect example of his career 

the last moto when all was gone  he was really good ,

Terrible starts. Fast enough to win, but has to get his starts down. 

Its nuts how bad his starts are but its just as crazy how far hes moving through the pack to get decent finishes. Hes riding great its literally just his starts. If he can get that figured out hes got the speed to win. 

In the past he struggled to pass.

This year passing is brilliant - got the balance between pressure, patience and decisiveness pretty dialled. 

Starts are terrible. 

I hate seeing his results, he's better than this.         He's got the speed

yea he is pretty cautious, however I think a lot has to do with his style.  He's so smooth it looks like he's being cautious and cruising, but he's absolutely hauling. 

Yea definitely has the speed, maybe a tick slower than RJ, but he doesn't make 1,000 micro mistakes a lap like RJ.  If only he could get a start!!

"he had the worst race craft"...what are you talking about?  He's put on insane charges this year and is probably the second fastest in the field, that's race craft.  He just gets horrible starts

FLusterated!

Yea some ppl get stuck behind other riders trying to come through the pack or end up accidentally matching the riders theyre following. Every race Shimoda is coming from like 19th to 4th so its not his race craft he just cant buy a start. Everybody says the honda is down on power and last year we saw an immediate change on starts with all the kawis after they found something, but if I was honda I would focus solely on starts until they figure it out. I’m gonna go back and watch his starts and see if hes not getting the jump or whats going on. They really need to get it figured out, hes riding incredible right now.

I like Jo, but he’s hyped up a lot. I don’t see him being as fast as Kitchen, Trasher, RJ, or Smith. Maybe Kitchen, but the other 3 have him covered in the speed department, in sx at least. Jo reminds me of Jake Weimer and how he needs that confidence and if there isn’t any, then the results suffer. 

Good thing deegan ducked him.  Lol

His racecraft looks way better than it used to. Some of his passes last night were smooth, especially that twofer. Dude needs to figure out starts.

His starts have always been the problem. Nothing new here. I kinda figured they would get even worse now that he's on a slower bike. Some guys are just poor starters. He's been at this on good equipment awhile. I don't expect his starts to get drastically better at this point

He is slower than some of the guys he has to compete against.

Honda ga Oso sugiru, Kawasaki no ho ga hayai da yo

Forgot about that, that double pass was legit!

Needs a few sessions from MA800 to fix his starts.

The female announcer said joe has a hard time communicating with his team? Did she mean a language barrier or just he doesn’t know how to express what the problem is?

I heard that too and I’m not gonna lie it reminded me of when one of the commentator ppl said sometimes they just have to make something up. I figured this was one of those times lol.