MotoGP Review: Qatar Heroes

Qatar seems to throw landmark races.

We had the controversy of arriving at the race track for the first race in 2004 to be greeted with Rossi being thrown to the back of the grid after his team were caught tampering with his grid spot and then being protested by the Movistar Honda team of Sete Gibernau.

Gibernau won a vital race that day and Rossi eventually crashed after scorching through the field from the back. Even a D'Antin Ducati got on the podium that weekend. Rossi said Gibernau would never win another race after that one, and he was actually proven right.

KTM imploded upon their own 125 championship success in the 2005 race, with Gabor Talmacsi beating Mika Kallio at the last yard. Three races later, Kallio lost the title to Thomas Luhti by the same five points he lost that day in the desert.

And then there was 2007, when Casey Stoner steamed past Rossi after the last corner of the first lap, before they even got the start/finish line. It was a stunning sight that I shall never forget, the sheer top speed of the Italians pulverising the might of the Japanese.

This year's race was not such a a 'wham-bam, thank you ma'am' affair, but like a piece of good design, it will look more appealing over time.

This year, Jorge Lorenzo was on pole from rookie James Toseland and the evergreen Colin Edwards, making an all-Yamaha front row. You couldn't have bet on that.

But still the modern era threat of Casey Stoner and the Ducati was always there coming into the first round.

Aussie James Strong, a friend of Casey and a former board member of Dorna, asked me before the warm-up what my thoughts were about the race. I said it would be his friend and then Lorenzo, but I had no idea of who would be third, and it seems that no-one else had any idea of who would be third either. Not even the guy who came third!

"Yes, it was unbelievable start. I could not imagine such a start. I thought it was a jump-start for a moment, but I took advantage from it immediately, and then pushed," said Dani Pedrosa, hurting after the race with his still-recovering broken hand.

You must listen when racers whenever they say they are surprised or shocked, because you know then that it really is something beyond normality.

The Brits were hoping for Toseland to be there, but we knew it would be a tall order to get him through this first race with a front row and a podium all in one go.

Nevertheless, Toseland held his head high and came out walking tall amongst a field bursting with eleven world champions.

In the end, Toseland finished just 0.7s off the back of Rossi. His joking demeanour dropped for a second when reminded about Andrea Dovizioso beating Rossi on his debut. "Yeah, thanks for reminding me about that ..."

Toseland had never even ridden a prototype bike in his life before last November, while everyone else who finished ahead of him in Qatar has never ridden anything else.

"He's something very special, honestly," said team boss Herve Poncheral, "because he has the intelligence before he came here to arrive and say, 'OK, I have been champion in WSBK and all that I have learnt I have to forget about it and start from zero'.

"All that he's been racing is CB500, CBR 600, 918, 999, CBR 1000. He was very humble even as a world champion to say, 'OK teach me, tell me about this bike'.

"I don't know if I can say 'the best', but one of the best riders for sure who I can say from the very first moment, I have the feeling, wow, it's going to be special.

"Britain has had an incredible weekend with Scott Redding in 125 as a rookie who obviously has speed, Bradley Smith who was bit unlucky today, but they have the speed, but the sensation of the weekend is James."

Poncheral is no fool, and has seen it all over many years of racing. He is a true privateer man who has the heart of Tech 3 at the forefront of his mind.

He could wrap up some dodgy, back-handed sponsorship deal, make a load of cash and then bolt as so many have done in many a paddock, but Herve will not do that.

Yamaha can see that, and they support him more and more now that they recognise a worth in letting him have their bikes and have a chance of success now that decent rubber is underneath them, rather than Dunlop which struggled so much last year.

Yamaha are really playing Honda at their own game, with Tech 3 being so competitive with 2008 chassis all the way through their four-rider line-up on the MotoGP grid. Not even the great master of motorcycles, Honda, can get two 2008 chassis to two of their works riders in the Repsol Honda garage!

Honda have taken an enormous amount of flack by supplying so many bikes in years past, but that was because they could with an NSR 500 and a V5 that worked. Now Yamaha are doing the same.

As predicted, Rossi has painted himself into a corner in ditching Michelin and going for the Bridgestone option this year. He is behind on testing time and up against the might of Michelin, who continue to say that they are not bitter and twisted about their public sacking by him at Motegi last year.

If Lorenzo is ahead and a Bridgestone is ahead then there is no excuse, and that's exactly what happened the first time of asking. There are, it has to be said, many in the paddock who are Rossi supporters, but who want him to be taught a lesson after his 'I want this and I'll throw my teddies until I get it' antics of last autumn.

The spin from Frederic Henry-Biabaud of Michelin after the Qatar race was that the French are putting an awful amount of effort in the Lorenzo/Toseland/Edwards side of things:

"We are not happy to have seven riders in the top ten as a revenge, but we are happy as it was not just down to tyres. Last year the guy who won was the best. There was a little bit of an excuse from Valentino last year about the fact that he could not beat him because of the tyres, but today that proves not to be exactly the case.

"And now that we have another guy on the same bike because Yamaha is playing very, very fair. Without doubt it is going to be very interesting, as Lorenzo does not fear anything. The team is going to be really behind him."

FHB was proud about getting seven riders in the top ten, particularly about getting the disbelieving Dovizioso as first Italian home, ahead of Rossi. The kid was so overcome at beating his hero he burst into tears when arriving back at the garage with fourth place in the bag.

