Opinion

Guest Column: The Business Of Racing, By Eric Trytko

Submitted by David Emmett on

With the news coming out today that Ant West will not be able to make the grid for the 2012 motor GP season, due to his inability to find funding for his ride, brings up an interesting take on where the sport of MotoGP, motorcycle racing, and motor sports in general fits in with life today in our current economic environment.

Young riders coming up today, and even current riders, need to understand that they are no longer being paid to race. This is a major change in mindset, what they are paid to do is work as a marketing tool for their sponsors and patrons. For most of the history of athletics and motorsports, one of two things had to happen for you to compete, you either were either wealthy, or, you had to have a wealthy patron. Patron, another term for sponsor, is something that disappeared, for the most part, post-World War II on a personal level. Post World War II sponsorship came from corporations rather than people though that really didn't become visible until the 1960s with the Lotus Formula One team.

In today's world, corporations aren't racing for anything more than exposure. And that exposure is not so much about what happens on the racetrack, it's what happens with that sponsorship at the track and off the track. In fact, most sponsors don't care a whole lot about what happens on the track as long as their brand is visible, it's about what you're doing with your visibility and your hospitality on a race weekend. Then, it's also about, promotion pre-race and post race. On top of that it's doing appearances for the corporation when and where they choose.

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Why Motorcycle Racing Fans Should Oppose The Stop Online Piracy Act

Submitted by David Emmett on

Go to Wikipedia today (Wednesday, January 18th) to search for information, and you will be met with a dark page bearing a stark warning: "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge". The reason for Wikipedia's blackout is simple: they, along with other major internet companies such as Google, WordPress, Reddit, Tucows, Boing Boing and sites such Twitpic all oppose the legislation currently going through the US Congress to prevent so-called content piracy. Two bills are currently under consideration, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), both of which are aimed at preventing the illegal theft of content owned by the US film, music and software industry.

That is a noble aim: the people who work hard to create the movies, TV series, music and computer games that we all love deserve to be paid for their work. They invest large amounts of money to produce content, and they do not deserve to have their product stolen and redistributed by gangs of organized criminals who make money off of the games, movies and music made by the content owners, without contributing anything to those content owners. 

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Happy New Year To Our Readers!

Submitted by David Emmett on

MotoMatters.com wishes all of our readers a Happy New Year and all the best for a happy, healthy and successful 2012. We're grateful for all of the support our readers have given us throughout 2011, which has allowed us to continue to grow our audience and expand our coverage. We are especially grateful to the readers who have supported us financially, either by becoming subscribers or buying a calendar or t-shirt, and to the advertisers who have supported us throughout the year.

A special word of thanks also to our contributors: MotoMatters.com staff photographer Scott Jones, and contributing photographers Michel Hulshof, Jules Cisek and Ben Davies. 

With major changes coming in both MotoGP and World Superbikes, we believe 2012 will be one of the most interesting and exciting years in recent motorcycle racing history, and we will be making a few changes to the site and hopefully adding resources to cover the world of international motorcycle racing in even more depth than we did in 2011. Here's to the New Year!

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The Fog Of War: Just How Do Rossi's And Stoner's Jerez Test Times Compare?

Submitted by David Emmett on

Testing the 2012 MotoGP bikes, when the series ups its capacity limit to 1000cc once again, has raised more questions than it has answered for the media and fans trying to follow the series. The first public test at Brno saw some promising results, with the Hondas and Yamahas fairly evenly matched, and the 1000cc bikes between 0.5 to 1 second faster than the 800s. But Brno has been the only public test, the others all being held behind closed doors - though journalists were present at the Misano test, that one being declared a private test only at the last minute when Honda and Ducati pulled out, leaving the track to Yamaha.

The times from the private tests have been much harder to track down, and though rumors have emerged from all sorts of sources, both verification or official confirmation have been absent. Journalists have been left to cast out their nets among their sources and try to make sense of the numbers being returned. It basically boils down to sifting through the times, and hazarding a guess as to which might be reliable and which are completely off base. 

