Ducati busy not winning everything in 2019,
At the start of the season we predicted Ducati could win the triple crown: Motogp, WSB and BSB. At the end of the season we have egg on our face…
AT THE START of the season I predicted it was possible for Ducati to win the Motogp championship plus the World and British Superbike titles. Well, one out of three ain’t bad…
Now things have come into stark focus it is easy to analyse my mistake. Simply put, it’s Marc Marquez. It’s easy to forget he started the season in recovery from a major shoulder operation, which should have affected the first quarter of his season at least. There was no noticeable effect. Jorge Lorenzo also started with a recently repaired wrist. Surely, went my reasoning, Dovi would open up a useful lead while the Repsol team mates were getting back up to speed. And even if Ducati failed to cure the Desmosedici’s problems in the middle of corners, surely Dovi’s tactical brilliance would win the day. Actually no, and now the universal opinion in the paddock is if you want to win the championship you only have to do one thing: sign Marquez. My most confident prediction was even wider of the mark. I described Pecco Bagnaia as the, ‘odds-on favourite,’ to be Rookie of the Year. Last time I checked he was third in a field of four. OK, no-one, and I mean no-one, saw Fabio Quartararo as a threat to anything before the start of the season, but Pecco is being beaten by Joan Mir and is in danger of being caught by Miguel Oliveira. Quartararo’s meteoric rise has emboldened recruitment policy at KTM, who’ve gone for 19-year old Iker Lecuona for the
Tech 3 satellite team and stuck 26-year old Brad Binder directly into the factory team. No-one currently in Motogp, except Quartararo, is regularly laying a glove on Marquez. So, the thinking goes, forget paying big money for someone you know can’t win and recruit a young gun who might just turn out to a another Fabio. It is also worth remembering that at the end of next season the majority of the Motogp grid are out of contract. Anyone over 30 who isn’t winning races faces the prospect of looking for a real job. As a team manager forcefully pointed out – when I mentioned a certain rider was ‘quite good’ – his job is not to keep such people in employment, his job is to recruit the next World Champion. And that means beating Marquez. And that means a long-odds gamble.
As the original column was written after
‘He’ll face The Cannibal, as the Italians call Jonny Rea’