Good Article about MotoGP (Long)

[CaptainCR]

I came across this article on another motorcycle messageboard. It's long, but worth the read if you're into MotoGP. :cheers:

NOYES: MotoGP Career Path: Can We Still Get There From Here?

The last of the Grand National dirt trackers to make it to the show...Nicky Hayden

There was a time when American Superbike riders and dirt trackers were as sought after in Grand Prix racing as Brazilian strikers are today in world soccer. Now, in spite of the fact that there are four Americans on the 19-rider MotoGP grid, new talent is being sourced in-house, right out of the 250 class. The road to MotoGP used to go through Daytona, Springfield and Peoria…now it goes through Barcelona, Jerez and other stops on the Spanish National 125cc Championship trail. At least that is the route that current MotoGP rookie sensations Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner have taken.

That route also worked for Fortuna Honda rider Toni Elias…and for another guy you might have heard of named Rossi. (Italian Valentino Rossi did a lot of learning dicing with Jorge Martínez “Aspar” in the Spanish 125 series.) The next big thing, following Pedrosa and Stoner, just may be Jorge Lorenzo, currently the fastest man in the 250 class. And after Lorenzo (and Dovizioso and de Angeles) there is another crop of 125 stars on the rise, led by Álvaro Bautista, Mika Kalio, Sergio Gadea, Mattia Pasini and Hector Faubel. None of these current 250 and 125 riders are household names in the United States, but they are fast-tracking their way toward MotoGP.

Not all of them will make it, but a quick glance at the current riders in GP racing’s premier class illustrates that this tendency is likely to continue for some time.
At the upcoming United States Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway four AMA classes will show their wares and, notionally at least, MotoGP team bosses will take a cursory glance over the running in the hopes of discovering new talent. Anyway that was the way it used to work

There is no clear proof that riders coming up from 125 and 250 are better suited to racing and winning in MotoGP, but the perception is more important than reality. And the perception is that the American fountain of Superbike-bred roadracing talent is running dry while Europe´s new wave of lightweight 125-250 riders is producing champions destined for glory.

There is just a hint of backlash satisfaction in European articles about the demise of the obsolete “American style” of rear-wheel steering. And that is only human, since it was a hard blow to European pride back in 1978 when a maverick named Roberts crossed the Atlantic and established a new roadracing technique that changed the way 500s were ridden. Dirt trackers like Kenny Roberts applied rear-wheel steering learned on American miles and half miles to explosive, two-stroke 500s fitted with primitive slicks with minimal side grip and Europe’s 250 champions were suddenly stymied…high-sided when they tried to ride the short-fused 500s as if they were 250s.

Europeans, stunned that Barry Sheene was beaten by a rookie from Modesto, tried to copy King Kenny but crashed and burned. There was natural resentment when top European 250 stars were skipped over for Superbike and dirt track riders from the United States and Australia (remember, Wayne Gardner and Mick Doohan came right out of Australian short track and big-bore production-based four-stroke racing).

While the likes of Roberts, Spencer, Mamola, Gardner, Lawson, Rainey, Schwantz, and Doohan backed ‘em in and fired ‘em out, European champions who had worked their way up from tiddlers to 250s and then to 500s, were unable to figure out how to square off the corners and launch the nasty 500s with the rear tire smoking and the front tire looking the wrong way.

The following current MotoGP riders spent at least the season prior to their GP debuts riding the Spanish nationals: Carlos Checa, Valentino Rossi, Sete Gibernau, Dani Pedrosa, Casey Stoner, Kenny Roberts Junior, Toni Elias and José Luis Cardoso. These riders also came to 500/MotoGP from the 125/250 classes: Marco Melandri, Loris Capirossi, Shinya Nakano, Randy de Puniet, and Alex Hofmann.

5'3, 112-pound, three-time World Champion Pedrosa is a serious title contender in his MotoGP rookie season

All told, thirteen of the current nineteen MotoGP riders began their careers riding small capacity two-strokes and eight of them (Rossi, Gibernau, Checa, Roberts, Cardoso, Capirossi, Hopkins, and Nakano) rode 500s before moving to MotoGP

That means that only six of the 19 MotoGP riders came to MotoGP directly from big four-stroke classes and only one was truly a Grand National dirt tracker. Here is where the others on the MotoGP grid came from:

Nicky Hayden: AMA Superbike and Supersport and AMA Grand National Dirt Track.

