MotoGP Review: A few feathers ruffled

What an excellent day for the sport to see Valentino Rossi equal the great, and I mean that, Giacomo Agostini's record of 68 wins in the 500cc/MotoGP class. Rossi has now won the past three races and completely turned the championship around to a 75-point advantage at Misano last weekend, three clear races worth.

Rossi equalled Angel Nieto's record at Le Mans in May, leading us to ponder the fairy tale of Rossi to level with Ago in Italy rather than somewhere far away without atmosphere; like Malaysia.

But the fairytales like winning the last ever 500cc race and then the first ever MotoGP event, his last ever ride on a Honda and then his first ever on a Yamaha, continue to be written by Rossi himself. Our thoughts that he might equal Ago's record coming true not just in Italy, but a mere nine kilometres from his beloved home town of Tavullia. And all of this with Diego Maradona on the grid.

The crowd cheered with one of those roars that you actually have to be there to understand and feel the passion in. For the third race in a row, Rossi took the lead after Casey Stoner fell, who has left a great big wedge of 50 points in gravel traps over the past fortnight. You could hardly blame the vehemently partisan crowd for cheering, as even Ducati team manager Livio Suppo said over breakfast that morning that, in Italy, it is still thought that Rossi is the faster rider, and the Ducati the faster bike.

Rossi now has a lead in the championship of three clear races with five to go. Title number eight, and possibly his finest, is just around the corner. Something that normally one would roll one's eyes at through boredom of the same old guy winning again and again, but nothing can be further from the truth. The guy has charisma and an aura that is incredible. These are the good old days so enjoy them with Rossi as Stoner fights back like some angry Australian cattle dog.

Pedrosa/Bridgestone

As you can imagine, an historic day's sport was ruined by the announcement by HRC that Dani Pedrosa will complete the remainder of the season on Bridgestone tyres, thereby dumping Michelin, the 26 year long supplier to the team, overnight. And I mean overnight.

The pocket-sized Spaniard raced round 13 of the 18 race championship on Sunday afternoon and then tested the Bridgestones on Monday morning without a jot of guilt at dishonouring a contract that one would have imagined is/was of considerable size. Well, I say that he raced on Sunday but it didn't look like that much effort was being put into the 28 laps at Misano; it would have been somewhat harder to justify the switch if Pedrosa had finished on the podium an hour earlier wearing a Michelin cap, wouldn't it?

Much has been written about the change and how it came about, but what actually happened was the following.

Honda announced that they would be on Michelins for the 2008 season on November 5th 2007. The team then started the season disastrously with Dani Pedrosa crashing on the very first day (January 22nd) of the 2008 testing schedule in Malaysia, making a considerable mess of his hand, that required surgery and for him to sit out the bulk of the pre-season data-gathering tests. They were on the back foot from day one 2008, literally.

At those same late January tests, Hayden was riding the pneumatic-valved V4 800cc engine but was prevented from using it in the opening races because of reliability worries. Instead, the team ran a 2008 chassis but with a spring-valved cylinder head, something that the chassis was not designed for.

This was one of the early rings from the alarm bells: Honda worrying about reliability. It's right up there with the other things you never hear, like 'that Victoria Silverstedt is a right munter'.

Nicky Hayden then struggled so much at the Qatar test the weekend before the first race, HRC actually shipped in last year's machine for the American to ride the week after under the floodlights.

Pedrosa rode to the podium in Qatar, then streaked ahead to win the second race in Jerez and his other home race at Catalunya, a job he did by a mile. The others were not even close. He was riding more than bravely in difficult circumstances with his still hurting hand, and the world applauded him.

In fact, he went on to finish on the podium in eight of the first nine races, the only non-champagne moment being a fourth at Le Mans. Championship stuff really. In fact, he was doing so much better than the others he was leading the world championship.

But then he fell off while leading in Germany, trying to make some bizarre statement by winning the race by 30 seconds in the wet. He crashed and got so hurt when tumbling into the gravel trap that he could barely function at Laguna the following week. He struggled on the Friday and never returned to the track after seeing that the Michelins were uncompetitve. But even by not competing he was still third in the world championship, but 41 points back of the leader with eight races to go. Hardly an unbridgable chasm.

After the summer break, Brno was a disaster for the Michelin runners, but Pedrosa toddled around to get 15th place, 60 seconds behind the first Michelin runner, Dovizioso, and only 1.4 seconds ahead of De Puniet who'd crashed and remounted! Hardly a committed day's work.

So, in a nutshell, Pedrosa has gone from leading the championship to being 77 points back in just a mere four races, and it was all Michelin's fault. Well, that's the impression we got, even though from those four races Michelin have bagged 54 points while Pedrosa has tallied just 14.

That then led to HRC asking Bridgestone if they could have their tyres underneath Pedrosa for the remainder of the season.

Bridgestone said no.

Incredibly, Dorna then stepped in and asked Bridgestone to assist in the Pedrosa/Honda/Michelin problem, apparently implying that Pedrosa might sit out the season if a solution was not found.

Bridgestone's Hiroshi Yamada said, "Dorna asked to us to supply the tyres to Dani and also they explained to us that MotoGP world was... anyway. They think this situation is no good after Brno."

I asked if Dorna or HRC thought this situation was no good?

"Both." Answers Yamada.

"So after the request from HRC we considered this strongly and finally we decided to supply the tyre. This kind of request is not normal in the middle of the season."

Asked how Bridgestone might feel if Marco Melandri requested a switch from Bridgestones to Michelin tyres mid way through a season, Yamada-san answered determinedly through gritted teeth.

"If Ducati request to us then we consider. But I don't think so..."

