MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

MotoGP returns to action at Silverstone this weekend, after five weeks off - longer than intended, due to the cancellation of the Kazakhstan round at the Sokol International Racetrack. It does so just as F1 takes its summer break, with no racing for the four-wheeled series throughout the month of August.

While the breaks are mutually beneficial - It is easy to avoid scheduling clashes in Europe for the two series with such a time away - it brings into stark contrast the relative power of the two series. Both F1 and MotoGP have a very heavy Spanish and Italian presence, with France also a major player in F1.

But anyone who has holidayed in those three countries knows that August is the month where the entire nation takes a vacation. Businesses shut down and everyone heads to either the beach or the mountains, depending on just how keen they are to escape the heat.

So if a race series is to have a summer break, August would be the month to have it. Though race teams and racing departments never really have time off, having time away from racing when family and friends are also free makes it a lot easier to organize social and family life.

Here's where I return to the contrast between the two series. It is plain that F1 comes out on top here, with MotoGP forced into a subordinate role. While the engineers at Ferrari have some time with their families, staff at Ducati Corse and Aprilia Racing are stuck in the office, parsing the data from Silverstone and Spielberg, and slaving through the weekend to try to find another few hundredths.

We are two races into the 2023 MotoGP season. Two races which took place under unusual circumstances – the season opener at Portimão was at a track where MotoGP had spent two days testing just a couple of weeks previously, and Argentina is a unique track where they raced in wet weather. So obviously, with the news that Toprak Razgatlioglu is to test the Yamaha MotoGP bike on Monday and Tuesday, it's time for some wild speculation about who might swap seats and who might be dumped for 2024 and beyond.

But first, a caveat. Beyond the signed contracts, this is just speculation on my part. Most of it is what I would do, based around the options on the table right now. A tiny part of it is based on drawing conclusions from talking to various people over the past year or so. Whatever you do after reading this, do not sell your belongings to bet on the outcome. Keep your money firmly in your pocket. Having said that, here we go...

What we know:

There are a few things which are set in stone, or the second best thing, set down in contracts. Contracts always have escape clauses, of course, but those are used very rarely. It is seen as an admission of failure by rider, team, or sometimes both when an escape clause is invoked. Better to sit out the extra year and invest in attracting a better rider. Contracts which are announced as one-year deals are often actually so-called one-plus-one deals, where both sides expect the renewal to be a formality, though it isn't necessarily.

When playing the game of Who Goes Where, first you have to factor in who already has a contract for next season. Of the factory MotoGP seats, 11 are already spoken for in 2024, with Franco Morbidelli the lone rider whose deal ends this season. (Hence the speculation, of course).

In its 75th season, the premier class of grand prix motorcycle racing is to introduce something revolutionary. For the first time since Assen moved race day at the Dutch TT to Sunday, MotoGP is to race on a Saturday. 2023 sees the introduction of sprint races, half-distance races to be held at the end of the day on Saturday, in addition to the usual full-length races on Sunday.

If you want to know exactly how this will work, I would refer you to the piece I wrote on Monday, answering most of the questions I have seen on the MotoGP sprint races. But it is worth asking what Dorna hope to achieve by the introduction of sprint races.

The short answer, of course, is to add some excitement to the series, and better value for spectators at the circuits. "It's time to give MotoGP more exposure, not only on television but also to the fans," said FIM president Jorge Viegas at the presentation of the new schedule at the Red Bull Ring in 2022. "We need more fans, we need a better spectacle, and we are going to fill the schedule on Saturdays."

Empty grandstands

This had been brought into stark contrast last year at some tracks. Attendance at the Portimão round of MotoGP had been mediocre, and Jerez had a little sparse. Mugello was almost deserted, a track where previously the hillsides had been packed. By contrast, Le Mans was sold out, and Assen was not far off being full. The German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring was heaving with fans, back to pre-pandemic levels.

Last week, the debate over the role of rider weight was reignited by a post on Instagram by BMW WorldSBK rider Scott Redding, comparing his own weight to that of Aruba.it Ducati's Alvaro Bautista, and asking whether there needs to be a minimum combined rider/bike weight in WorldSBK. To back up his claim, he posted some video clips and sector analysis from the San Juan Villicum circuit in Argentina. "I just think it should be as fair as possible for all of the riders," Redding wrote.

