"On Line" - The MotoGP Blog

Resurrection

Throughout the first three races of the 2008 MotoGP season, all the talk has been of the newcomers to the class. And rightly so, as Jorge Lorenzo, Andrea Dovizioso, James Toseland and Alex de Angelis have all made an impact on MotoGP, to a greater or lesser extent. Lorenzo taking three poles in his first three races, and his first win at just the third attempt; Dovizioso punching way above the weight of his underpowered satellite Honda RC212V; Toseland proving that World Superbikes is still a viable entry route into MotoGP by finishing in the top 7 in the first three races of the year; even de Angelis has impressed the public, by pushing his Honda right to the limit, and rather too often, well over it, and into the gravel.

As exciting as this development has been for the fans, it has meant that the attention the established names in MotoGP are getting is a good deal less than they are either accustomed to or care for, and what attention they do get has been of entirely the wrong kind. Nothing flatters the ego more than to be asked your opinion by journalists, but nothing deflates it more than to be asked your opinion of why other riders are doing better than you by those same pressmen. For MotoGP stars used to being the main attraction, this is a bitter pill to swallow.

The trouble is, those same stars have no one to blame but themselves. Valentino Rossi forced a switch from Michelin to Bridgestone tires at the end of 2007, and since then, has struggled to learn his way round the new tires. After being dumped unceremoniously from his ride at Ducati, Loris Capirossi swore revenge aboard the Rizla Suzuki, but finds himself finishing in much the same position as he did on the Ducati GP7. Far from challenging the world champion on equal machinery, Marco Melandri, the man who replaced Capirex at Ducati, has been almost entirely faceless. And only relative newcomer Dani Pedrosa seems able to make the Honda competitive.

Move On

MotoGP’s Old Guard is suddenly looking very jaded indeed. There is talk of a wholesale shakeup, with suggestions that Valentino Rossi may be past his prime, that Honda has lost its way, that riders like Toni Elias and John Hopkins, who have shown such promise in the past, are only as good as their results, and no more. And there are widespread rumors that Marco Melandri could be heading for an early split with Ducati, perhaps even to retire.

Such talk eventually begins to grate on MotoGP veterans, and as practice progressed for the Shanghai round of MotoGP, they showed signs of reasserting their authority. The names at the top of the timesheets during practice had a much more familiar ring, and the revenge of the veterans was made complete when the old stalwart Colin Edwards put in a scorching lap in the dying seconds of qualifying to take pole, shattering Valentino Rossi’s previous pole record by 3/10ths of a second. Less prominent, but just as remarkable, was the return to form of Marco Melandri and Toni Elias. No longer loitering at the very bottom of the timesheets, the two Ducati men had suddenly made a huge step forward, and moved much further up the field.

The Old Guard’s resurgence was not all of their own making. On Friday, Jorge Lorenzo had suffered probably the biggest highside seen at a racetrack since the demise of the 500cc two strokes, chipping a bone in his ankle and fracturing bones in both feet. It was a testament to Lorenzo’s courage that he rode at all on Saturday, but the measure of Lorenzo was managing to grab 4th on the grid, despite nearly falling in another spectacular incident, his Yamaha M1 bucking and weaving wildly, throwing the Spaniard up into the air before the bike regained its composure. The way he slammed down onto the tank brought tears to the eye of every man in the paddock, and quite a few of the women too.

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Beauty And The Beast

The Shanghai International Circuit is a strange place. It is, to paraphrase Dickens, the best of tracks and the worst of tracks. For like so much of the building going on due to China’s rise as a global superpower, the facilities are quite simply remarkable. The pit garages are spacious and clean, the paddock buildings are beautifully laid out, complete with garden and water village, and the press room looks like it could be used by NASA to monitor space shuttle flights. The trackside facilities truly are second to none.

Before they can enter this oasis of luxury, however, they must first wrestle through the Great Wall of red tape required to ensure that their bikes and supporting equipment actually get into the country and to the racetrack on time. The problem is worse this year, with the Chinese authorities tightening up security for the Olympics, especially after the Olympic torch relay turned into a mass protest against China’s active role in Tibet and her passive role in Darfur in Sudan. Beijing’s fear of protests inside the country has turned what used to be a bureaucratic headache into a complete nightmare.

