Don't Panic

This time last year there were rumours swirling around the MotoGP paddock about then Moto3 upstart Jack Miller making the unprecedented leap straight to MotoGP, giving a wide berth to the fortnightly high speed mélange that is the Moto2 class in the process.  Most that weren’t directly involved in the deal thought it foolhardy, not least of all the current crop of MotoGP riders who, with the exception of Cal Crutchlow, uniformly advised against it.

At the time Miller and Alex Marquez were belligerents in a war being fought on all fronts – on track, in the press, on social media and via Moto3 allies as proxies, both with equal numbers of proponents and detractors, allegiances often running along linguistic and cultural familiarity.  At the final round at Valencia Marquez ultimately edged out Miller by two points, after Miller’s mate Danny Kent missed a gear change with four corners to go on the last lap, handing Marquez 3^rd place.

Miller took the win and left for MotoGP, Marquez the championship and Moto2.

So now it is that rumours are once again doing the rounds, only this time it’s Kent’s turn to roll the dice in the game of paddock Snakes and Ladders.  Kent, now 22, who after a largely ineffective 2013 in Moto2 slid back down to the relative comfort of the pointy end of Moto3.

With 10 rounds of the 2015 season gone Kent has won 5 races, one more than Miller at the same point last year and, unlike Miller, has not only finished every race, but has been on the podium at every round with the exception of Le Mans (4^th) and Indianapolis (21^st).  With a 56 point lead and 8 races to go it’s his championship to lose.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for a rider who only last year was contemplating trying to crowdfund a ride in the World Supersport Championship such was the lack of corporate interest in him.

Kent himself hasn’t said anything other than that amongst several Moto2 offers a MotoGP offer for 2016 is ‘on the table’.  Speculation has it that Pramac Ducati are their toes in the water, with Kent potentially replacing Columbian Yonny Hernandez.

If this is the case, should Kent take it?  As with Miller at the same time last year, it depends on who you ask.

The main arguments last year against Miller making the move – that time in Moto2 was needed to become accustomed to a larger and heavier bike, particularly the way that they slide, and that the jump from 50 hp to 250 hp was too much – are being applied to Kent’s situation in the same manner.  However Kent can take heart from Miller’s results this year thus far.  All things considered, it’s been a positive move for the Queenslander.  He’s placed as high as 12^th, that same race being the first Open bike across the line, and at 18^th is currently the highest ranked Open Honda rider in the championship standings.

But unlike Miller, Kent has already had a year on a Moto2 bike.  He’s also similarly sized to Miller (at a towering 173 cm), so presumably will adapt to a MotoGP bike even more easily.

But there are other factors that Kent absolutely must take into account.  Miller’s deal is for three years with Honda Racing Corporation directly and has the backing of Dorna.  So regardless of what others were saying, Miller knew he had a safety net should things not go smoothly early on.  Kent’s potential deal with Pramac Ducati is with the satellite team itself, not with the factory, and is unlikely to be as generous as HRC’s either in time to adjust or remuneration.

Kent also needs to consider that the Ducati is the least docile bike on the MotoGP lot.  Certainly the Boys from Bologna have moved heaven and earth to improve its pliancy, but it’s still a long way off the point and squirt of Miller’s Honda.

So Kent’s move to MotoGP would ostensibly be riskier than Miller’s.  But what are this other options?

There are a number of Moto2 possibilities, including joining the all reigning Marc VDS squad, perhaps in conjunction with his current employer Leopard Racing, and there is something to be said for the reassurance of following the path well traveled.  But such is the depth of talent Moto2 is the racing equivalent of a Royal Rumble: 30-odd men (and a few women) enter, and only a handful leave victorious.

Perhaps we should look at the Moto2 rookies for guidance: Alex Rins, Marquez’s teammate last year and 3^rd place finisher in the 2014 Moto3 championship is going gangbusters.  Currently 2^nd in the championship, he has 5 podium finishes from his first 10 Moto2 races, including a win at Indianapolis.

And Marquez?  Well, he also had his best finish of the year at Indianapolis, cracking the top 10 for the first time.  Currently he sits at 15^th on the championship table.

With the rivalry last year between Marquez and Miller, perhaps we can use this comparison: would you rather be 15^th in Moto2, with names like Rabat, Zarco, Luthi and Lowes - all looking to crack into MotoGP - ahead of you?  Or 18^th in MotoGP, 1.8s off the pace but with time up your sleeve?

In the game of Snakes and Ladders when the opportunity to climb a ladder and leapfrog your opponents you take it.  If I were Danny Kent, I know what I’d do.

