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Honda Dreams of Banning Ducati's Winglets

Winglets are back with a bang in the premier class, and almost all the manufacturers are trying to make use of their advantages. Still, not everybody is happy with them, and Honda Racing Corporation would just love to see them gone for good.
Ducati winglets on a MotoGP bike 1 photo
Photo: Ducati
Aerodynamic winglets have been banned from Moto2 and the Grand Prix Commission (GPC) envisaged to have them removed from the Moto3 bikes starting with the 2017 season. However, the change arrived much sooner than expected, with the GPC agreeing upon an immediate ban a week ago.

The Grand Prix Commission thus responded to a request from the Manufacturers in the Moto3 Working Group, who unanimously agreed to forward their proposal to the Commission. The only category where the winglets remain in place is MotoGP, but Ducati says that Honda is not at all happy with this.

Even though Honda, one of the manufacturers with a big word in MotoGP, is using no less than six aerodynamic fins on the bike, it looks like they'd gladly get rid of them just to see everyone else doing the same.

Ducati Corse's boss Gigi Dall'Igna was not at all shy to speak about this sensitive matter, and he's not happy with Honda, either. "When Honda developed their seamless case, nobody opposed it despite the great changes it brought. So for them, this box provided a great advantage on the track, and everyone respected this. And that is what we ask now.

"The development of fins has led us to a crucial point, development and wind tunnel testing have also been used in tests of other parts of the bike. Nobody asked us anything about the incidents where our drivers were involved and nobody was injured. The debate arose when Marquez and Iannone touched in the first corner in Argentina. Certainly there had been contact between the back of Marc and our bike's winglet, but there was no mark left on his leathers, and there has been no physical damage,"
Ducati's MotoGP boss declares.

Ducati has been the first manufacturer that brought the winglets to a race this season, and the others "saw that they were good" and replicated them, with a few exceptions. Even Aprilia, who were not that quick to design and install aero winglets on their all-new RS-GP prototype, finally did so for the Italian GP at Mugello this week.

Their shape and hardness brought them in the center of attention after one Ducati collided with a Honda and Iannone's left-side winglet touched the back of Marc Marquez, but with no harm done whatsoever.

According to the teams, the winglets are helping the riders keep the front end down on the track during hard acceleration, to compensate for the lack of sufficient wheelie mitigation reaction in the spec software. Others mentioned that the lower air pressure created behind the lateral winglets would help extract hot air from the engine area and cool the bikes better.

With so many bikes on the grid using them, it is hard to believe that the GPC and the teams will reach an agreement for the ban anytime soon.
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