Pit Shadow
Hi all, grumpy again here this month. Some people drive me bananas. My angst is generated by Aleix Espagaro's pole position at Assen. Yes, he had been flying all weekend in practice, but first and foremost it was the bizarre conditions that led to his debut pole. Not so, apparently, if you were in the MotoGP media room that Friday evening. The inhabitants don't tend to talk too loudly about any mistakes that Dorna are generally thought to have made. I have to write incognito here after all, lest I be drummed out should any of my more honest views on a lot of their decisions be read. Hey, gotta make a living, so gimme a break on that one. But it made me ill to hear many singing their praises about the Open class following Espagaro's pole, as it if justified the entire thing. When I got home I watched some of the TV coverage, and even the commentators were at it. Except, my problem with them isn't anything to do with Dorna, or the fact he has super-soft tyres available to him, or even the weather conditions, but the bike Aleix is riding. They were all talking like it was an achievement of the machine as if it's something knocked together in the Forward Racing's chief engineer's garage in his spare time. For gawd's sake, it's last year's Yamaha M1! Yes, the same bike Cal Crutchlow snatched a bunch of podiums on, in fact, just running the spec' ECU and software. Scott Reading and Nicky Hayden's Honda proddy machines are dogs by comparison, and it's only due to the fact that the ever-lovable Colin Edwards seems to be in wind-down mode that he's not whooping them on a regular basis, too. OK, the Ducati is currently running under Open rules, sort of, but their problems have been long documented. Every now and then Andrea Dovizioso can spring a surprise on one and Andrea Iannone can be bloody fast and has impressed many this season, but by rights the two Forward boys should both be ruling the class in every single race. The fact both the Tech3 2013 bikes were basically wheeled straight out of Herve's garage and into Forward's isn't news to anybody in this paddock, but the media side of things seems to conveniently forget this when blowing smoke up Dorna's collective behind. And if you needed any other example of how it was the weather at Assen which helped Mr Espagaro to that pole, look no further than Broc Parkes' unbelievably good 11th place finish. Not taking anything away from him at all, Broc's a great bloke and rode his balls off in tricky conditions, but even he'd be the first to admit that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Rant over. Aleix has impressed a lot on that bike, regardless. Even if the results haven't quite been what we'd hoped, his speed on the CRT Aprilia was clearly no fluke. I do wonder if he's occasionally a bit bummed that his brother got drafted into the semi-factory Yamaha team direct from Moto2 though! There's always next year, Aleix...