Pit Shadow
Winter is traditionally a time I look to other sports to fill that yawning chasm a lack of racing generates. But now, oh yes, all the big three series are back and in full swing, and I can stop pretending to myself that I enjoy all the other stuff. In fact, there’s one aspect of racing that I really savour, and that’s closure.
Over a certain number of years, depending on how long a racer’s career is (even decades), you get to see their competitive story from start to finish. Whether or not you become a fan is irrelevant here, but you do get to see and experience every chapter along with them, and when they finally hang up their leathers for whatever reason, you get to move on and concentrate on others.
When it comes to other sports such as rugby, football or whatever, my problemwith them is they never end. Only the fall of civilisation or some kind of mad upsurge in health and safety eventually banning all contact sports (or financial meltdown, granted), signals an end to it.
That’s my issue – they just go on, and on, years after decades after (probably) centuries right up until the insects take over. Even then, they’d probably just start sports leagues of their own… Depending on who you support, a lifetime of fandommisery could be all you experience, or years of pleasure, or even indifference. But you’ll never see the end, never see what happens because you’ll long be dust while the seasons tick by. This has given me a far better appreciation of racing. I feel far happier investing my time and attention to something I’m more likely to see through to the end.
It’s funny, because it was a bunch of kids whipping around Aragon that made me think of this. The inaugural World Supersport 300 race was a decent affair, with a packed grid (they could have filled it twice over apparently), and the kind of drama one expects when you stick a slew of teenagers on 100mph+ motorcycles. It crossed my mind that some of them there we’re seeing for the first time, and many we’ll watch as they mature and move through the ranks. True, national series and Moto3 kind of elicit the same response, but there was just something about this that made me take notice.
It’s probably the fact they’re all riding modified road bikes sparking memories of kids whizzing about the place on two-stroke 125s and 250s back in the day. True, they’re a long way off the pace of Moto3 by 10 seconds or more, but the bikes can’t hold a candle to those GP machines. Nor, in fact, to decades old production 250s and certainly not any production two-stroke racers. But they’re a start, and the good news is that if the manufacturers invest in it, they’ll start making the base machines better. This will (hopefully) in turn start making these bikes even more attractive to kids and younger folk because, with the greatest of respect to Yamaha, Kawasaki et al, in production trim only KTM’s RC390 really gets the juices flowing, according to the FB boys – and that’s not even being raced in the class yet, despite being eligible. I have high hopes for SS300, seeing it was well worth my weekend moonlighting at WSB frommy usual MotoGP entrenchment. Let’s all get behind it, agreed?