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Exactly. And Tomac have a complete setup bike to go from. AP also. Multiple years on the bike.
AP was the same at was it Thunder Valley? Almost winning first moto. Changed shock setting and second moto was disaster. Said it himself on the podium "we fucked it up".
Didn’t he get a hole shot this weekend (Phil that is)
He did.
Has anyone addressed why he relocated to South Carolina? Seems strange he is struggling with the bike but his team and Broc Tickle and any other resource that can help him are in California. I assume they are having to ship suspension and motor changes back and forth cross country? Doesn't seem very efficient under the circumstances.
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Down 1-2 sec a lap? Might be bike setup.
Down 10 sec a lap (like we just saw from Prado)? Not bike setup.
Bingo!! Short and on point, great post.
And Harrison finished 10th on a fairly stock KX.
Probably acces to decent tracks.
You heard Guillod. Even as a privateer he couldnt stay at the West coast. Smooth practise tracks, mixed level of riders on the track.
Yes the tracks are much better but he doesn't have any resources to work on his bike. Once he gets the bike close then he can live anywhere he wants, just seems weird to leave the support of a full factory team when every single aspect of the bike is off (according to him).
Eli was 5 sec of Jett, Hunter and Sexton's pace in Spring Creek. He had one week of testing and it felt great on his practise track and he was faster on the clock.
Prado made swings with no possibility of testing other than on sitelap after practise.
So yea, if you make big swings you can fuck it up 10sec easily, there is no way you will be pushing because a major crash is just around the corner if bike is so far from a decent setup.
No because you will end up like Tomac. Felt great on practise track, faster on the clock.
Worked shit in race condition, 5 sec of on laptimes to Jett, Hunter, Sexton.
You need to be close to race conditions.
Tomac is working on his bike with his team at their facility, right? They missed, then quickly remedied the issues and made big strides in one week.
Prado is riding around ClubMX and asking Chad Reed to take his bike for a rip asking for feedback. Meanwhile his team is on the other side of the country.
Doesn't feel like an apples to apples comparison.
I don't think there's really any way to argue in favor of whatever Jorge is doing right now. Regardless of your rationalizations, this performance is pretty unprecedented in the "went the wrong way on setup" realm.
Ah, I get what you mean. I think Aldon Baker said in one of the old TGO movies that motocross is the perfect blend of man and machine. That's how I've thought about it since.
Prados team followed him east. Broc stayed in CA to test engines and would send them to Club MX overnight. His team was giving 110%. Part of the rub now is that some aren’t convinced Prado gave the same level of commitment or showed appreciation for their level of effort.
We will give Prado 5 seconds for bike set up.
I guess the other 5 can be effort?
If Prado wasn’t capable no one would care. That is what makes this so interesting to me. How talented he is and how bad he has been.
You think Tomacs crew rides his bike? 😄
Having team near and riding hard packed prepped track in cali is probably worse than losing a bit of time shipping things. If you can't even get it right with crew, at a private semi soft track that you can prepp yourself, you are not going to get it right being at West coast public tracks.
And Kawi suspension guys and Oscar has been at Club as i understand it.
Its why most is east coast based even though teams are based out of West coast. Water and soft semi-private tracks.
SX is something else since many of them are hard packed.
Agree on that it is unprecedented.
But I'll take his open communication 100 out of 100 times. It's his view. And we don't know how Kawi is behaving. Maybe fair, maybe not compliant at all.
So tired of riders like Tomacs press releases, like from spring Creek "we had a bad weekend, need to do better". And then one week later we get the "it was a setup thing".
Oh, I don't care what his approach to communications is.
What is unprecedented is this level of underperformance being attributed to bike setup.
Pit Row
I think its 3 things:
1. Setup: x seconds (bike dont turn, oversteers, bottoms out, to stiff, armpump, whatever). Shitty setup but rideable. Technically difficult to go fast but can do ok 5-10 pace for 35min.
2. Risk: Im about to seriously crash if I do multiple fast laps on this setup: We fucked up. Can do 10-20 pace for 35min.
3. Fuck it. I'm signing out. 15 or 25 dont care. 20-25 pace.
I think if he was in the championship you wouldn't see the 3.
But it's easy to forget that Chase just said fuck it and was out for a few weeks because he was anyway out. Prado still showing up for the races even if he is out of championship and results are shit. Webb threws in the towels every year.
I think it's partly because they need to test at race conditions. If they could get those conditions somewhere else I think they would drop out.
I can’t help but wait for a “Kawasaki and Prado part ways” headline soon.
You seem very emotionally invested in this, and I'm not. I'm sorry that Kawasaki ruined Jorge Prado. I hope things get better.
You take Sexton as an example, the guy thats since he was out of championship round 1 immediately took a vacation until end of season? 😄
Webb signs out every year. Went an rode Enduro to test different bike and setups.
Prado is still at the races, even though he could throw in the towel as others do and just work on setup and come back when closer.
So i guess its perspective.
Im not, i have vacation so to much time to kill.
I think the next two weeks could be make or break.
I do agree with this. If Prado has a hard time communicating with the team on what he does or doesnt feel, maybe go to an Anderson set up or Ciancearulo (sp)set up for a baseline.
Jetts bike right now would be hard for himself to ride 3 years ago.
I want to see this 70 kid do well and redeem himself from the shortfalls he is going through.
But, he needs to be a solid teammate to start with and everyone on the team is equal.
He’s paid to go faster than he’s comfy going. Besides that, if he rides around 8 seconds off the pace the whole time, how are they ever going to get data to improve the bike under race conditions?
Honestly who would be opposed at this point? A mutual departure would seem best for all. Kawasaki is getting chase so they could get a true B rider and then Prado could go somewhere he wants to be.
Prado’s just homesick.
Crashing ain't getting them anywhere.
Jett took a third because he wouldn't push, he could have pushed but chose not to. None of the riders will push to the risk of crashing if there is nothing in it.
They don't need data for things that are that much off. Ain't no data going to show you what you can do if they miss like that.
When they test, they need to be able to lay down heaters, setup that allows you to go fast. And as a final test you need to be able to do a moto. Barcia and others has explained this several times. Prado felt right away it wasn't going to work. Chase rode 4 or maybe 5 laps, said the 1mm they moved the fork was not working but they couldn't change it for the restart so he didn't push second part.
RC said he could feel when he rolled to the track if an exhaust system was going to work or not when they tested.
They seem to be far off. Wonder if he will never get the spring fork to work.
Twisted is doing Phil’s Kawi motor. The same who does the ClubMX bikes. Phil said this week the bike is down on power compared to the Yamaha from bottom to mid and that if he rode that bike here in the states he would be struggling. He also said it’s completely different from what he believes a Factory Kawi is. However, you start with the same base engine. I’m not making excuses for Prado because it’s clear he’s not trying anymore. I think when he tries he’s a 5th place guy on that bike. Mentally for him he expected to be atleast on the box and has given up, it’s clear as day. That isn’t okay. I’m also not going to just assume the guy is lying out of his ass and just decided to make himself look like this. There has to be more to it. No multi time world champion wants to be the biggest failure story of the year.
I see a lot of people comparing AC and Ando when he was winning to now. Those bikes were different from this generation. Anderson won a lot of races in 22 on the old bike. His results haven’t been the same since.
Post a reply to: The Prado Mystery