Michael Scott

 

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Wings are banned. Progress has been jammed. MotoGP has taken another backward step away from being a genuine sphere of valuable engineering research.

Or has it? Perhaps the opposite … although in areas of development other than engineering.

Creative engineering in racing is most often not a matter of advancing knowledge and benefitting the human race but instead finding a way round the regulations. Any real advance is by coincidence.

As the second round of tests ended in Australia, the biggest surprise came from Ducati, pioneers of the modern generation of winglets, and the most vocal opponents of the ban. The Italian squad, revealed under-chief Paolo Ciabatti rather crustily, was going to stick with the standard fairing, unadorned with winglets within or without.

This makes Ducati almost unique. By this time, all the others had revealed their loophole specials. All except newbies KTM, with other things to worry about first. Although the rule allowing one fairing upgrade per season gives Ducati the chance of an about-face.

Loopholes they were, almost literally so. Except that all of them had winglets inside.