Though the sentiment is admirable, the thing about motorcycle racing is it is fundamentally unfair. Somebody else's bike will always be better than yours. Some other rider will be lighter, stronger, have it easier than you in one way or another. That is of little comfort to those racing in a particular class at a specific event, but it remains true nonetheless.

The way this has traditionally been dealt with is through what is usually called "the package". The combination of bike, team, and rider is different for each competitor, and rule makers have attempted to create space in each class to allow riders and teams to find multiple ways to be competitive.

Horses for courses

That does mean that each class requires a different set of specifications, depending on the philosophical starting point for that class. There are combined weight rules in Moto3 (152kg), Moto2 (217kg), and World Supersport (between 239kg and 244kg, depending on the bike). The reason for having a minimum combined weight in those classes comes down to a single, simple factor: in one way or another, the bikes in those classes are restricted from producing enough power to overcome the difference in combined weight.

It was a day we had been looking forward to for a long time: March 14th was the day that MotoGP Unlimited was to be launched on Amazon Prime. The series was due to be available in 170 different territories around the world.

As midnight passed in Europe, social media lit up with responses to the series. And unfortunately, those responses were very far from positive. Not because of the content of the documentary series, but because of the editorial decisions apparently made by Amazon Prime. In the UK and US, the only version available was the dubbed version, where actors have voiced over everyone speaking in their own language. In Australia, India, and some Southeast Asian countries, MotoGP Unlimited was not available at all.

The problems reported seem to be a result of decisions taken by Amazon, rather than either Dorna or The MEDIAPRO Studio, the producers of the show. But the process by which these decisions were made is very hard to fathom.

MotoGP Limited

In most territories, particularly in most European countries, the series is offered with a range of choices. In my own case (based in The Netherlands, and with an Amazon account with an address here), I have a choice of the original audio – where each of the participants speaks their own language, with English subtitles – or a number of different dubbed languages: English with audio description (where all speakers are dubbed in English and the action is described, for the visually impaired), Spanish, Italian, French, and German. In addition, there are multiple options for subtitles.

However, for anyone based in the UK or the US, those options do not appear, according to reports from people in those countries. There, the only option is the English dubbed version, and the choice of subtitles.

There has been a lot of death this year in motorcycle racing. At Mugello, Jason Dupasquier crashed and was hit by another rider during qualifying for the Moto3 race, and died in the early hours of the following morning. At Aragon, during the European Talent Cup race held at a round of the FIM CEV championship, Hugo Millán crashed during the race and was hit by another bike, dying as a result of his injuries. And yesterday, during the WorldSSP300 race at Jerez, Dean Berta Viñales crashed at Turn 2 and was hit by another rider, dying in hospital a few hours later. Dupasquier was 19, Millán was 14, Viñales 15.

The deaths – three teenagers in the space of less than four months – led to a great deal of introspection in the racing world, and concerns over what should be done to prevent this from happening again. A lot of people had a lot of ideas, but the thing that strikes me about these deaths is that, as good as some ideas might be, there are no easy answers.

Motorcycle racing is dangerous. This is a truism, but it is not often we get a reminder of just how dangerous it is. Sometimes, reality likes to rub our noses in it.

The one thing that all three fatalities have in common is that the riders who crashed were hit by bikes that were following them. Though an enormous amount of work has been done to make circuits safer, this is the one type of accident for which there are no simple solutions. A motorcycle traveling at speed contains an enormous amount of energy, more than a human body can absorb and survive.

This is true even at relatively low speeds. Dean Berta Viñales crashed on the exit of Turn 2 at Jerez, one of the slowest corners on the circuit. According to data from Brembo published before the weekend, WorldSBK riders brake to 65 km/h for Turn 2, meaning that Berta was hit by another bike probably traveling at less than 80 km/h.

Why don’t Kawasaki race in MotoGP? It’s a question asked almost as frequently as why doesn’t Jonathan Rea switch to MotoGP? The simple answer is money. For a fraction of the money Kawasaki spent to finish at the back of a MotoGP field they’ve been able to dominate the Superbike World Championship for the best part of ten years.

Six titles in a row and 123 victories since 2011 versus five podiums in six years. The cost of investment in their Superbike project is a fraction of what they spent in MotoGP but their results are enough for them to sell the ZX10-RR as the all conquering Superbike on the planet. It’s a marketing dream compared to the nightmare of trying to sell being a MotoGP backmarker.