The biggest source of controversy - probably because these are the most significant numbers for the 2012 season - have been the times from Honda's 1000cc test with Casey Stoner back in May of this year at Jerez, and Ducati's recent test of the brand new aluminium twin spar chassis which Valentino Rossi put through its paces at Jerez just over a week ago. Initial reports suggested that Rossi had been running 1'39s, closely matching Stoner's pace. But that assumes that Stoner was also running 1'39s at Jerez during the test, and paddock rumor has it that Stoner was running a good deal faster than that during his test earlier in May. Two seconds, was the figure most commonly quoted, and rumored to be accurate. 

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Guest Column: Cutting Costs In BSB, By Mike Edwards

Submitted by Mike Edwards on

Mike Edwards set up MIST Suzuki back in 2005, and has been involved in motorcycle racing at the British national level and at the world level in the FIM Superstock series for many years. Throughout his years running the MIST Suzuki team, Edwards has gained a lot of insight into the underlying costs of motorcycle racing, and where savings can be made. With MSVR - the company which runs British Superbikes - set to publish the rules for the 2012 BSB series, including a raft of measures aimed at cutting costs, Edwards recently published a series of articles on the MIST Suzuki website on the cost aspect of racing, and where he believes costs could be saved. The articles have been reproduced below, with Edwards' kind permission.

Racing Is Expensive

Racing is expensive. Get over it. Does it need to be as expensive as it is? Of course not, but it's a difficult balancing act.

For any SuperBike round you need rubber, lots of it. The regulations permit a total of eight front tyres and eleven rear tyres for each round. Some might be qualifying tyres, others wet or intermediates with the rest being whatever is required over the weekend. At £222 a pair it's not cheap, in fact it's very close to the cost to the trade price that any dealer can purchase them at, but they don't have to pay for a team of people support the racing and fit tyres to the never ending line of wheels over the race weekend.

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Honda's Missed Trick: How HRC Could Have Taken The Sting Out Of Pedrosa's Return

Submitted by David Emmett on

When Dani Pedrosa finally returns to the MotoGP paddock, he is in for a very rough ride. Pedrosa's injury has been shrouded mystery - at least, it has been since he was photographed at a bowling alley in Barcelona, only to announce he would be missing his home race at Montmelo, just a few miles away, a couple of days later. Rumors that he had reinjured his collarbone in a training accident - possibly involving a supermoto bike - emerged on the Spanish website Motocuatro.com in the days between the Barcelona and Silverstone rounds of MotoGP, fueled further when it was announced that Pedrosa would have yet more surgery to fix a loose piece of bone in his collarbone after Silverstone.

Naturally, the press - and most especially, the Spanish section of it - are chomping at the bit to speak to Pedrosa. They are determined to get to the bottom of this intrigue, and the Spaniard will face a barrage of questions in every one of the press briefings he attends. Doubtless the Repsol Honda team will organize an extra press conference on Thursday to handle most of the questions, but the answers he gives there will be subjected to intense scrutiny overnight, and revised versions of the questions then put to Pedrosa the next day, a process which will repeat every day until Sunday night, when the Spaniard is likely to fly home to Barcelona. Any hopes of being able to concentrate on racing are surely in vain.

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Don't Cheek The Beak, Or Why Marco Simoncelli Has Been Called To Face Race Direction At Barcelona

Submitted by David Emmett on

I'm sure you're all familiar with the situation - after all, if you're reading a motorcycle racing website, the chances are good that you are no stranger to speed - you're out for a ride or a drive somewhere, and you get pulled over by the local constabulary. There are a number of responses to getting stopped by the long arm of the law: loudly protesting your innocence and shouting at the officer who stopped you; sullenly sitting on your bike and responding to all questions with little more than a Neanderthal grunt; or giving the good man or woman a welcoming smile, admitting your failings (whether you believe the charges to be just or not), claiming it to be totally out of character and promising never to let it happen again. And of the three possible responses, it is fairly obvious which one will receive the lightest sentence (and no, it's not the one where you tell the officer exactly what part of the male or female anatomy they most resemble).