Colin Edwards: Colin did win an AMA 250 title, but he made his mark in World Superbike where he won two titles.

John Hopkins: a former motocrosser who won the AMA Formula Extreme Championship and was given a chance by the now defunct WCM Red Bull Yamaha 500 team.

Makoto Tamada: Japanese and World Superbike

Chris Vermeulen: World Superbike and Supersport

James Ellison: European Superstock and British Superbike

Only Hayden, the current points leader, is in the hunt for the title. Edwards, who nearly won at Assen, has made podium appearances, but is number 2 for Yamaha and in Rossi’s huge shadow (though receiving offers to return to World SBK), while John Hopkins looks ready to win if only his bike and tires will let him. Vermeulen, the transfer from World SBK, is learning. James Ellison is running too far off the pace of his Yamaha-Dunlop teammate to retain much credibility.

Team directors are, for the most part, blissfully unaware of what is happening in World Superbike or AMA Superbike, and are increasingly skeptical of British Superbike graduates after the poor showings of Shakey Byrne and Ellison. (Ryuichi Kiyonari, currently riding for HRC in the BSB, may get the call to MotoGP to fill the traditional role of Japanese “tester-racer.”)

A few years back, Japanese factory teams always had their eye on top Australian or American Superbike riders. In the “old days” young chargers like Australia’s Josh Brookes and America’s Ben Spies would have already been contacted for tests, but that has changed. Even if Spies takes the AMA title from five-time champion Mat Mladin, Suzuki are committed to Hopkins and Vermeulen and other teams are also either stocked or already talking to 250 riders like Lorenzo, Dovizioso or de Angelis. The AMA SBK series is just not on their radar anymore.

And Brookes, who won both the Australian Production Superbike and Supersport titles on the last day of the 2005 season, came under-funded to World Supersport and has already been fired by the SC Caracchi Ducati team. He has been picked up by the no-hope Bertocchi Kawasaki World Superbike team, but at least is present on the world stage where he might get promoted to a better SBK team.

Australian Jeremy Burgess, crew chief for Mick Doohan and, now, Valentino Rossi, believes that his fellow countrymen are wasting their time in production-based classes and need to get themselves on 250s. Burgess is advising Yamaha to swipe Casey Stoner from Honda to replace Edwards as Rossi’s understudy.

Kawasaki is at least keeping an eye on Tommy and Roger Lee Hayden and also on their World Superbike star Fonsi Nieto (a former World 250 runner-up and winner of five 250 GPs), but they seem set for the time being with 250 graduates Nakano and de Puniet.

Ducati are certainly in the market for young talent and are certainly more aware that other teams of the current offerings from World and National Superbike championships. They have spoken to representatives of Hayden and Stoner, and are watching the development of Leon Haslam in the BSB. It will take a strong second-half from Sete Gibernau, who comes back from injury next week at the Sachsenring in Germany, to keep him in Marlboro Ducati colors in 2007, but Ducati are looking inside the MotoGP paddock at the likes of Nicky Hayden and Casey Stoner to team with veteran Capirossi if Gibernau is discarded.

The Way It Used To Be

Mick Doohan was the last of the dirt-tracking Superbike stars to win the premier class crown (

The late and great Barry Sheene, who learned the game on racing 125s (and won a 50cc GP for Kriedler), won two 500 titles (1976-1977) on RG500 Suzuki square fours. He beat Finn Teuvo Lansivouri and American 500 pioneer Pat Hennen in 1976, held off Americans Steve Baker and Hennen in 1977 but was undone by Kenny Roberts on that Goodyear-shod, Carruthers-tuned Yamaha in 1978. After Barry, riders coming up from smaller classes either failed miserably or simply held back and prolonged their careers by running up long strings of 250 titles, as if 500 did not exist.