Since Rea signed for Kawasaki in 2015 he has won 81 races and six titles as a Kawasaki rider. Aprilia started their MotoGP programme the same year. Who’s had better value for money? There’s only one winner in that discussion.

Teamwork makes the dream work

For a generation Kawasaki has found a partner team. At one point Paul Bird’s squad ran the Kawasaki programme in WorldSBK, with limited success, but since 2012 it has been the Provec Racing operation run by Guim Roda, and the results speak for themselves. First Tom Sykes and presently Rea have dominated to such a degree that the role of Provec is undervalued.

Any fool could see that Marc Márquez coming back to race at the second race in Jerez, after breaking his arm in the first race, was a bad idea. The fact that he has had to have a second operation to replace the plate in his arm merely confirms this.

But MotoGP racers are no ordinary fools, of course. Like all elite athletes, they are driven to extraordinary lengths to compete, taking extraordinary risks, pushing their bodies and minds to the limits of their abilities, and all too often, beyond. They do not consider whether something might be a bad idea or not.

For a MotoGP rider, the short term is the next practice session, the medium term is the race on Sunday, the long term is the championship standing at the end of the season. Anything beyond that is not relevant to the job at hand, which is to try to win races and titles.

That blinkered focus means that they are, as a rule, incapable of taking sensible decisions about their health, in either the short or the long term. But it is precisely that same blinkered focus which has brought them to where they are, racing at the very highest levels of the world championship. The ability to exclude anything that doesn't directly involve racing from their minds and devote all of their mental and physical energy to racing is what makes them so successful.

The decisions of MotoGP racers are foolish in the long term, but when viewed from the warped perspective of an elite athlete, they have an internal logic and consistency which makes sense to them. As I said, MotoGP racers are no ordinary fools...

Humans have a deep-seated need for certainty. Though the human experience runs the full gamut from an excess of spontaneity to rigid and unbending routine, a need for some kind of certainty, some handholds to grasp on to as we make our way through the world. Motorcycle racing fans, as humans, are no different.

So it is unsurprising that people – fans, journalists, team managers, mechanics, etc – have responded to every piece of news about the COVID-19 outbreak by making more or less bold predictions about when racing might resume. The latest news – that Germany has extended its ban on large-scale events until August 31st, meaning that the MotoGP round at the Sachsenring set for June 21st, and the WorldSBK round at Oschersleben, due to take place on the weekend of August 2nd will both have to be either rescheduled or canceled – has been no different. Everyone seems keen to make bold predictions of exactly what will happen next.

If there is a lesson to be taken from all of this, from the outbreak of the novel coronavirus and all of the repercussions, surprising and unsurprising, it has had around the world, it is that bold predictions rarely last beyond a few hours. The pandemic has exposed the massive complexity of the modern world, and how tightly all of it is intertwined. Decisions and events have huge and unsuspected knock-on effects which echo around the world.

When we will be able to go racing? That's the question everybody wants an answer to, as MotoGP and WorldSBK rounds are canceled seemingly every week. The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has cast a pall over the world that not even motorcycle racing can escape. This week, MotoGP was canceled at Mugello and Barcelona. Last week, it was MotoGP at Le Mans, the week before that, Jerez MotoGP and Assen WorldSBK. Each race is canceled as it heaves into view on the calendar.

So when will we be able to go racing again? I don't know. You don't know. The truth is, nobody knows, not even Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta or FIM president Jorge Viegas. Because it is out of their hands. Organizing a world championship motorcycle race is complicated, and requires large numbers of people and equipment to cross multiple national borders using various modes of transport.

Freedom of movement

A couple of examples: For the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team to get to the first MotoGP race which has not been canceled, at the Sachsenring in Germany, they need to drive trucks from Gerno di Lesmo, near Milan in Italy, through either Switzerland or Austria and up through Germany to Hohenstein-Ernstthal, where the Sachsenring is.

There is a mixture of nationalities among the drivers of those trucks, making just getting to the trucks a complicated affair. One driver, for example, is a Dutchman living in Norway. His journey would involve flying from central Norway to Milan, then driving up from Milan to the Sachsenring. On his return to Norway, he would face a 14-day quarantine before being allowed to go home.