Why doing an Alonso won't work for Dovizioso in MotoGP

The motorsport world was sent into a frenzy on Wednesday when the Renault Formula 1 team announced it had signed double world champion Fernando Alonso to return to its fold and the series in 2021 following, what will be, a two-year sabbatical.

Sabbaticals are all the rage in sport, and they obviously must be quite enjoyable as Mika Hakkinen is still on his!

Last week, Andrea Dovizioso's manager Simone Battistella told the Spanish MotoGP podcast, Change the Map, that his rider was now considering a year out as an option as talks between himself and Ducati have stalled again.

"It is an option that we value," Battistella said of Dovizioso taking a sabbatical. "If the conditions are not met, he prefers not to continue. Andrea is not thinking about retiring, he feels strong and well, he is in the best shape and he does not think about leaving.

"It is true that if you do not have an interesting project you are not interested in accepting, you are willing to wait until it arrives. That does not mean he is going to retire, it means that he is not going to have a team to race in and he is going to wait for that project to come."

As coronavirus has wrought financial ruin across the globe and dick-kicked the motoring manufacturing business particularly, Ducati faces choppy waters as it had to suspend production through March and most of April owing to lockdown restrictions in Italy. Though it has now started assembling its - let's face it - high-powered luxury items again, lockdown hit at the key time most people would normally buy a motorcycle in preparation for a summer of riding.

To try and keep itself afloat, Ducati wants to bring an end to big-money rider contracts in its racing programmes. And this is where the friction between Ducati and Dovizioso has emerged.

Dovizioso's current deal signed back in 2018 in the wake of his sensational but ultimately unsuccessful charge to the 2017 title is thought to be worth around €6 million. It's assumed Ducati wants to slash this by at least half, as well as renegotiating financial terms for this year owing to the fact there will only (at the moment anyway) be 13 races.

While new 2020 terms were said to have been agreed by Ducati last month, Battistella revealed this wasn't the case and that "we are still defining" this.

Battistella hints that Ducati could have treated Dovizioso better, but does admit that would be "easy" for him to say as his manager and that it truly depends on the results achieved by both parties on track.

Dovizioso is entitled to his opinion of his worth to Ducati, and with some justification. Joining the squad at its nadir in 2013, after two miserable years almost killed Valentino Rossi's career (at great expense to the bill payers at Borgo Panigale), Dovizioso persevered through the drudgery and helped shape the demon child Desmosedici into a competent package.

Now, that's not to say Dovizioso hasn't earned his stature. He's the only one in the last seven years to have actually fought Marquez for a MotoGP crown, and that's not something to be sniffed at

Vindicating Ducati's decision to keep him for 2017 over the unpredictable-but-arguably-quicker Andrea Iannone, embarrassing Jorge Lorenzo (who was on a substantially bigger pay packet) in the process, Dovizioso has remained Marc Marquez's nearest rival in the championship for the past three seasons.

However, that particular fact does shroud the reality. From winning six races in 2017 and taking the title fight down to the wire, Dovizioso won four in 2018 but went from being 37 points adrift to 76, and was 151 points behind an ultra-consistent Marquez last year having managed just two victories.

And let's not forget that, when Ducati finally delivered him the fuel tank design tweak he had been requesting, Lorenzo was generally the quicker of the two factory Ducati riders in 2018 and led Dovizioso in the standings (albeit by a point) ahead of the San Marino Grand Prix. Two crashes, at Misano and Aragon, and a third in Thailand which ruled him out until Valencia due to a broken wrist, stopped any potential for Dovizioso to be headed in the championship.

It's been six years since Alonso last stood on an F1 podium, his move to McLaren sending him to the back of the pack. But he rejoins F1 at least with the credence of being a double F1 world champion, almost dragging an unfancied Ferrari to a third title in 2012, and generally being one of the fastest drivers of this generation.

Now, that's not to say Dovizioso hasn't earned his stature. He's the only one in the last seven years to have actually fought Marquez for a MotoGP crown (yes, Lorenzo did win in 2015, but Marquez wasn't a title protagonist), and that's not something to be sniffed at. But he isn't a world champion in the premier class after 12 years of asking and he is a titleless 34-year-old.

Thus, taking a sabbatical in 2021 is a gamble that isn't likely to pay off for Dovizioso.

With the level as high as it is now in MotoGP, a year on the sidelines will more than likely leave you at an unsurmountable disadvantage. Yes, Ducati could find that its works team line-up of Jack Miller and whoever is brought in to replace Dovizioso, and the likely Pramac line-up of Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia, don't deliver the results it has come to expect over the past three years and will be all too happy to slide into Dovizioso's DMs.

But the problem with this play is twofold. Firstly, the name repeatedly touted to take the seat which could become Dovizioso-less is none other than Lorenzo.

The Spaniard recently rubbished these rumours, but there's no smoke without fire. And, as Ducati management proved midway through last year when it tried to court Lorenzo away from Honda to Pramac for 2020, it's not afraid to swallow its pride in the pursuit of glory - well, the sensible members of Ducati management at least.

And in a year as mental as 2020 has been already, a line-up of Miller - the man Ducati was willing to dump to accommodate Lorenzo's return - and Lorenzo wouldn't be the most surprising thing to happen. And if it were to happen, based on past form, Lorenzo isn't likely to struggle on a bike he partially helped develop.

Secondly, factories' push for youth has gone wild for 2021. Yamaha will field Maverick Vinales and Fabio Quartararo; Suzuki is keeping Alex Rins and Joan Mir; Ducati, as mentioned, has Miller with potentially Bagnaia and Martin on works-supported Pramac bikes; KTM has plumped for Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira at its factory team, with Iker Lecuona at Tech3 alongside the positively-ancient-by-comparison Danilo Petrucci.

Marquez being just 27 and having romped through the past seven years, and Quartararo's breakout rookie campaign last year at just 20 years old are the main factors behind MotoGP's grid becoming a nursery. And with that, any factory re-signing Dovizioso for 2022 would appear to be massively out of touch.

And going back to the fact that he'd lose a year, history doesn't often reflect well on sabbatical-taker comebacks. Randy Mamola, for example, sat out 1991 following a stint with Cagiva, and the 13-time 500cc grand prix winner only managed one podium on a customer Yamaha on his return in 1992.

Given the fact Ducati has paused talks until August to evaluate Dovizioso's performances in the early rounds also suggests the Italian marque is confident the ball is in its court

Retiring at the end of 2006 after Ducati opted to replace him with Casey Stoner for 2007, Sete Gibernau returned in 2009 with Francisco Hernando's Ducati squad. But he could only manage a best of 11th at Jerez, missed two races through injury and was out mid-season owing to financial woes with the team.

Of course, each sabbatical is different, but the point stands: there's no guarantee that the situation you left will be the same when you return, even if it is just one year away.

The obvious question now is whether this is simply a tactic from Dovizioso and his management to get what they want out of Ducati.

It's hard to imagine Ducati going back on its new outlook financially given the circumstances, and with the prospect of a Lorenzo return or a much cheaper rookie option, a roll of the dice for Dovizioso is likely only going to come up snake eyes.

Given the fact Ducati has paused talks until August to likely evaluate Dovizioso's performances in the early rounds - which could suffer depending on how fit his left shoulder is following the crash in a motocross race at the end of last month (which Ducati gave him, but not team-mate Petrucci permission to compete in) that broke his collarbone - also suggests the Italian marque is confident the ball is in its court.

So, the talk of a sabbatical being likely is serious, but if Dovizioso opts out of 2021, then it's highly unlikely his hiatus will be temporary.

And what a sad way that would be to cap off a pretty incredible career.