Is it just a poorly managed team?
Kawasaki has all the money, resources and technology that all the other Factory teams have.
They really haven't had much success since Tomac and they chased him away.
Factory KTM was nothing until they brought in Decoster to build a team and a bike.
Factory Yamaha was terrible until Star took over the management of the team.
Factory Suzuki was a powerhouse until Decoster left and took everyone with him. Admittedly Suzuki cut funding due to the declining economy, but that is a Management issue as well.
Factory Honda absolutely sucked for years until Lars became the team manager.
Factory Husqvarna lost thier very successful manager and results dropped way off.
How successful would Tomac and Webb at Star, the Lawrence's at Honda or Chase and Webb at KTM been without a strong highly focused management?
Not really related but I noticed one of those external oil coolers that Vital said was useless on the Kawasaki has made it’s way onto Jett’s bike.
Didn’t Kenny have Lars at Honda and didn’t deliver any titles?
“The Man” was at Suzuki from 96-10 and only won titles with Albee and Pastrana outdoors in 99/2000 until RC came along….a one and done with Chad in 09 MX, and then RD right after that.
So was it Roger’s fault they didn’t win much if at all from 96-04, or did Suzuki riders only win because of RD? RC and Chad were already great when they signed with Suzuki, RD can only really claim Dungey as his own.
What I’m saying is it takes a “perfect storm” to create winning situations. The right / rider / bike / team / teammates / manager / luck / ect…..not just a one way ticket to winning by adding one piece.
Depends on how good the rider is.
The best riders always find a way to win unless something is REALLY wrong. Like KTM PDS in whoops or the first backwards yamaha 450 that Stewart rode. Seeing Steward destroy 250f’s on a 125 can give some perspective about how bad that Yamaha 450 must have been if he struggled that much against riders on ”equal” material.
It boils down to what kind of rider the team has and how picky they are.
Tomac is known to be picky on some parts, same with Sexton and clearly Prado. When you got a rider like that the team comes in to play more than some other riders that just jump on the bike and make use of what they got. Like RC on the 02 Honda.
Sometimes i would say that a team/bike get a bad rep because of the rider (like Honda HRC when Chase and Ken rode that bike). We all know what happened later on the same bike with the same people behind the team.
List all the teams that have the same resources and where ALL of their riders are in the points.
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Roger and Ian helped get the KTM program turned around, but the vast majority of the “blame pie” of success or failure is on the riders.
Phenomenal timing on this thread. 🤦🏻♂️
That bike didn’t look good at all even when Prado was leading , his entry speed in to corners looks miles of compared to the gasgas
What happened to Ando in moto 2?
As i have said many times, in Pro Motorsports, there are people in charge that would rather lose, than win with something that wasnt their idea.
Kawasaki are one of the worst for this on both sides of the pond.
Kawi has a bunch of old heads on the team that need to go. They are like the old factory yamaha before star took over. They need to clean house
The front end appeared to not be settling in the corners versus most of the other top 5 guys.
Seems the same as in Europe, Yamaha Factory MXGP is still stuck with the squad behind the scenes, it isn’t working as it should. Also time for some fresh heads in there, same case as the US Kawasaki camp.
They seem to definitely lack a fitness manager for Prado. He obviously doesn’t have the fitness to race at that level, in the US, yet. At Southwick after his moto 2 crash he was struggling to lift the bike back up, looked totally spent. I felt as if I was looking at a young child trying to lift a 65cc
Prado
Play-Doh
Same, same
Soft
Fitness is one thing for sure , but I also noticed he was dabbing his feet and getting wrong lean angles in corners a lot today .
In Lars' case it does help that his time has coincided with having possibly the greatest to ever rider a dirt bike on his team.
I've thought about what is going on at Kawi too. What is it that's preventing them from getting results, especially now with Prado, is the bike really that bad? and if it is, why? Do they not listen to riders, we've heard recently that the engineers are always "right" there.
I don’t buy into the bike issues much. Surely they can get it set up to prados liking if he can communicate what he needs in a way the team understands. Hopefully this is what chads helping with. Fitness looks to be an issue, bike set up obviously won’t help that if it’s beating him to shit. But he should be able to get it close enough. Interesting for sure.
You would think, but no, they cant.
Kawasaki have won nothing without a generational talent on their bike. Second rider has always been a disaster, for reasons that are well documented.
MXGP second seat is a bust, desparation seat, i was hopeful that when ICE One took over , it would be better, but it was actually worse.
Pit Row
Do you really know what budget Team Kawasaki have to play with, is it similar, or half the others?
OP sounds like one of those people who yells at the tv "yeah the team sucks so fire the coach"
Prado isn't riding the Kawi like it needs to be ridden, lots of talk that he's been told by the team to run lower gears and doesnt.
Anderson doing his best but I feel he's partly mailing it in until next year with whatever is going on this season.
And finally we are on Vital so we are all clearly correct whatever we say.
When you almost holeshot and lead half the race, only to finish 40-something seconds behind the leader, it is pretty hard to blame the team manager. Sounds like they need to borrow a page from Mitch’s playbook and mail George a pair of running shoes.
As others have pointed out, Honda wasn’t exactly on a hot streak until Mirtl brought them the greatest talent to ever swing a leg over a dirt bike.
That’ll happen when your tongue is flapping against the spokes 15 minutes into the moto.
Well said. His fitness is not there yet. Hopefully he gets that fixed over time.
The idea of a team telling their professional rider how he needs to ride the bike is why Kawasaki has sucked so much. While riders do need to “shut up and ride the bike” at some point, a race team should be tailoring the bike to suit the rider. If he likes to lug it, they shouldn’t be building an engine package that relies on lower gears/higher revs.
It doesn’t sound like Kawi is like that anymore. They brought Brock in to work with the riders and help develop the bikes for them. Certainly sounds like Kawi is doing all they can to get Prado’s bike working the way he wants it to (as they should).
Somebody recommended booting the factory 450 program and having mitch and PC take over the 450 program like star did. I know pc has been having its own problems but thats a lot of bad luck and the riders they have, the bikes are great. That just might work.
They might need a big change-up just to get things fresh and new over there. Its been stale for a decade. Idk if kawi would do this, but what they got over there is not working and hasnt worked since RV. And RV was a kawi guy and could make anything work so it could have been even longer than that. Tomac looked like a god on the honda and then when he went to kawi turned into weirdo rides, pants fell down, dnf’s, missed championships…etc. then goes to yamaha and day 1 looks like a whole new man and wins everything. Something is not working over there.
Eli won 3 straight outdoor titles and a sx title in his 5 years with Kawi, id say his tenure there was pretty successful. I think Eli had more mental slip ups at Kawi that prevented him from winning more titles over there, not them not making the bike work for him, he won 4 major championships with them so the bike was working. Eli’s also gotten hurt more lately on the Yamaha then he did on the Kawi, but I don’t think that’s a bike thing.
The Kawasaki team manager did a good job for the first half of the moto, but then the Kawasaki team manger started to fade and lost motivation.
Eli a generational talent? Eh, maybe. I'm a JA stan, but he definitely isn't and still rolled off 7 wins in SX a couple years ago and could have won the title if ne stayed out of slap fights with other riders. The team/bike isn't the issue
How dare you brings facts and stats to the post.😆 George is just getting smoked and needs to get his shit together soon or he's back to the MXGP.
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