Mat Oxley's blog

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

It’s not often these days that one is moved to thank those in charge, but MotoGP’s Race Direction need a big thank you for their unanimous decision not to sanction Marc Márquez for his last-corner move on Jorge Lorenzo at Jerez.

If they had dragged him into their office and punished him, I think I might have given up on motorcycle racing and got into something different. I note that the BBC’s MotoGP show was preceded by a gardening programme. If tough overtaking manoeuvres are to be banned in MotoGP then gardening might make a pleasant alternative for Sunday afternoon entertainment.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

It is a quarter of a century (ouch) since I visited my first United States Grand Prix in April 1988. That Laguna Seca event was historic because it was the first US GP since the 1965 races at Daytona. It was also historical because pit lane was nothing more than a row of flimsy tents, fluttering in the Monterey breeze, the timing sheets were cutely handwritten and the catering consisted of some nicely baked cakes, courtesy of a local women’s institute.

Behind the tents was a row of shipping containers, providing secure storage for team equipment. I seem to remember interviewing renowned tuner Erv Kanemoto while we were stood in the stifling heat in one of the containers. He may even have had a computer with him. Holy moly, a computer in the pitlane…

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

Qatar is a dry state so there’s no fun to be had with booze on the podium, but I bet the Yamaha crew more than made up for that when they got back to their hotel on Sunday night. Doha’s international hotels are the only places you can imbibe alcohol in the country, so their terrifyingly expensive bars are an unlikely mix of ex-pat financiers and oil/gas engineers and a few naughty locals. Throw in a rowdy bunch of racers and mechanics and you’ve a pretty weird scene.

I’ll also bet that Valentino Rossi stayed up longer than Jorge Lorenzo, if he could persuade the barman to keep popping the champagne corks. Rossi may be hurtling towards middle age but he still has his old rock and roll attitude, he’s never subscribed to Lorenzo’s beliefs in Spartan self-denial or quasi-Buddhism.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

When someone once congratulated Eddie Lawson for being fastest in practice, the four-time 500 World Champion shrugged his shoulders and said “you don’t get points for practice”. He was right, of course, and it’s the same with testing: no points, no prize money, no nothing, save for a faint feeling of satisfaction.

Certainly, Cal Crutchlow must have left Jerez on Monday evening wearing a faint glimmer of a smile on his face after topping the final pre-season tests.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

In October 2011, just a few days before the end of the MotoGP season, I visited Giacomo Agostini at his home in Bergamo, Italy. Lunch was served (by the family butler and chef) and I asked him the question that had prompted the trip. Since the 1970s Ago has held the record for the number of motorcycle Grand Prix victories – a total of 122 wins across the 500 and 350 classes – and that record had never looked in danger until Valentino Rossi reached his century in 2009. But by the end of 2011 – Rossi’s disastrous first season with Ducati – It seemed once again that Ago’s record was safe.

How did he feel about that? Elated, surely?

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

Sunday’s opening superbike round at Phillip Island was interesting in all kinds of ways, but what struck me was where the riders doing the winning had come from.

They certainly weren’t men steeped in the ways of four-stroke production racing from their earliest days. Factory Aprilia riders Eugene Laverty and Sylvain Guintoli – who won a race each on Sunday – did their World Championship apprenticeships on struggle-street in 250 GPs, battling against the odds on ancient machinery.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

The question is: are CRT bikes too slow? It depends on your viewpoint. If you are Jorge Lorenzo, under pressure from Dani Pedrosa as you come upon a backmarker at a crucial corner, then, yes, they probably are too slow. But if you are able to stand back and look at CRT bikes from a historical perspective then, no, they are not too slow.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

I’ve just been writing about King Kenny Roberts for an upcoming edition of Motor Sport magazine – the made-from-trees version – regaling readers with some of his top tales.

Roberts is a great storyteller: dry as dust one moment, cursing the next. There’s only one problem: there’s never enough room for all of his stories, so here are a couple of my favourite one-liners from the man.

