Throughout the first season of Moto2, there was much smugness among the diehard curmudgeons who had bemoaned the loss of the two-stroke 250s at the fact that the 600cc four strokes were considerably slower than the old 250s were. The old guard treated the Moto2 machines with disdain, regarding them as little more than jumped-up sportsbikes, bearing little relation to true Grand Prix Machinery.
There was some merit in their argument: The 250cc two-cylinder two strokes were jewels of engineering, beautifully constructed, lightweight, powerful and precise as a surgeon's scalpel. The Moto2 bikes were bigger, bulkier, and in part thanks to the rudimentary electronics and slipper clutch, much more out of shape into and out of corners. If 250 races were like a fight to the death by olympic fencing champions, Moto2 races were like a barroom brawl after the bar had been drunk dry.
Some of that smugness will have to go now, though. On the last day of the Jerez Moto2 test, first Marc Marquez and then later Stefan Bradl smashed through the 1'43 barrier, with Bradl beating the former 250cc lap record set back in 2005 by Dani Pedrosa. Marquez fell a tenth of a second short of Pedrosa's 250 mark, but Bradl took nearly two tenths of a second off the former 250 champion's 2005 pole record. The Moto2 bikes have now officially caught up.
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