In Pit Lane – The unstoppable force

If I knew what a flabber was, I would certainly know that it has been thoroughly and repeatedly gasted. By Valentino Rossi.

I must admit that I was one of the doubters who wondered whether his recent broken leg might be an injury too far: that on his bed of pain he might wonder what was the point. Knocking on for 40, surrounded by piles of money big enough to block out the light, a similar number of trophies, every ambition achieved and facing a challenge that gets tougher every year, as young talented riders keep feeding in …

I seriously believed he might now think it was time to relax and enjoy the fruits, to devote himself not to out-riding the crop of bright young Italian wannabes who attend his training ranch and ride for his ever-expanding SKY VR46 empire, but to find an easier way of nurturing their talents.

There really is nothing left for Valentino to prove.

Well, he promptly showed the world that there was one thing – to prove us doubters completely wrong. In spades. I hang my head.

Valentino broke the 26-day double-fracture return record set in 2010 by Randy de Puniet, by being back on a MotoGP bike on day 22. We know the rest: he qualified on the front row at Aragon, challenged for the lead and finished a very close fifth, less than six seconds behind winner Marquez.

I mean … wow.

But I also mean – gee, Valentino, do you really need to put yourself through this? Where can this all end?

It’s hard to work your way up in racing to reach the highest level. True, Rossi had a primrose path, but it was talent that drove him along it at top speed. Some riders lack such help and guidance and as a result, never get there. But for nobody is it actually easy.

It is clearly often much harder to stop.

Of the champions I’ve known, some quite well, there are very few who actually made it out into real life with their dignity fully intact. Kenny Roberts Senior, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Gardner and the shining example, Casey Stoner.

Leaving out those who, like Rainey, Doohan and to a large extent Schwantz, were forced to stop by injury, there are more stories of sad decline than the other thing.

Even Giacomo Agostini didn’t go out on a very high note; no GP wins in his final year of 1977, by which time he’d left Yamaha for a pointless MV return, then come back to Yamaha.

Thigh to be fair, he did win a couple of F750 races that year.

Multi-champion Phil Read was battling along as a privateer when he jumped in his Rolls Royce halfway through the Belgian GP of 1976 and went home in a huff.

Then there are the battles of Freddie Spencer, who had shone every bit as brilliantly as Marquez today. The two have a lot in common: including precocious youth and a gift during races of apparently crashing without actually falling off.

Fast Freddie was a mid-1980s giant-killer who humbled Kenny Roberts. Always enigmatic, he then ran out of motivation and eventually also money, after a series of pitiful come-backs. It was hard to watch a multiple world champion who had been so inspiring, lose his own inspiration. Fast Freddie didn’t deserve that.

So what of today’s top dogs? What fate awaits them?

How long can Marquez sustain his current intensity? Will Vinales really be able, as he once suggested, to simply win the title once, then leave it at that? What compulsion will keep Pedrosa going, when he seems doomed to be forever coming second? And so on, down the grid.

But I’ll tell you what. You could get tired, old and grey  waiting for Valentino to run out of steam. 

By Michael Scott

(As appeared in AMCN Vol 67 No 09)