So after all the talk of his dangerous riding, and the incident in which Marco Simoncelli collided with Dani Pedrosa, which Race Direction ruled was caused by Simoncelli, and judged to be "irresponsible riding" - an infraction according to Section 1.21 2) of the MotoGP regulations - the press release put out by the San Carlo Gresini Honda team was rather puzzling. In it, Simoncelli expressed his - undoubtedly sincere - regrets at Pedrosa's injury, but went on to complain that he felt he had done nothing wrong and had been treated unjustly. 

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Marco Simoncelli's Greatest Crime: Impatience

Submitted by David Emmett on

Marco Simoncelli is probably the most exciting rider in MotoGP at the moment. Obviously, his physical presence - tall, lanky, with an enormous and tangled bush of hair atop his head - helps him stand out from the crowd, but it is his riding which has endeared him to the fans. The boy is fast, utterly fearless and willing to fight for every inch of the track. Simoncelli stands aside for no man, which means that at any time, at any track, he can pull the most astonishing moves to try and either defend his position or snatch a place from out of the blue. The fans love it.

The riders, not so much. That impetuousness, seizing the first hint of a gap as soon as it opens, and opening it by force if necessary, has not made him very popular with the remainder of the MotoGP field. Simoncelli, they say, is a wildcard, a rider who is so unpredictable that they don't feel comfortable racing in close proximity with him. The kind of fairing-bashing action that leaves tire marks all over leathers may make Simoncelli a favorite with the fans, but having to deal with it at 300 km/h while manhandling a MotoGP bike around is not an enjoyable experience.

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The Imaginary Snub, Or What Really Happened When Spies Congratulated Lorenzo

Submitted by David Emmett on

At Sepang on Sunday, Jorge Lorenzo committed what a very large group of motorcycle racing fans consider the most heinous of crimes: Taking a MotoGP championship from Valentino Rossi. The fact that Lorenzo took that championship by dominating the series all season, finishing off the podium only twice all year and off the front row just once, despite starting the year with an injury, is irrelevant, it seems; by becoming champion, Lorenzo has upset The Natural Order.

Lorenzo's crime was compounded by his reported behavior a week earlier at Motegi. After a bitter and physical two-lap battle with Rossi, which provided some of the most exciting and intense action of the year but which Lorenzo should never have allowed himself to be drawn into, the Spaniard spoke to Yamaha management about the passes made by Rossi. Rossi, who reports would have us believe is Lorenzo's teammate at Fiat Yamaha, was then called in by Yamaha's bosses and asked not to jeopardize Yamaha's chances of lifting the individual, team and manufacturer's championships for 2010. Lorenzo's request and Yamaha's response saw both parties vilified across large parts of the internet, and lampooned in the Italian press.

So at Sepang, Lorenzo was the object of intense scrutiny, his every action dissected and discussed like a presidential candidate's acceptance address. And naturally, when Lorenzo pulled over on the cool down lap after finally securing the championship that had been his life-long goal, the fact that he missed Ben Spies' hand offered in congratulation was jumped upon by the voracious pack and imbued with a significance normally reserved for the actions of mystics and gurus.

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WSBK: Imola Preview -- The Reckless Accountant

Submitted by Mike Walt on

After a three week hiatus, The World Superbike series returns to action at  the Enzo e Dino Ferrari circuit at Imola, the third race of the year on Italian soil. The Ferrari circuit  is a veritable roller coaster ride, with near-constant elevation changes and a plethora of challenging corners, both fast and slow. On the line this weekend is no less than the whole ball of wax; the championship itself. Imola has been the site of deciding battles for the title in World Superbikes before, the most notable being the epic two-race slugfest in 2002 between Colin Edwards and Troy Bayliss, but this year's race(s) will be a different kind of struggle.

Points leader Max Biaggi won't have the perverse luxury of being able to let it all hang out like Edwards and Bayliss and must keep an eye on the leaderboard and still ride hard enough to make a good showing on the day. In order to take the crown at Imola, Biaggi doesn't have to necessarily beat the only other rider with a shot at the title, Alstare Suzuki's Leon Haslam, but he does have to keep him from taking 8 points away from the Roman Emperor's 58 point cushion.  Most importantly, Biaggi can't crash or finish very far down the order, thereby giving Haslam a shot at the final race of the year at Magny-Cours.

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