Walter Villa, Kork Ballington, Anton Mang, Carlos Lavado, Sito Pons, Christian Sarron…they were the kings of 250 but they either avoided 500 as did the late Walter Villa, dabbled unsuccessfully as did Toni Mang, or had a go and, ultimately, failed, as did Ballington, Pons and Sarron.

Venezuelan Carlos Lavado, twice 250 World Champion, described to me what it was like when, in the final race of the 1983 season, he was required to ride a 500 Yamaha in support of Kenny Roberts in his battle with Freddie Spencer on the Honda 500 triple. “I won the title and my season was over at the beginning of August in Anderstorp, Sweden, but Roberts needed help and Yamaha asked me to ride the 500 in Imola. It seemed like a good thing to do. I had never raced a 500 or even tried one, but it was just a bigger, more powerful motorcycle, I thought. But I thought wrong. It was something from Hell. I was thrown so high when I crashed in my first practice at Imola that I said “no more.”

[CaptainCR]

Probably the best 500 rider of the pre-Rossi period to come up after winning a 250 title was France's Christian Sarron. He was as fast as the fastest on new tires. In fact, during an amazing stretch in 1988 he put his Yamaha on the pole in five consecutive races, but his only win came in 1985 when he won the third start of his rookie season, beating Freddie Spencer in the rain at Hockenheim.

He would never win again and his string of five poles was followed by a series of high-siders that broke his confidence. He retired at the end of the 1990 season and his inability to convert 250 brilliance into 500 success, followed by Sito Pons’ similar fate, discouraged 500 teams from bringing up 250 stars.

The Way It Is Now

Honda's young guns: Of them only Hayden has a dirt track background

Bubba Shobert and Doug Chandler were the last true AMA dirt trackers who got a real shot in 500. John Kocinski, although trained on dirt track ovals, was really more in the European mold, having spent many seasons campaigning a 250 Yamaha in the AMA before winning the World 250 title and then coming, probably a bit late in his career, to 500. Kocinski’s 500 career was promising, but he was unable to thrive in the shadow of Wayne Rainey in the Roberts Marlboro team and, after a brief return to 250, moved to the 500 Cagiva team towards the end of the 1993 season.

Kocinski won two 500 GPs for Cagiva to go with the two he won with Yamaha, but his greatest moment came in 1997 when he became the only rider to win a World SBK title with Honda’s powerful but difficult RC45. As a reward he was staked to two final 500 seasons on Honda satellite teams, but was never able to get the NSR500 to his liking.

And, except for the 500 title that Kenny Roberts Junior managed to win in 2000, Americans have been shut out in recent times (Roberts did a brilliant job of making the most of his opportunities on an inferior machine while Honda, without Doohan, were led by Alex Criville, who was unfit and suffering from fainting spells -- the onset of the illness that caused Spain’s only 500 champion to retire.)

Honda’s replacement for Doohan, whose career ended at the third round of the 1999 season when he crashed and broke his leg badly during a Friday free session at Jerez, was Rossi.

Had Rossi not been so successful from the beginning, and had Hayden won races in his rookie 2003 season, Honda and, thereby, MotoGP bosses in general, might have retained some doubts about the adaptability of 250 riders to the premier class and might also have continued to believe in the desirability of Superbike and dirt track riders.

With the arrival of the big, friendly 990 four strokes with their Grand Canyon power bands, the dreaded high-sider has become a thing of the past in MotoGP. In fact, with today’s sophisticated, traction control systems, we are seeing more high-siders in 250 and even 125 class than in the big class where clever mapping and intrusive traction control makes old-fashioned emphasis on throttle control just that…a thing of the past.

Now Dorna, organizers of the Spanish Championship, the British Championship and the MotoGP Academy, are working to clone Dani Pedrosa in the form of young Britain Bradley Smith. Unable to find that illusive British MotoGP star from the ranks of the BSB they have set out to make the little red-head into the next Pedrosa or Stoner, polishing his skills in Spanish Nationals before guiding him into 125.

Dorna’s previous British 250 project, Chaz Davies, also a product of the Spanish 125 school, seems to have stalled because, though still a teenager, he is too tall to ride a 250.