Before I go any further I should add that that The King rates as one of my top three road racers of all time. I would also put Mike Hailwood in there and probably Valentino Rossi too, though what to do with Mick Doohan and Wayne Rainey? Okay, let’s make it the top five. I’ll let you argue about who’s first and who’s fifth.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

You can imagine the gasps of disbelief when Ducati unveiled its GP13 atop a mountain in the Dolomites last night: the bike is pretty much a GP12 with a new paintjob. How can that be? Surely the Ducati needs a total redesign more than any other motorcycle on the MotoGP grid?

That is indeed true – at the end of 2012 Ducati were no closer to the front than they had been at the start of 2011, when Valentino Rossi arrived to take over from Casey Stoner.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

The New Year is usually a time to look forward. But the past is an easier place to talk about than the future, so please forgive me for looking backward as I struggle into 2013, having rather overdone it on too many occasions during the past week or so.

This year it’s 20 years since one of the most thrilling, weird and anguished battles for the premier-class World Championship. The 1993 duel between Americans Kevin Schwantz and Wayne Rainey will never be forgotten, and not only for good reasons.

Schwantz versus Rainey will always be one of ‘bike racing’s all-time greatest rivalries – much more real and much nastier than anything we’ve had in MotoGP. The pair hated each other from the moment their career paths collided in US Superbikes in 1986.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

This is the time of year I usually indulge myself with a list of awards, handing out praise and criticism, perhaps bearing a grudge or two and exacting a little revenge here and there.

But this year I’m only going to hand out one award because I don’t think there’s ever been a more deserving winner of any award than this. It’s for the unluckiest rider of the year, and the winner is former factory Yamaha rider Ben Spies whose 2012 season was such a tale of unmitigated disaster that it was (ironically) round 13 before he even had an incident-free race. I’ve been working the GP trail for a quarter of a century and I’ve never known a rider suffer so badly, week in, week out.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

MotoGP winter testing began on Tuesday in very wintry conditions, which isn’t the idea of winter testing.

The weather was so grim at Valencia that Yamaha packed up and headed 150 miles north to Aragon, pursued by rent-a-cars full of journalists and photographers anxious for their first glimpse of Valentino Rossi and his new Yamaha getting down to it on slicks.

They needn’t have bothered – the weather wasn’t much better at Aragon – so Rossi and new/old team-mate Jorge Lorenzo learned nothing. In fact Lorenzo did learn something – that it’s very easy to crash in the wet, but then he knew that already. Yamaha should’ve gone south, to Jerez, or even north, to Brands Hatch, where the autumn sun shone beautifully.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

You’ve got to hand it to Jorge Lorenzo.

During 2012 he was the rock in a rough sea. This has been a stormy year of dizzying change in MotoGP: the arrival of CRT bikes, Casey Stoner retiring, Valentino Rossi changing jobs once again and finally the Bridgepoint bombshell. All year, only one thing stayed truly consistent: Lorenzo.

His results at the 16 races he finished on his way to the title were stunning – never outside the top two. First at Qatar, then second, second, first, first, first, second, first, second, second, second, first, second, second, second, second.

That kind of regularity is unique in the modern era and Lorenzo is certainly a unique racer. He has a very individual approach to the sport and he rides in a very special way.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

There’s barely going to be standing room on Phillip Island this weekend.

Advance ticket sales suggest that the crowd will be at least double last year’s and possibly even bigger than the event record, achieved at the very first Australian GP in 1989 when the nation was in the grip of Wayne Gardner fever.

Aussie fans will be turning out in force to say goodbye to Casey Stoner, their first premier-class champ to whom they’ve had the chance to say a proper farewell. Both Gardner and Mick Doohan made hurried exits from bike racing, due to injury. Gardner announced his retirement a few months after missing the 1992 Australian GP due to a broken leg suffered at Suzuka. Doohan announced his retirement not long after missing Phillip Island in 1999 due to injuries sustained at Jerez.

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

Bridgepoint’s announcement that MotoGP and World Superbike are to be run by the same company is the most significant happening in motorcycle racing since WSB’s launch a quarter of a century ago.

Dorna will now run both championships, which will allow them to arrange technical rules, race calendars and so on to the benefit of both. In theory, at least.

It is a huge deal from a commercial perspective that is likely to have a major impact on fans, for better or worse. I am hopeful, even though monopolies are not a good thing and even though I’m not keen on many changes that Dorna have made over the years.