Moto GP - Part Three

We went to the Ducati Island at the track Saturday. You enter through the museum section that contains some super nice bikes ('70's Sport and Super Sport being my favorites) as well as some of the other things Ducati used to manufacture, like a razor and camera. After you walk through the museum, you go outside and it's loaded with Ducati's of all types. These are bikes of people who came to the races. I saw lots of newer bikes but also an old 160 Monza Junior, and an 860 GT. All kinds - if you dig Ducati's, you need to see it.

Also, there are vendors located around the outside wall, including NCR. The Ducati frame in the photo is one of theirs and it's the lightest frame I've ever seen for any bike, including some bicycles I've owned. It had to be some type of titanium with some gorgeous looking TIG welds. NCR has a history of producing cutting edge parts and frame modifications for racing motorcycles. The box of parts in the photo is like the sample case the door to door salesman in the old days would cart around - knock on the door, open up the case of samples and give you the pitch. The cost of the parts in that sample case are probably more than I make in a year and it's not even a complete gruppo like you would buy for a bicycle. Beautiful stuff.

So with all of this finely crafted machinery I saw, welding and machining were in evidence most everywhere. If you look at the old Italian bikes, they had sandcast crankcases and were very pretty in a somewhat primitive way. Now the cases are pressure cast and the bikes have all types of CNC machined parts on them. Racing modifications still involve a lot of skilled craftsmanship due to the low volume of the parts being produced. And then I looked at the Formula One Ferrari.

The Formula One is the epitome of the racing machine. The fastest and lightest and best of everything goes into building these things - except welding? I gave the car a quick once over and the suspension arms that were once welded up from chrome-moly steel are now carbon fiber. The body is no longer aluminum as they were for many years. Basically, anything that's visible on the outside of the car is some type of composite. I'm not an authority on Formula One cars by any means, but other than fabbing up exhaust systems, do these guys even need a welder in the shop? I'm not worried about the demise of welding due to composite materials but it's interesting to contemplate how much of this technology is going to continue to trickle down into other forms of motorsports, including the family sedan. Regardless of how that shakes out, I had a great time at the races. It's always a good time with the Surly's and Unk.