Why MotoGP doesn't need F1 style radio, despite Rossi's pleas

They are not currently part of the world championship, but should they be added, like in Formula 1 and four-wheeled categories to convey vital (or otherwise) information?

In wet-to-dry conditions like those at the Sachsenring, riders would surely be better informed by verbal interaction with their team, rather than one-way pit boards.

After all, Ducati and Yamaha mechanics held boards with the word BOX on them as far as their arms would let them, as Andrea Dovizioso and Valentino Rossi persisted with wet tyres and Marc Marquez slashed their lead on slicks, having stopped early.

By the time Dovizioso, Rossi, Cal Crutchlow all changed bikes six laps after Marquez the game was up, the Honda rider was on his way to victory.

Even if they did stop, there was no way to tell their team what tyres they wanted, between intermediates, slicks, or a half-and-half combination.

Marquez and Honda ruled out using intermediate tyres pre-race, and he won on the back of an early gamble for slicks, following an off-track excursion, but Honda was ready for the swap.

Crutchlow left pitlane with slicks on his LCR Honda, which helped him finish second ahead of Dovizioso, who had a front intermediate and rear slick and could be seen checking his tyres leaving pitlane.

"I don't think it's a great idea," Crutchlow said of radios, even though he struggled to see his pit board at the Sachsenring all weekend and committed to following the doomed Dovizioso and Rossi.

"I think we have enough information.

"We make a plan, these guys are professional enough to be able to make a plan as well, and the plan was if you come in, you discuss your tyre choice, you discuss what lap maybe come in."

Dovizioso, meanwhile, was banking on not pitting for a bike swap but was on the fence about radios.

"I think it can be easier to manage everything and can also be better for the safety," he said.

"But our sport is different to Formula 1 so I think it's better to keep like this.

"If we can speak during the race, the decision of strategy or everything is much better, but I think it is better to keep it like this in any case."

While Dovizioso finished third, Rossi lost out heavily, having been put on intermediates by Yamaha, and he finished eighth to leave Germany 59 points behind Marquez in the championship.

"It's not Formula 1, but now if we had the communication with the box it could be a lot more easy," he said.

"Sometimes with the board it's difficult.

"For example if you take Assen [where Rossi crashed out of the lead], if they said to me that I had already two seconds of advantage, just to slow down, I could avoid the mistake."

Radios have been tested in the past and surely from a logistical and cost perspective, adding them is very doable these days, if stakeholders decided to look at it.

But what would it add to the show? I'd argue nothing, in fact, it would be detrimental.

The uncertainty of the races at Assen and the Sachsenring were a massive part of what made them so memorable.

With pit radios, teams would have called their riders in as soon as Marquez made his bold move for slicks - where would the fun have been in that?

Marquez rolled the dice in a massive way and reaped the rewards, whereas riders at the front, in the heat of the battle, pushed on and lost out.

One of the rolling themes in F1 in recent years has been that engineers give the drivers too much information - Nico Rosberg admitted there was a perception that they were "puppets".

Even a move to restrict that has been controversial, with vast grey areas and penalties.

Obviously contemporary F1 cars are massively complex, but MotoGP leaves it all down to planning before the race and then the riders themselves while on track.

That organic element, that it is so much more man than machinery, is one of the best features of MotoGP. Why start muddying the waters?

And that's all before you get to the safety of a rider getting a radio message while thoroughly committed to a high-speed corner.

"I cannot imagine that there in the full banking, 100mph somebody speaking," Marquez, firmly in the 'no' camp, said.

"This is not cars. For me, there is no way."

Nothing is really broken in MotoGP at the moment - why try to fix problems that don't exist, and risk creating more?