The right side of hurricanes does tend to develop more than the left-hand side. It's not always a factor of the forward motion contributing to higher wind speeds on the right hand side of the motion. Gulf storms take this to an extreme -- often times, most of the convection and heavy rains are found on the north and east sides of the storm. Ivan is not an exception.

The fine-mesh mesoscale models are relatively new entities and are still being developed and worked on as time progresses. They are used moreso for research purposes - such as modeling convection - than for track and intensity forecasting (though that may be where we are headed down the line).