In fact, with Dani Pedrosa (5’3” 112 pounds) now firmly established as a potential MotoGP champion for Repsol Honda, even 5’7” and 5’8” riders like Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden are bigger than the new ideal jockey-sized rider.

And, unless some kind of combined minimum weight for bike and rider is adapted for the MotoGP class, the tendency toward smaller, lighter riders will continue. Already Honda technicians speak of the need to find “compact riders for the compact 800cc bikes of the future.”

While all that might seem to bode well for Jason DiSalvo, who, by the way, came off 125s and 250s, racing both in the UK and Spain, plus in many European Championship rounds, it seems to indicate that American riders in general, both because of stature and background, may be left out of the MotoGP loop in the future.

It is hard to believe, given the current Japanese mindset, that there will ever be another rider in MotoGP of Wil Hartog´s dimensions. (The “white giant” stood just over 6´2” in his heyday as a Suzuki 500 GP rider and winner….and, for that matter, Deiter Braun at 6´2” won the 1970 125 and the 1973 250 World titles.)

But, as an Italian, Honda Europe executive said to me recently, “the way things are going, a rider like Rossi (5´11” 160 pounds) just might be too big to fit the new 800 that Honda is building for Pedrosa.”

Roadracers have always been, on the average, compact, and, in spite of those dire words, talent like that of “tall” riders like Rossi and Kevin Schwantz will probably always be rewarded…if noticed.

And that is the worrying part. Rossi’s route to MotoGP, via the Spanish CEV series into World 125 and 250, has become the current fast lane, although there are acceptable alternatives beginning with German and British 125 racing for kids in their early, early teens.

But Schwantz and Rainey got their shots at 500 in 1987 (Schwantz) and 1988 (Rainey) for two reasons:

1. They were Americans at a time when 500 team bosses kept their eye on everything happening in the USA.
2. They were accomplished Superbike riders. Rainey’s single season on a 250 in 1984 was a good way to learn European tracks and accustom himself to life on the road, but, as with Schwantz, it was his AMA Superbike success that caused the 500 red carpet to be rolled out. (The fact that Rainey was an accomplished dirt tracker also helped.)

That is what is not happening now for American riders. In fact, the last two
American riders to get the call were both favored by special circumstances. John Hopkins was slotted into the WCM 500 Yamaha team because team owners Bob McLean and Peter Clifford, upon advice from a well-established American talent scout (John Ulrich, the same guy who spotted Kevin Schwantz), decided to take a chance with a kid who had never even raced a Superbike but had shown great promise in the old AMA 1000cc Formula Xtreme class. In Hayden’s case it was the clout of American Honda that overcame HRC’s initial resistance.

In fact, I remember that toward the end of the 2002 season both Mick Doohan and Sito Pons told me that there was no way that Hayden would get the call to be Rossi’s teammate. Doohan said, “My advice to Nicky is to take the offer from Yamaha because HRC won’t change their plans and take him a year early.” Pons was even more adamant. Sito said, “HRC have no interest at all in signing Hayden. Take my word for it,” (in fact, what Sito said was really what HRC executives were saying at the time).

American Honda insisted, and HRC are glad they did, but it almost seems to Honda that Nicky has been successful in spite of his background rather than because of it.

At the beginning of this season Honda race boss Suguru Kanazawa was quoted in the Spanish and Italian press as saying, “We expect success from riders like Pedrosa coming from the 125 and 250 championships, but Nicky came right out of the AMA championship and that is like coming from another planet.”

If you are an AMA rider with MotoGP aspirations, you should be rooting hard at Laguna Seca for another American win from Hayden, Edwards, Hopkins or back-on-form (and on a competitive bike at last) Roberts, and you should also be hoping that Hayden can hang on to his lead and win the title for Honda.

Even that won’t change Honda’s well-justified conviction that their man of the future is Dani Pedrosa (who has won three world titles in the last three years…125 in 2003 and 250 in 2004 and 2005) and that he is the model for the future, a compact rider coming out of 125 and 250.

And if that trend continues, American riders coming out of the AMA series may find that, unless World Superbike attracts them, they just won’t be able to get there (Europe and World Championship competition) from here.

-Dennis Noyes

[Captain G Force]

good article...very interesting insight on the politics of racing.