Don't Hate The Player Or The Game

A lot has been said over the last 6 years about Nissan’s GT Academy, its international driving academy that ties-in with Sony’s PlayStation brand.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, owners of Sony PlayStation consoles can play the popular Gran Tourismo driving simulator online in competition with other players, the best of them being invited to a training camp at a famous track, like Paul Ricard in France or Laguna Seca in northern California, where they compete for a place in the academy proper.  Once accepted, they are coached in driving technique, race craft, and how to communicate with engineers, as well as fitness, nutrition, and even how to conduct oneself in interviews.

Admission to the academy has generally been seen by the wider racing community as the prize itself as opposed to as a stepping stone to a legitimate racing career.  I too have been guilty of this – while chatting to a Nissan engineer prior to the 2013 24 Hour of Le Mans, I made an off the cuff remark about the academy graduates that was taken as more derogatory than I had intended:

Engineer:             ‘You do realize that one of our graduates, Jan Mardenborough, is racing in LMP2 this year, don’t you?’

Me:                        ‘Uh, no… I didn’t realize that.’

The more equipment-intensive the sporting endeavour, the more necessary early parental encouragement and involvement becomes.  Growing up in a slum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro is no impediment to becoming the world’s greatest footballer – all you need is a ball.  However the more equipment required the higher up in socio-economic circumstances you generally need to look to find parents not only willing but also financially able to give their children the early start that’s necessary to make it to the top.  Tennis racquets, cricket bats and pads, and ice hockey equipment all require investment, quite apart from driving kids around to courts, ovals and rinks in order for them to develop their skills.  But it all pales in comparison to motorsport.

This is what makes the GT Academy so disruptive.  It offers an opportunity for those that may have always had the passion and desire to go racing but perhaps didn’t have parents with the money or inclination to do so, and aren’t independently wealthy enough in adulthood to fund anything more than modest racing exploits.  Until now, without beginning in karts at an early age and sufficient funding throughout their early careers, the most many drivers could hope for would be to take their clapped-out Mazda MX-5 track car to a podium finish at their local club meet on an abandoned air field.

Up until now Mardenborough and inaugural winner Lucas Ordonez have been the most visibly successful of the Academy graduates.  However they have been exceptions rather than the rule, lending credence to opinions that see the academy purely as a marketing exercise.  But that’s all changed in the last month with GT Academy graduate-heavy entries achieving an in-class podium finish in the Dubai 24 Hours and, astonishingly, an outright win at the Bathurst 12 Hour.  And it didn’t stop there: just this week Nissan announced that Mardenborough and Ordonez will be racing in its factory LMP1 entries at Le Mans in 2015, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

Generally the reaction has been positive, but not unanimously.  There has been a distinct, vocal minority that have been critical of the fact that the graduates have been racing classed as amateurs, despite the fact that they earn a salary from Nissan and spend all their time focused on racing.

These sentiments have generally come from GT drivers on the fringe – those that have put in the years of hard work, driving karts and open wheelers, getting their knuckles bloody, begging, borrowing and stealing whatever they need to just to make it to the grid at the next round.  They are highly skilled, but for whatever reason haven’t been able to make the transition to being able to make a living from racing.  It’s understandable that they would feel hard done by.

While I understand and somewhat agree with the sentiment (that amateur drivers should be just that – amateur), the argument is somewhat lost given the fact that at Bathurst the Nissan won outright.  Had the team been celebrating as hard with a class win it may have been somewhat ungracious.  But when Jorge Lorenzo, two time MotoGP World Champion, drove a Ferrari 458 in the Gulf 12 Hour classified as a Gentleman Driver one can to see their point.  Lorenzo and teammates took out the class win against people who had to be back at work the following Monday.

But even if they no longer have day jobs, it doesn’t account for the fact that they don’t have a decade or more of seat time.  Patrick Dempsey, best known for playing Dr. Derek Sheperd on Grey’s Anatomy, is one of the aforementioned independently wealthy individuals able to fund their racing efforts.  In an interview with BBC 5 Live’s Jennie Gow prior to his second run at Le Mans in 2013, he summed it up thusly:

‘You’re competing with drivers who have been doing this since they were young boys and young girls, so they have a lot more experience and seat time.  And seat time I think ultimately gives you… it’s instinctual.  You don’t think about it anymore.  And sometimes a driver like myself doesn’t have that.  There’s a delay… that’s the crossover.  (With seat time) you can develop that, and you start to just live and breathe the car.  But that takes time.  And that takes money.’

That’s what’s so impressive – the fact that these young drivers, without the lifelong experience of their traditionally educated rivals, are keeping pace with the professionals.