Michelin are angry, whatever they say, and they are out to put their weight behind all three Yamahas, plus the Repsol Hondas, to fight back against Ducati. It looks like Qatar may well have been another race that was a marker for the sport in that these rookies are here, and really shaking up the old school.

We now just cannot wait until Jerez and the warmer conditions there, but Rossi must be hoping that his curse of changing tyres doesn't hang over his head like it did over Gibernau's. Can you imagine the uproar if that happens ...

*   *   *

The paddock seemed to like the whole 'get up late, lounge by the pool and then go racing until after midnight' thing.

It suited the body clocks of the Spaniards, but likewise it didn't sit so well with some others. There were a few people who were a bit sunburnt, but the prediction that some desperate soul would get sunstroke never quite came to fruition, less for one very rosy-cheeked Irishman whom I slapped on the back in jest only to leave him reeling in pain after an hour or two too long by the pool.

The racers, for whom this is all far more relevant as it is they who are flinging themselves around the race track at 200mph, didn't seem to mind it, just as US racers never mind it on their ovals.

Photographers had a few troubles getting the perfectly sharp shot, but the shots with sparks flying far made up for the ones they dropped into the bin.

Word was that American lighting company Musco had a few eco-friendly websites giving them a hard time for their involvement at the Qatar track, where they had installed 3,600 bulbs on 1,000 lamp posts burning 5.4 million watts of power for an event that really didn't need to be held under lights, with only a two-hour time difference to central Europe where the core of the sport's viewers are based.

The energy required through having enough lights to illuminate a road from Qatar to Moscow didn't go down well in some quarters, but in the eyes of Qataris, who are sitting on top of the world's third-largest gas reserve, it didn't matter as they were the first to have a GP under floodlights and have the world's eyes upon them.

Just as it is tallest tower, the biggest boats, the A-380 as a private jet, the man-made islands, the million dollar prizes in duty free; it is a competition of one-upmanship in that part of the world and Qatar have been the first to do a Grand Prix of any type at night after a not inconsiderable effort.

The weekend will, however, be remembered for just that, the very first time we ran under lights. The shots were stunning, giving bikes a depth of colour that we'd never seen before.

I mean, I knew that Ducati made their road bikes look a hue of red that I didn't know could be done anywhere else, but the GP8 Ducati with its tiny hint of metallic sparkle looked stunning. Truly a moment where you had to be there!

Rumours are that Malaysia is still in the running to go for a floodlight race, but who can afford such an undertaking? I heard a roumour that it cost £54 million for this project in Qatar!

Indeed, it may well be that the Asian racetracks will have the advantage with this whole idea of moving the time of the race to suit for European audiences, as I hear that the Singapore F1 Grand Prix will have its race starting at a normal time of 1400hrs European time, 2000hrs local time.

Maybe we can move the Laguna Seca race forward by some hours and have that at a better time than nigh-on midnight in Europe, as there is plenty of time for the USGP organisers to move that race around at Laguna.

Unfortunately some TV stations could not show the Qatar race on their main channels due to other programmes with better viewing figures, but by definition you really need a freeview, cable or satellite to watch MotoGP unless you live in Spain, Italy, Holland, Austria or the UK.

But Spain had terrible bad luck with TVE, as the first results of the general election were due to be announced right as the MotoGP bikes left the start ... not that too many people who are nuts about bikes would have been watching the first results trickling in!

It all begs the question - does MotoGP really need to wedge itself into an already tight evening schedule on European channels?

Italian TV got their usually big TV figures, but comparing the 2007 race to last weekend's race, the figures were 6.76 million 12 months ago from 6.33 million viewers at one o'clock in the afternoon, and a smaller market share this year of 27.5 percent, down from 38.2 percent.

BBC had to move the race from its usual BBC2 slot to a digital BBC3 channel, while Dutch RTL had to delay it by two hours, both because of higher-rated programmes.

F1 or football this sport is not, and it will never be. MotoGP is more successful than ever before, with healthy TV figures, but with digital TV recording on things like the Sky+ box in the UK and Tivo in the USA, live TV figures may well be a thing of the past.

The next step for coverage is obviously the internet, or the further development of WiFi/mobile broadband mobile phone TVs, or WiFi Hi-Definition iPods that will record a TV signal straight into their hard drives while still in your pocket shopping or cycling in the afternoon sun.

You can replay the race on demand, or on whichever friend's TV you wish to watch it from, straight out of your pocket. These are very exciting times for the future of TV coverage of sport as a whole as more and more sport is shot and televised well, just as it was in Qatar.

Many would prefer MotoGP to maintain its current popularity in the countries we go to and put more effort into bringing the BMWs or the KTMs into the sport than expanding the calendar and wearing mechanics to the bone.

I'll never forget Murray Walker saying that you don't want some sports to become too popular, otherwise the drunken oiks turn up and spoil it for the rest - just as happened in Spain during pre-season F1 testing.

We look forward to coming back to Qatar under the floodlights, but maybe the weather needs to be a little warmer than the two-fleeces-needed weather that we had at 11 o'clock at night. Maybe a return to the September/October slot of before might be a runner to engineer out the chill factor on tyres and grip. I hope so.

In the meantime it's late at night, sorry, early in the morning, the sun's coming up on the other side of the press office to where I saw it last, so it's time to leave. Now where's that pool and that sunburn?

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- The Autosport.com Team

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