Once through China’s Kafkaesque customs procedures, things don’t improve much. The layout of the track is absolutely dire: Two vast straights, 1.2 kilometers and 1 kilometer in length, with a few squiggles to join the straights together, all meant to resemble  the Chinese character “Shang“, meaning “High” or “Above”, which forms part of Shanghai’s name. The problem is that the simple strokes of the Shang character, resembling an upside-down capital T with a short stroke to the right halfway up the stem of the T, plus small serif-like embellishments on the top and the right of the character, do not translate at all easily to the requirements of a racetrack, which is to all intents and purposes a circle which has been deformed in any number of interesting ways.

Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad

Added to the uncooperative nature of its basic shape was the fact that the track was designed to host Formula 1 in China. The requirements of Formula 1 and motorcycle racing are mostly diametrically opposed: Formula 1 cars require wide tracks with long straights for passing at speed, with sharp turns at the end to allow cars to outbrake each other. Motorcycles, on the other hand, are much narrow and more agile, and as a result it’s possible to pass through the middle of corners, as well as along the straights or in the braking zone. The best motorcycle tracks, such as Assen and Mugello, feature combinations of bends with several lines through them, giving riders a choice of places to attack, and to make their pass, while simultaneously opening themselves up to counterattack once they’ve made their move. Shanghai is not one of those tracks.

And yet there are places which offer some entertainment. At the end of the start and finish straight, Turns 1 and 2 are basically a single right hander closing up through almost 270 degrees. Turn 3 follows, a left-hand hairpin, offering a chance to dive up the inside if you can hold the wider line out of Turn 2. The left-right combination of Turns 7 and 8 also flows more naturally, leading on to the double left of Turns 9 and 10, the first real chance to attack. But if you get past here, you can often find yourself getting off the corner more slowly for the short drag up to Turn 11, and will see the rider you just passed coming back past you as you brake for the tight left of Turn 11, before the long right hander of Turns 12 and 13. This is perhaps the best corner on the circuit, with the track wide enough to offer a number of lines onto the back straight.

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Grudge Match

The winner’s circle, or parc fermé as it’s known to MotoGP insiders, is a place as mysterious as it is magical. At the end of a long hard race, after they’ve just given their all for the past 45 minutes, the first three riders to cross the finish line are escorted to a separate roped-off section of pit lane. Here, they park their bikes in a specially preordained order, receive the congratulations and plaudits of their teams, give interviews to various TV companies, and wait to make their way to the podium. Parc fermé is the one place which every motorcycle racer hopes to be as he sits on the grid waiting for the flag to drop.

But if a MotoGP rider is skilled enough to be finish in the top three, any romantic notions they may have had about the atmosphere in parc fermé are quickly dispelled. For the fact is that the winners’ circle is a much more complicated place than it seems at first glance.  After all, the lucky souls who roll their bikes in there have just spent the previous 70-odd miles doing everything within their power to defeat the other occupants of that hallowed piece of tarmac as thoroughly as possible. And to achieve that goal, they may have engaged in some forceful and sometimes downright dangerous moves, applied intense psychological pressure, or attempted to scare the others into making a lapse of concentration.

And as if this wasn’t bad enough, the riders who make it into parc fermé are usually the same riders who are chasing the title, which means that not only have they just spent this Sunday trying to beat each other into submission, but they probably did the same thing the last weekend, and the weekend before that. These men are often deadly rivals, engaged in a battle which for most of them is even more important than life and death.

