I was watching a video of the 2018 Assen TT the other day. If you remember, that was the race in which we had four teams – Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and Suzuki – all at the top of their game, in addition to eight riders – Rossi, Lorenzo, Marquez, Dovizioso, Rins, Crutchlow, Zarco and Viñales – all similarly at the top of their game, fighting at the front in one of the most intense battles ever seen in MotoGP. It was mesmerising and infinitely exciting, even if you know who won before you watch it.
What got me most of all about Assen 2018, especially in light of what we witnessed this year at the same track, was how many times riders strayed, however momentarily, into the green paint outside the rumble strips on the exit of a corner with no penalty given whatsoever: nothing to dilute the incredible action we were witnessing on track.
What I’m getting really bored of in MotoGP at the moment is the emphasis on mistakes rather than concentrating on the great racing we’re witnessing. Even if nothing in 2023 has yet to match what happened at Assen in 2018, it’s still been a great season of racing.
But all we seem to be talking about at the moment is the bloody race stewards and their penalties which naturally include the seemingly arbitrary manner in which they are handed out and the inconsistency. If the racing has been good, it has largely been forgotten in all the furore about penalties.
Now, before you all start getting hot under the collar about ‘unfair’ treatment meted out to home hero Brad Binder, let’s be realistic: he made the same mistake twice and took a penalty both times, unfortunately dropping him off the podium both times. Did he deserve the penalties? Under the letter of the law, yes. Did he gain an advantage from either discretion? Well, only Brad can tell us that but at the end of the main race, he was struggling with the soft rear tyre and he simply ran out of road defending against a threatening Aleix Espargaro so you have to say that he gained an advantage by carrying too much speed through the corner and running wide in the successful defence of his position, even if it was by mere millimetres.
Of course, many will point to Jorge Martin doing exactly the same thing at the same corner on the same lap, metres behind Binder so why didn’t he get a penalty? Because, say the stewards, dropping a place is one thing, but penalising a rider by more than ten seconds – the gap to Alex Marquez behind Martin – by dropping a place is a bit harsh. It all goes to show the pressure the stewards are under to apply common sense in some situations and the rule of the law in others. I wouldn’t have their job for anything.
It was a real shame for Binder, who had made a lightning start – something the KTM is proving rather good at – and ran comfortably in the top three all race, masterfully protecting his soft rear tyre and performing a remarkable defence against first Bezzecchi and then Espargaro while never letting up the pressure on Bagnaia, throughout the race.
The weekend’s biggest transgression occurred in the Moto2 race. Pedro Acosta, that incredible talent, saved a crash at the final chicane and ran wide onto the green paint. He gained a chunk of time on fellow lead-battlers Ai Ogura and Jake Dixon and, even though he slowed, he didn’t slow enough and was given a long-lap penalty for gaining an advantage.
Fair enough. But what wasn’t fair was that he then ran onto the green while taking the long lap penalty, which should mean an automatic long-lap penalty which wasn’t given by the stewards. Eh?
Did some of the stewards think that giving him a penalty for saving a crash was too harsh and so persuaded the others to ignore the second transgression? Again, rules are rules and, if in the old days of grass run-off areas, the penalty would have been that he crashed, then it is only right that he gets a penalty for running onto the green paint today. And it should have been two long-lap penalties because he did it twice. What if Acosta had been followed into the long lap section by another rider and came out further ahead because he was going faster and, by going faster, meant that he crossed a line and touched the green?
As I’ve written before, it was partly at the riders’ instigation that there was to be a stricter interpretation of the rules to curb some of the excesses that were being perpetrated. But has it gone a little too far the other way? How much more of this inconsistency can we take? Nothing spoils a race more – for the participants or the fans – than watching a racer take the chequered flag in a podium position, only to have it taken away because of a late penalty. I’m not saying they should be allowed to get away with whatever they want and it must be near impossible – and dangerous – for the stewards to make snap judgements without looking at all the angles first and in-depth. And to penalise one rider and not another for the same discretion but in different circumstances would be an impossible tangle to get into.
This brings us to the other bone of contention: the Michelin front tyre. As we are all only too aware, a following rider can’t stay close to the guy in front because the front tyre will overheat and prevent a late lunge overtake. Looking at Assen 2018 again, there were dozens of late lunge overtakes into almost every corner on the track, fast or slow, and no one fell off!
Aerodynamics were in evidence in 2018 but nowhere near as drastic as we have today and it isn’t hard to watch MotoGP going down a route in the ensuing five years that has ruined close racing in Formula One for even longer: an over-reliance on aerodynamics. I know the riders like to have every performance advantage they can get but why aren’t they standing up and complaining about the current rules that prevents close racing, not to mention making the bikes more dangerous to ride on the limit? It always amazes me that the governing bodies in either F1 or MotoGP don’t have the balls to say, ‘the racing is sh*t and this is what is going to happen to make it better: like it or leave it.’
Dorna has done an amazing job of making the racing closer but it is now allowing all that good work to be undone by permitting the teams to develop technology that is ruining the racing. If you want to take it one step further, what relevance do aerodynamics and shape-shifting technology have to road bikes?
It always makes me laugh when someone who owns a BMW S1000RR or a Ducati Panigale V4 or such like, boasts that the wings on the front generate 30kg of downforce at 300km/h, like he knows how that feels and really needs it. I mean, I often reach 300km/h on my daily commute or breakfast run. And the day I see someone activating the rear ride height device on his Superbike while waiting for the traffic light to go green…..Stupid knows no bounds.
Yes, MotoGP is the pinnacle of racing and should be a no-holds-barred exercise in technical excellence but not when it heads down blind alleys. Is winning by any means possible a blind alley when winning is the reason they are there in the first place? Not necessarily, but give the factories a set of rules and they will always find ways around them, so it’s not as if their technical prowess would be stifled: they’d just find new ways to go fast but within a set of different parameters, so we’d still be at the pinnacle.
We now have an interminable five-week wait for the next MotoGP round, which will be at Silverstone. That’s a long time and enough for the bored sports websites to start the rumour mill regarding 2024 and who will be riding where. In actual fact, it’s really boring but it’s a ritual that they go through every year.
Will Marquez stay at Honda or is he fed up to the back teeth? The problem is, where would he go? I can’t see neither KTM nor Ducati booting one of their factory riders aside to make room for him. Will Acosta, whose avowed intention is to be in MotoGP in 2024 one way or another, be on a KTM or something else? There’s nothing at the factory team until 2025 but could KTM put him on Augusto Fernandez’ seat just to make sure they keep him? Will Morbidelli stay at Yamaha and, if he does go, where will he go and will Rins crawl away from Honda to take the seat at Yamaha?
Of course, it’s all conjecture and surmise and there might even be a grain of truth in some of it. Personally, I’d rather wait for the action to start again on the 6th August: let’s hope 2023 Act 2 is as good as the first act.
