Pit Shadow

Boy, oh boy, I do wish you guys could be in the MotoGP press office at times, especially during testing season when we share it with some of our WSB brethren. Yep, around the same time that Jonny Rea and some of the other WSB contenders turn heads among MotoGP royalty, as is now becoming the annual fashion.

First off, very impressed that Rea (and Sykes) go as fast or faster every year despite Dorna trying their best to blunt WSB’s edge in the name of ‘competitiveness’. Yes something needs doing, but at the same time, said ‘competitiveness’ inWSB between manufacturers only started sliding when, drum roll, Dorna took over and started fiddling! Anyway, well done to the Kawasaki guys.

But what’s had me in fits of giggles is the lengths other MotoGP journos go to, to try and explain why Rea and Sykes are so fast, either being close to matching or beating GP riders’ lap times, or times from previous Grand Prix, and so on. This time around it went nuts, with huge swathes of analysis, conjecture and bluster thrust forth onto the internet to say ‘see, see, MotoGP is so much faster all the time, really!’.

Well done, geniuses, of course it bloody is, it’s the premier class of motorcycle racing with an average factory team budget more than ten times that of WSB and some of the best riders in the world – duh! In fact, Rossi’s wage alone is more than double Kawasaki’s entire WSB budget! But it really was hard to keep a straight face; it’s as though a mild panic sets in when Rea busts a really quick lap, for journos and Dorna, both.

This is nothing new – when GPs were 800cc, WSB overhauled them in lap time terms at several circuits they shared, and not just those flowing ones like Assen or Phillip Island which have always been close between the two. Hell, when Sam Lowes won his World Supersport title, his qualifying lap at PI would have seen him with a few CRT bikes behind him on the MotoGP grid! Dorna didn’t like it though, so when they took over WSB, the capping began and MotoGP went back up to a litre capacity. Then there was the time Troy Corser beat the GP500cc lap record at Donington on his Power Horse Ducati 996 in 1996, or Steve Hislop on his Monster Mob Ducati lapped the same track faster than Valentino Rossi on his Honda RCV – it happens, no need to get in a flap!

Many point at Rea running a qualifying tyre, however, they’re not as sticky as they were, as Pirelli changed them to maybe last two fast laps, rather than one. Nor does use of a qualifier explain just how a tarted up road bike does so well, either – time to give the men on the machines more credit I reckon, don’t you?

But it’s incredible how threatened some GP folk feel when this happens, get over it already! While I’m on WSB, I was buoyed by the new rule package, but Ducati have been hit hardest as predicted. Basically, Chaz Davies has been making the bike look better than it is, and having spoken to him, right now as their development curve stands they’re in a heap of trouble for 2018. I do hope they manage to sort it, because without them, Kawasaki will run away with it once more…