So when a rider’s skill, luck and machinery finally collide to allow him to enter parc fermé for the first time, what greets him is a strange and vaguely sinister mixture of elation, frustration, hatred and despair. If you’re lucky enough to win, the overwhelming emotion is one of sheer joy, and there are few experiences greater than to share this joy with your team, who have worked just as hard as you have to get you there. But if you weren’t the first person across the line, then the feelings can be very much more mixed: joy at a good result, certainly, especially if you were able to put some points between yourself and a title rival. But also regret at a small mistake you may have made which allowed the people who beat you to get ahead or get away; anger, at yourself or at your team, for bike setup changes which didn’t work, or tires or parts which didn’t perform as expected; anger also at the riders who beat you, for harsh passes and dangerous moves, either real or imagined; resentment, too, at the winner, for having the temerity to beat you and take the trophy which you feel rightfully belongs to you, for all your hard work; and sometimes even a sense of awkwardness, as you are forced to share the space - and tiptoe around - riders who you may feel genuine hatred for, after incident upon incident has piled up between you, reinforcing your mutual dislike.

The Hate Zone

The previous two MotoGP races have been perfect illustrations of the point. At Qatar, there was Casey Stoner’s obvious joy at getting his title defense off to the best possible start, Dani Pedrosa’s pleasure at taking third, and Jorge Lorenzo’s joy at getting on the podium in his first MotoGP race. And at Jerez there was Dani Pedrosa’s delight at winning in front of an ecstatic home crowd, and Valentino Rossi’s pleasure at being able to compete for wins once again.

But both podiums also showed their darker side. Pedrosa may have been pleased to take 3rd in Qatar, but he was not at all happy to be sharing the podium with Lorenzo, a man he hates with a passion. And at Jerez, it was Lorenzo’s turn to show his displeasure, seemingly angry at finishing only 3rd in front of his home crowd. The situation was only highlighted by the King of Spain, present to hand out the trophies, forcing the two rivals to shake hands, a gesture which Pedrosa underwent as if having a tooth extracted.

So with Jorge Lorenzo on pole, after setting a truly stunning time during Saturday’s qualifying practice, with Dani Pedrosa beside him on the grid, and feared to be nigh on unstoppable if the tiny Spaniard managed to make a break from the start, there was every chance that the podium ceremony at Estoril could end up more resembling Classical Greek tragedy than a formality for distributing silverware. There had already been a dress rehearsal during the low-calorie version of parc fermé put on after qualifying, with Lorenzo and Pedrosa, numbers 1 and 2 on the grid, studiously ignoring each other, while Valentino Rossi, the last man on the front row, looked on in bemusement. If the two Spaniards managed to end up on the podium together, then the atmosphere in parc fermé after the race would be anything but pleasant.

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The Western Shore

After the bizarre, ghostly night race at Qatar and the seething cauldron at Jerez, MotoGP returns to some semblance of normality when it visits Estoril for the Portuguese Grand Prix. At Qatar, the night race entered completely unknown territory, the combination of falling temperatures and rising humidity making getting setup right a gamble at best. Then came Jerez, a track which places particular demands on the bikes and on setup. It also strongly favors Michelin, as it is one of the French tire company’s nominated test tracks. And so to go to Estoril, a track with both a long, high-speed straight and a slow, intricate turns, and a track where nobody has done any testing for many months raises hopes of seeing a more normal result. More normal, and more representative of the relative strengths of the riders and teams.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. For although Estoril should be a much more level playing field than either Qatar or Jerez were, the Portuguese track has plenty of quirks of its own. First and foremost of these is the weather. The Circuito do Estoril sits just a stone’s throw away from the Atlantic Ocean, albeit a very powerful throw of a small and aerodynamic stone. Once over the row of low hills which separate the track from the sea, there’s nothing between yourself and Connecticut for thousands of miles.

As picturesque as ocean vistas can, they also have a flip side. For the energy which generates those majestic waves crashing upon the shore can also raise mighty towers of clouds and great gusting winds, which can then proceed to soak and batter the racetrack and riders, turning prior expectations on their head. All too often, the elements have had a decisive effect on racing at Estoril, the region’s capricious weather catching many a racer out. The most recent victim was Sete Gibernau, who crashed out of the lead in 2005 when he was the first of the field to hit the freshly-soaked Turn 1 just after it started to rain.