Ultimately Nissan is the same as any manufacturer – it wants to win races.  But unlike other manufacturers, they’re willing to think laterally and try untested methods.  And in this instance at least they've given motorsport a refreshing splash of egalitarianism.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get down to the High Street to get myself a PlayStation.

Review: Casey Stoner: Pushing The Limits

Although famously loath to speak to anyone with a media pass throughout his MotoGP career, when prodded by journalists Casey Stoner was reliably honest, at times subversive, and routinely inflammatory (or just simply blunt, depending on where your allegiances lay).  So it would be fair to suggest that Hachette Australia, Pushing The Limit’s publisher, probably set aside a healthy budget for fact checking in preparation of the book’s release.

Property Hachette Australia

The first few chapters are standard sportsperson biography: the early days where they discover a talent and a love for their craft, followed by years of parents duly driving them around to compete against other youngsters with similar dreams, and graduating through the ranks spurred on by continued success.

The book really hits its stride though when Casey’s dad Colin digs up the money he buried in their backyard (seriously), sells the house and with wife Bronwyn takes Casey, aged 14, to Europe.  Once there they live on baked beans and sleep in a caravan, eking out a barren existence focused solely on making the most of their son’s prodigious talent.  The stories of financial struggle (a hungry teenage Casey hanging outside his mechanic’s house one frosty morning hoping to be invited inside for breakfast comes to mind) are at once both at odds with the glamorous façade projected by top-tier motorsport, and a testament to the sacrifices required of those who will one day be World Champion.

Once Stoner gets to MotoGP however, the book takes on a very different, altogether more incisive tone.  Intensely private, this may be the last we hear from him publicly, in which case he’s going out with all guns blazing.

Stoner has never been shy about giving frank assessments of those in the MotoGP paddock, which over the years made him a favourite target for jingoistic supporters of his rivals – I doubt the politically correct Dani Pedrosa has ever been spat on by Valentino Rossi fans, nor has Nicky Hayden ever been booed at, of all places, a charity auction.  However none of these slings nor arrows over the years have tempered Stoner’s will to tell it like it is, and tell it like it was he does.

In the book’s final stanza Stoner explains amongst other things his very public disagreements with Dorna CEO and MotoGP head honcho Carmelo Ezpeleta, why he was dissatisfied with the management services of Randy Mamola and WMG, and his fall-out with Ducati’s top brass.  It’s incendiary stuff, and I suppose that Stoner plans to rely on the one solid defense to allegations of slander: that it’s the truth.

Perhaps more provocatively, he indulgently revels in schadenfreude as he recalls Rossi’s difficulties at Ducati after replacing Stoner at the Bologna factory in 2011.  At the end of 2010 Rossi’s crew chief Jeremy Burgess declared publicly that Stoner clearly wasn’t any good at bike development, and that he and Rossi would ‘fix (Ducati’s Desmosedici) in 80 seconds’.  In 2013 Rossi and Burgess schlepped back to Yamaha with no wins and only 3 podium finishes during the two years they wore red.

All of this would simply sound like Stoner taking time out of his busy fishing schedule to take pot shots at the schoolyard bullies were it not for the fact that he is equally quick to thank those who reciprocated his loyalty throughout his career.  Alberto Vergani, CEO of helmet manufacturer Nolan, is noted for his generosity at various stages of Stoner’s career, as is Lucio Cecchinello, owner of LCR Honda, for helping Stoner to break into MotoGP despite a lack of funding.  Honda bosses Shuhei Nakamoto and Livio Suppo also get the thumbs up, as do Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovisioso for their talent on and mutual respect off the track.

Most indicative though is Stoner’s evident fondness for Alberto Puig, former 250cc Grand Prix racer and Stoner’s mentor during his progression from the British and Spanish national championships into the lower World Championship categories.  Stoner declines to reveal why they parted ways, preferring instead to remember how, as he along with parents Colin and Bronwyn tried to make a go of it in Europe, Alberto and his father invited the Stoners to live on Puig Sr.’s farm rent-free when they weren’t racing so they could make the most of what little money they had.

Ultimately, while Stoner’s criticisms of the less scrupulous people lurking in the MotoGP paddock will no doubt grab the headlines, it’s his appreciative praise of those without whom he wouldn’t have two World Championships that really shines through.

This is essential reading for not only anyone even remotely interested in motorcycle racing, but also those who harbour loftier than average goals and might be in need of a little extra encouragement.  Whether you love it or hate it will depend on who you cheer for when the lights go out at 2 pm on Sunday afternoon.