I think it was '92, '93 or so that MotoGP got really dangerous. The sanctioning body tried to calm things down by limiting piston "diameter" as well as displacement, which caused Honda to machine oval pistons. Then they tried limiting fuel octane so Ducati or somebody ended up getting Elf/SNEA to brew "gasoline" that had no petroleum products in it so that while it octane tested at something mellow like 97 it was basically nitromethane. Meanwhile tire composition started getting really freaky such that the stuff had a static coefficient of "sideways" and a dynamic coefficient of "not nearly enough to keep you shiny side up when you break static" such that things would be fine in the turn and things would be fine in the turn and things would be fine in the turn and then you were in the grass with no warning whatsoever.

Suzuki or somebody came up with the idea of making the firing really shitty and uneven so that instead of distributing power evenly across the band you ended up with a four cylinder engine that ran like a penta with one piston dead. I wanna say instead of 90 degrees they were at like 54 degrees or something awful. The whole point was that you were above 10k most of the time anyway so it wouldn't slow you up much but as far as the tires were concerned, there was a "miss" enough that when you were leaning deep into a corner and you broke static, the engine was stopped for just barely long enough for the skid to catch the tire and return you to static. That dark black swipe of your tire playing Harold and the Goodyear Crayon across the track became a dashed line which gave the rider just enough bite to recover.

Frickin' motorsport has been in a weird-ass corner-case world for like what? 50 years now?