Whatever The Weather

But it is unfair to characterize Estoril solely in terms of its unpredictable weather conditions. For the circuit, which lies just west of the Portuguese capital Lisbon, is blessed with a layout which has provided us with some spectacular racing in the past. It starts with the front straight, one of the fastest of the season, which leads you down to the first possible spot for passing, the sharp right of Turn 1. If your best efforts at braking harder and later into the turn than your rivals fail to get you ahead, or if, like Toni Elias in 2006, you found that you were so late on the brakes that you threatened to launch into the Atlantic, then all is not yet lost. Simply bide your time through Turn 2, and try your luck through the hairpin loops of Turn 3 or Turn 4, both of which allow you to attack through a multitude of lines.

Of course, if you get through at Turn 3, the danger is that you surrender the better line for Turn 4, allowing your rival back past again, and on to the short back straight with the fast right-hand kink. At the end, your next opportunity beckons, the double-apex left loop of Turn 6, now christened Repsol Corner after the infamous incident in 2006, in which Dani Pedrosa’s momentary lapse of reason almost left Nicky Hayden’s championship foundering in the gravel.

Failure at Turn 6 is not yet fatal. For if you can stay close through the next couple of right handers, then the combination of Turns 9 and 10 offers you your best chance yet. The slow, uphill chicane is one of the best corners in racing, offering a brave and physical rider an opportunity to put an old-fashioned beating on his rivals, getting by with a classic block pass, then slamming the door brutally in their faces. If you have the nerve, you can win the race right here.

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Pride Of A Nation

Dorna, the organization which holds the TV rights for MotoGP and is charged with marketing the series, likes to tell people that MotoGP is truly a global sport. And for the most part, this is only a mild exaggeration. MotoGP rounds are held on four of the world’s five inhabited continents, and the series is broadcast in over two hundred different countries. It is fair to say that MotoGP has a worldwide reach.

But just having a global reach is not the same as being a global sport. The series certainly has fans all around the world, but there are only a two countries where MotoGP really matters. While coverage in other places around the world varies from a quick highlights reel in the middle of the night to live coverage of the race on national TV, in Spain and Italy, MotoGP is a central part of sporting culture. Spanish and Italian TV don’t just show the races live, they also have extensive pre-race and post-race shows, as well as weekly talk shows dedicated to the sport, not to mention the yards and yards of coverage that MotoGP receives in the national press.

And with such intense coverage comes intense pressure. Italian and Spanish riders are expected to be competitive, to win races and win championships. When they don’t win, there’s trouble, as the last two years, with two English-speaking champions and a slew of English-speaking winners have demonstrated. That isn’t what Spanish and Italian TV viewers pay their cable fees to watch.

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The Waiting Is Over

The Qatar round of MotoGP always makes me think of my grandfather. During the first few months of the Second World War, he was sent to Belgium to fight the Germans. Luckily for him, the Germans were otherwise engaged, steamrollering across Poland and subduing Denmark and Norway, leaving my grandfather to trundle around the Low Countries on the back of a truck, wondering if this was what war was supposed to be like.

His question was soon to be answered: In May 1940, the Germans unleashed the Blitzkrieg, and advanced across The Netherlands, Belgium and France in the space of a few days, pushing the Allied forces, with my grandfather among them, onto the beach at Dunkirk to await their turn to be whisked to safety by the ragtag flotilla that evacuated the beach during those difficult days. The Phoney War was over; for my grandfather, the war had started for real.

While it is preposterous to regard motorcycle racing - even MotoGP - as even remotely serious global warfare, I still find myself thinking of my grandfather in the period between Qatar and Jerez. At Qatar, battle commenced officially for the MotoGP riders, with the first on-track skirmishes for points taking place. But with the race held in the dead of night, in the computer-game atmosphere of the artificial lighting, under the gaze of just a handful of people, it feels far too surreal to take seriously.

