Michael Scott | August 29, 2024
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
MotoGP Needs Another Smiling Assassin
What’s wrong with MotoGP? Well, quite a few things actually (and, to be fair, quite a few things are also right, in a minor golden age). But the salient point is personal.
Everyone is much too nice to one another.
I’m talking about the riders here. Those larger-than-life figures that Dorna’s PR machine presents to us on various electronic media and wheel around on trailers early on race mornings, where they wave dutifully at mainly empty grandstands and grateful early-start corner workers. All while giving agreeable, vanilla interviews.
Lovely bunch of chaps.
Deadly rivals on the track, of course, but best of friends off it.
Really?
Risking their necks to beat each other in a high-stakes life-or-death sport?
Sorry, but the warm, fuzzy atmosphere is as bogus as the tears of the crocodile. Something needs to be done to put the champing back in championship.
I don’t blame Bagnaia, currently vying to join the greats with a third straight title. He’s a wonderful rider and deserves everything he gets. He comes over, both on screen and in person, as a genuinely nice guy. But is not overly endowed with charisma.
He must have the killer instinct, to do what he does. But it doesn’t show.
He needs some tips from his mentor, Valentino Rossi.
Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi on the podium at Aragon MotoGP, 2016. Photo Gold & Goose
Vale was (is) the very personification of the smiling assassin. Blessed with a powerful level of charm, everybody liked him so much that when he turned his withering scorn on any impudent rivals, pretty much everyone automatically took his side.
His treatment of Max Biaggi for one, looked at dispassionately, was a form of bullying. He was relentless, belittling him mercilessly and enlisting widespread jeering support. He once upended Max’s Smart car in the paddock.
He didn’t need to do it: he had riding talent to spare. But the killer instinct kicked in. And was there a single fan who didn’t support him?
I asked him once whether he had a scintilla of sympathy for the riders he ritually humiliated week in, week out. He gave his trademark guffaw. As if…
Rossi applied the same tactics to other rivals. Gibernau and Melandri to name two. They might have taken it as a mark of respect … if it hadn’t hurt. He beat them all anyway while carrying the cheering fans along with him.
He tried the same on Marc Marquez and had the same result with the fans. Mostly. But by now the tide was turning, a new era was beginning. As Rossi’s results began to falter, Marc’s kept on coming. For his part the Spaniard had consistently shown his own contrast between choirboy looks and a murderously competitive streak.
It famously came to a head in Malaysia in 2015, with mystifying accusations that Marc was conspiring to support Rossi’s Yamaha teammate Lorenzo (What? By beating him at the previous race?), followed by the infamous kick during the race that put Marc down and out. Punished with a pit-lane start for the following final round, Rossi was unable to fight up front. He lost what would have been a classic eighth premier-class title by five points.
None of this is meant to disrespect Valentino. Some might consider Mike Hailwood a greater rider. Agostini. Or Kenny Roberts, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan… The comparisons are entertaining but not actually valid. All of them had their aspects of greatness in their time.
But Rossi is the GOAT in one indelible respect. Popularity. His boundless charm and charisma brought motorcycle racing to a wider audience than ever in the past, and his inevitable retirement left the sport with a gap so far quite impossible to fill.
The only comparable rider was Barry Sheene. Another whose charm and mass appeal quite eclipsed another utterly ruthless personality. The other riders suffered it, the fans loved it. Another smiling assassin.
Who can we look to now to lift the current era out of its feel-good malaise? Out of the morass in which the top riders are presented as cheery chums, when beneath the veneer all of them are utterly driven personalities, who like nothing more than to defeat every rival at every opportunity? No matter how much they may smile on the outside.
Well, there is some hope.
The greatest grudge matches in the past have come between teammates. Rossi insisted on a wall down the middle of the Yamaha pit when Jorge Lorenzo was on the other side of it. Think also of Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner: compatriots, Rothmans-Honda teammates, and deadly enemies. Also, Gardner and another Rothmans-Honda rider, Eddie Lawson.
Next year, it happens again.
Marc Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia together in the factory Ducati team.
As Pecco said recently: “It could be either a great team, or a disaster.”
For MotoGP, meanwhile, a proper rivalry with knives.
About time, too. CN
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