Ducati points the finger at Carmelo

The pigeons are coming home to roost for Mr Ezpeleta.

Most of the MotoGP news over the off season has been focused on the rising costs of racing and the effect of this versus the sharp economic decline into recession.

Carmelo is hell bent on more and more technical rule changes in efforts to improve the racing spectacle and find the holy grail of 125cc fairing bashing, last lap deciders in MotoGP.

I've commented before on the political use of "safety measures" to force through changes in rather the same way that the now former President Bush used security as the catch all to get his way in the US.

And people are starting to join up the dots.

I read with interest the comments yesterday from Ducati blaming Carmelo's knee jerk rule changes over the past few seasons for the escalating costs - which make absolute sense.

The best case scenario for more restrictive technical rule changes is to slow everybody down by the same amount. The more likely outcome is that more money will be spent by teams looking to exploit the new rules to their advantage. How does either outcome make racing closer?

For me it's simple. MotoGP has a demand side problem. Unless Carmelo and his team step back and see the bigger picture and actually start selling the sport and driving growth in demand no amount of cost cutting rules will work.

There was a great post today on Kropotkin's blog earlier today looking at Google trend data on people looking for info on MotoGP online.

His post focused on the surprising factor that the origin of by far and away the most Internet searches is Indonesia. Whilst it's interesting to think about why this might be, another glaring stat for me was the trend in key countries like Spain or Italy. It's subject to interpretation whether it is actually in decline or not (I think yes, because the peaks are smaller) one thing seems sure - it's not growing significantly in these heartlands.

This brings me back to an argument in a previous post about "cricket for people that don't like cricket". It's an overall trend in sports marketing it seems to change the rules of the games to try and attract more fans. But the downside is often an alienation of the established loyal fan base - meaning that when the promiscuous fans brought in move on, the sport is damaged overall.

Common sense is needed regarding the rules. And common sense is needed regarding the overall MotoGP structure, management and strategy.

Dorna's eye is looking up the wrong end of the telescope.