That Way Madness Lies

If Qatar is the Phoney War, Jerez is the Blitzkrieg of Fall Gelb. The deserted stands and silent night of the season opener makes way for the cacophony and chaos of the world’s wildest motorcycling weekend. The Jerez round of MotoGP is louder, more dangerous, and probably involves more gunpowder and smoke than the entire German push through France and Belgium ever produced. At night, the streets of the medieval city are filled with scenes of sheer madness: helmetless and often drunk bikers attempt to wheely the length of the main thoroughfares, or if they are less inclined to monowheel action, will bounce their sportsbikes off the rev limiter, sometimes filling the skies with the acrid smoke of burning rubber, sometimes happy just to deafen onlookers with the sound of bouncing valves, and lighting up the surrounding faces with the warm glow of hot exhaust pipes. Hundreds of thousands of motorcycling fans invade the streets of the town and the surrounding area in an orgy of booze, bikes and burnouts. It is two-wheeled shock and awe at its most extreme.

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Plus Ça Change

The march of the seasons may well be Mother Nature’s way of bringing balance to our hurried and stressful modern lives, but to motorcycle racing fans, it is a maddening annoyance. The onset of wet and windy fall, and the long, dark night of winter, calls an aggravating and nigh-on interminable halt to racing for month upon month.

As recompense for such cruel and unnatural punishment, we are given preseason testing. Riders and teams rack up enough frequent flyer miles to qualify for the next Apollo mission as they jet around the warmer parts of the world in their relentless quest for more speed, better bikes and the upper hand once racing resumes. This generates a flurry of news stories, lap times and above all, speculation about the relative pecking order on the MotoGP grid. But, like diet foods and low alcohol beer, it is a very poor substitute for the real thing.

Thankfully, one day in March, all that empty talk and hot air comes to an end, and we finally get back to the thing we all love so much: the best riders in the world harrying the world’s most sophisticated racing motorcycles around a racetrack. In 2007, that hot air of speculation dissolved in the hot, desert air of Losail, the desolate Qatari track kicking off what was to be a remarkable season. For 2008, in an attempt to avoid the scorching Arabian sun, the race was switched to run at night, under a technological marvel of modern lighting.

Lights! Camera! Action!

This single change had a bigger change on the event than many had expected. While testing had shown Michelin had narrowed much of the gap between themselves and Bridgestone during the winter, the difference in test times more down to machinery and talent rather than tire make, the strange night time conditions in the desert threw all that up in the air. In the early evening, when track and air temperatures were warmer, the Bridgestones held their ground, evenly matched with the Michelins, which had been built especially for the race using data collected at the tests the previous week. But in the late night sessions, run at the same time the race was due to be held, it was Michelin which ruled the roost, adapting far better to the cold night temperatures than the Bridgestones.

The exception to the rule was of course Casey Stoner. Apparently still in possession of the get-out-of-the-laws-of-physics-free card he had picked up last year, the young Australian world champion continued his relentless domination of the timesheets, all the way into qualifying. Were we on the way to yet another whitewash by Mr Perfect? Judging from the timesheets, that possibility was very much on the cards.

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MotoGP Qatar Preview - Star Of The Desert

At last. The long winter break is over, and a new day dawns on MotoGP with the season opener at the Losail circuit in Qatar. Although it’s not so much a new day as a new night, as MotoGP, in its continuing  struggle to win fans over from other forms of motorsport, has scooped Formula 1 to stage the very first night race in motorsports. The fact that racing has been running under the lights for years in the US is being conveniently overlooked, as most Europeans remain blissfully unaware of NASCAR and other forms of stock car racing, and so to Dorna, it’s the very first night race.

As pleasing as outwitting Bernie Ecclestone must have been to Dorna’s wily CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta, beating Formula 1 into the history books was not the main motivation behind the move to run under the lights. For the Qatar circuit is a bit of a paradox: on the one hand, it is perfectly situated for motorcycle racing, out in the wilds and far away from any neighbors who may be inclined to complain; but on the other hand, being stuck in the desert, and in one of the hottest and driest regions on the planet, with nary a hint of cloud cover to check the power of the sun, the sand and soaring track temperatures conspire to ravage tires and wreck grip, making tire selection almost impossible, and baking overworked engines. The lack of neighbors may be great, but the destroyed tires, overheating motors and slippery surface are the very opposite.