The glint and stare in his eye was apparent. He was an upset and angry man as it appears that Bridgestone have stolen Pedrosa from Michelin, but all in the paddock know this is not the case. It was a collaboration between team sponsor, Repsol, Pedrosa, and his manager, Alberto Puig to railroad this through.

Arturo Sus of Repsol said: "Our role as main sponsor is to push the factory the team and the riders to get the results we expect to get from our investment in this adventure.

"Our decision at the time was to push Honda to do anything it had to do to get Bridgestone to the team. We pushed HRC to do this after Brno."

"We did not want Dani to race on Bridgestone tyres next season, we wanted for him to do it now."

But as Nicky Hayden said on Friday when asked if he had read some comments of Pedrosa (on another subject) in a Repsol Honda press release, Hayden quipped that he didn't read the press releases as 'they never print what you say anyway.'

The tyres being changed mid-season was greeted with uproar from other teams in the paddock who would dearly love to swap things around mid-season if lap times were not there. Go and ask Ducati after the disastrous season with Marco Melandri. Go and ask Herve Poncheral after his nightmare on Dunlops last year.

So I did.

I went and asked Paul Denning of Suzuki, not unaware of poor results in the last few years; struggling with tyres miles off the pace, or engines that blow up multiple times a weekend.

"From a sporting point of view, and indeed from a respect point of view to teams' suppliers and to.... At the end of the day, riders come and go. The thing that makes the championship is these very talented guys ride the motorbikes from Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki. Those motorbikes need tyres from Michelin, Dunlop, Pirelli and obviously Bridgestone who've done very well in the past few years.

"But we didn't cry for help. A star like Loris Capirossi didn't cry for help when he was struggling in the first year or two with Bridgestone. In my opinion, Honda have capitulated far too easily to the rider and I'm amazed.

"I don't know what other pressures were brought upon Michelin or Bridgestone, but I think that the whole situation stinks."

So what had Pedrosa got to say about all of this?

Dani said after the press conference that he knew nothing about the decision and that it was the team's choice as to their choice of tyres on the bike, confusing many people who'd just read a Honda/Michelin press statement in which Pedrosa said, "I thank Michelin and Honda for their mutual understanding and for agreeing to my personal demands."

Someone, somewhere is not telling the truth.

Fellow Repsol Honda rider Nicky Hayden has come out of this pretty well. Situation normal there then. He has stuck to his morals and beliefs of honouring deals no matter that he has had a terrible year, 11th in the championship, 98 points behind Pedrosa. He has stuck to those morals just as he did throughout his 2006 championship year. Hell, he even got knocked off by Pedrosa who didn't say sorry until an hour or two after the accident in Portugal, but still Hayden's head was held high enough to fight back and win the title a fortnight later.

As someone inside the Hayden camp said on Sunday night: "Nicky has not asked, nor is going to ask, to change tyres mid season, break any contract or otherwise. He will continue to the end of his signed contract with Honda."

It was said with a large amount of mirth and amusement, once more cementing the honour and morals of the American who one gets the impression cannot wait to get on a Ducati after Valencia. He might be shocked to discover when he rides it that it actually fits him unlike the last two seasons.

But the arm bending that happened last weekend at Misano has seen Pedrosa get his wish to get onto Bridgestones with immediate effect.

It's like a group of teenagers drifting in and out of 'MySpace love' or 'Facebook buddyism'.

To think that the great HRC has been forced into a decision such as this to rip up a contract with Michelin that has been on going since 1982, is frightening to the hardcore fans of motorsport who are in awe of an HRC footpeg, clutch lever, or overly-engineered Allen key from the great Honda Racing Company. And I am one of those fans.

And yet they have been swung by a kid who is 22 years old.

HRC must still think that building a faster motorcycle will be the cure for the current hole they're in. They said that when Valentino Rossi left the team at the end of 2002, and to date they have been beaten by Rossi's Yamaha 35 times while HRC bikes ridden by Hayden, Pedrosa, Gibernau, and Melandri have won 18.

The motorcycle world has to pinch itself and realise that HRC won every race in 1997, 58.6 per cent of all 990cc races, but only 12.9 per cent of 800cc races.

Is it Dani Pedrosa who is unable to change his way. He believes it is the right way and that all the others are making mistakes.

But surely is it not he who is inflexible? He's the one riding a spring-valved engine rather than the more modern pneumatic-valved one the chassis was actually designed for. And did he not get beaten by a Michelin-shod bike on Sunday to the tune of 14 seconds? And did he not get beaten by a satellite bike by six seconds?

Alarm bells are ringing.

And what if there is a single tyre rule next year and the supplier is going to be Michelin, Dunlop, or Pirelli? What good would running the last five races on Bridgestones achieve unless Pedrosa's Spanish Repsol/Dorna lot know something we don't.

But through all of this, there is a viewpoint that only very few can actually see; that of the racer and his hell bent vision of winning every race at all costs by stepping on toes, barging through gaps at the last corner, and being fastest in every session.

One person so brilliant at that was five-time world champion Mick Doohan, who will probably be right once all of this dust has settled.

"I think that's the way it should be. He (Pedrosa) is their main hope and I think that's maybe what Honda need to do. They need some direction as at the moment they don't seem to have any direction.

"At least someone's leading the show and trying to produce some results; that's got to be a positive in my mind."

Dani Pedrosa's winter testing season is actually starting a full two months before the others, something that Valentino Rossi did last year with the pneumatic-valve engine, and he's the one sitting pretty now, isn't he?

We want to hear from you!

Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.

Take our survey

- The Autosport.com Team

Read and post comments