Dorna’s answer to Qatar’s conundrum is to run the race at night. With the heat of the sun gone and the offshore breeze dying back as the land cools, conditions should be much more suited for racing. That’s the theory. And as with all theory, there’s plenty of practical problems to complicate what would otherwise be a simple and elegant idea, some of which were foreseen, and some of which weren’t; some of which can and have been solved, some of which haven’t.

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Won’t Get Fooled Again

As the final few days count down before the first MotoGP race of 2008, and the tension and excitement starts to swell inside the breast of motorcycle racing fans, it’s hard not to get carried away at the prospect of a brand new season. And there is much to get excited about: the entry of some of the most exciting young rookies into motorcycle racing’s premier class; the first title defense for another new champion; and a slew of riders and, more importantly, manufacturers out to avenge themselves for last year.

But with that thrill of excitement comes the painful memories of that very same feeling of excitement from last year, and the way it was so brutally crushed by the total dominance of one man and one machine in 2007. It started well, at the nail-biting opener at Qatar, with Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa harrying Casey Stoner all the way to the finish. But that same race highlighted the relative weaknesses which would emerge to squeeze the excitement out of the championship in just a few short races: while Rossi was fast through turns, once the bikes hit the front straight, the Yamaha was just plain embarrassed down the drag to the first turn, both the Ducati and the Honda being considerably faster than Rossi’s nimble M1. The Honda, though managing a reasonable turn of speed, was absolutely no match for the Ducati, and what’s worse, Honda’s overeager pursuit of agility had pushed the engine up too high, putting too much weight over the front wheel under braking, leaving all of the Honda riders to complain about a lack of front end feel and stability on the brakes. The Ducati, on the other hand, was nimble enough to stay with the others round the twists and turns of the rear of the circuit, while destroying all-comers on drag race to the finish line.

Or rather, one Ducati was capable of staying with the others, as the other Ducatis were stuck firmly mid-pack, floundering with the rest of the clearly underdeveloped 800 cc contenders. Add to this the introduction of a tire quota, which Michelin got humiliatingly wrong for much of the season, and a reduction in fuel limits, leaving engineers guessing just how much gas they could use over the course of a race, and the interest had been slowly drained from the series by the time the summer break ended.

So along with the excitement at the imminent arrival of the 2008 season, there’s also some trepidation. With Casey Stoner still so fast, are we in for another year of disappointment, of processional races where the only unknown is in what order the usual suspects will fill places 5 through 10?

On the evidence of the 2008 preseason, these fears, if not entirely unjustified, are at least a little inflated. For this winter’s testing has thrown up some remarkable results, some interesting news, and a host of fresh faces to spice up the year’s racing. The 2008 MotoGP season is a very long way from being a foregone conclusion. Read on »

Grand Prix Zero: The unofficial jocular name for the official IRTA tests at Jerez. The joke, after the idiosyncratic tendency of computer programmers to start counting at zero instead of one, is that the only “official” preseason test has grown so much in popularity, importance, and status that it has become a de facto Grand Prix, albeit a rather strange one. For the meeting has a qualifying practice, but not a race; its highlight is on a Sunday, but it finishes on Monday; it has a paying audience, television coverage, even a prize, in the form of an expensive BMW sports car, but the 40 minutes of action which the weekend centers around is arguably the least important part of the entire event, where bikes which are still in the midst of development are pitted against each other as if in a race.

If truth be told, the 40 minute shootout for the BMW Z4 is an irrelevance: It bears no relation to the racing, and tells us nothing about where the teams stand or what the season will bring. At last year’s event, Valentino Rossi drove the BMW away, snatching the bike from the grasp of Dani Pedrosa and Colin Edwards, with the then reigning world champion Nicky Hayden in 4th, and Kawasaki’s Randy de Puniet coming home in 5th place. Casey Stoner, the man who went on to dominate the year and win 10 of the 18 races, only managed to set the 6th fastest time during the official qualifying practice, nearly half a second off Rossi’s vehicle-winning pace. As a clue to how the season was to pan out, the 2007 IRTA test was next to useless.

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