MotoGP Testing: Sepang Summary

The first test of the year is over, so here's a brief analysis of what went on at Sepang.

Nicky Hayden finished fastest, with a blistering lap. On qualifiers. Nicky has always been quick on qualifying rubber, and the sticky stuff has always masked the innate rubbishness of the 800cc Honda chassis. He did his fastest lap with the old steel-sprung engine, saying that the new engine, whose valves boing back pneumatically, was rubbish. OK, he said it needed a lot of work, but that's about as close as the Kentuckian gets to calling things rubbish. Things are looking surprisingly mediocre for Honda at this stage on race tyres.

Dani Pedrosa was crocked when the bike chucked him down the road and broke his wrist. He has undergone microsurgery (well it'd have to be, wouldn't it?) and is on the mend. However, he made underhand remarks about Hayden's ability to develop a bike. People who ram their team mate into a gravel trap shouldn't throw stones...

Casey Stoner was ominously fast, once the Ducati's trick electronics had been fixed. Marco Melandri wasn't.

Valentino Rossi wasn't all that fast at all, but seemed to like the Bridgestones. Except when they caught him out on one of his outlaps and nearly chucked him over the perimeter fence, anyway.

Kawasaki weren't very good, but distracted everybody from this by having the test riders try a "screamer" engine, which won't be used on the race bikes in the near future. Everyone said it sounded cool, which meant they weren't talking about how slow Ant West was. He was probably looking for his grid spot.

Suzuki were kind of OK on race tyres.

Jorge Lorenzo was very quick, Colin Edwards was very quick (as usual, when it doesn't count for anything) and James Toseland is getting ever closer to his Yamaha buddies (something that James Ellison never did).

MotoGP: Green Monster Arrives At Last!

Kawasaki have finally announced that they will be sponsored by Monster Energy for the 2008 and 2009 MotoGP seasons.

I say finally as it was rumoured for quite some time. I helped spread the rumours myself with my "Hopper turns into Green Monster" post back in July.

To recap, Monster Energy is a competitor to Red Bull in the American "energy drink" (i.e. highly caffeinated sugary water) market. It is owned by Hansen Natural Corp, an American soft drinks goliath which has been giving the Monster Energy drink the hard sell to the kind of people who begin and end every sentence with the word "Dude!" This ties in nicely with Kawasaki's new nickname of "Team Dude!", which it gained by signing the paddock's top two dudes, John Hopkins and Ant West.

Monster Energy already had links with Kawasaki's AMA road racing program, and were Hopper's personal sponsor last year. They support various extreme sports that are popular in the Dude! sector, and the brand is growing rapidly thanks to the fact that the drink comes in bigger cans than Red Bull. Plus, monsters are obviously cooler than bulls, as no self-respecting monster would ever get stabbed by some Spanish bloke with a cape.

MotoGP Predictions for 2008

Time was when it was easy to make predictions about MotoGP. Just say Rossi was going to win the title and his closest rival was going to be psychologically destroyed in the process. However, the last couple of years have been harsh on the pre-season fortune tellers:

Nicky Hayden winning the championship. [Rubs eyes] Huh?
Casey Stoner winning the championship. [Spits beer everywhere] You bloody what???

So these days it's spectacularly stupid to go making predictions about the year ahead. Well, my pool of predictions is a 2-foot deep volcanic spring full of caustic soda with jaggy rocks at the bottom, and I'm diving in head first.

Major Predictions:

Honda will win the championship.
With the introduction of 800cc engines in MotoGP, a lot of things changed. Ducati got everything right, even their inspired choice of the cocky little swine at the controls. They squared the circle of having power and economy at the same time, partly down to their excellent electronics. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Italians created the defining machine of its time. They've done it before in bike racing (MV Agusta), F1 back when it was less tedious (Maserati, Ferrari) and in rallying (Lancia). What surprises everyone is firstly that the Ducati never broke down, and secondly that after being completely dismantled by the scrutineers, it was found that they didn't even massage the rules like Ferrari would have done.

The red bikes apparently had relatively little development during the season, showing just how perfect the Bologna Bullets were in the first place. However, in the last race at Valencia, Dani Pedrosa's Honda was better than Stoner's Ducati. It went round corners faster and, incredibly, it went down the straight faster too. Even accounting for Pedrosa's tiny mass, which isn't actually all that much less than the 12 year old Stoner's, the Honda clearly had about 4 million bhp more than it had done at the start of the season. I reckon that the new Ducati will be a fairly gentle evolution of the old one, partly because Ducati will have to sit back and spend less money. They're a small company, and even with the tobacco money, they won't be able to spend big on huge new advances.

Heads have rolled at HRC. People have always claimed that Honda are a company that needs to race. Balls! Honda are a company that needs to win! Several senior Japanese engineers were fired, or at least moved sideways within the organization to save face. HRC bosses will be livid that the expected domination was an embarrassing failure. Second place in the championship? Second??? Not this time. I predict that the enraged HRC will snatch the title, with their tiny robogenius Dani Pedrosa taking the number one plate now that he's good in the wet and doesn't mind overtaking.

Rossi will stop whining about stuff.
The Doctor has turned into a right moaning minnie lately. My tyres are rubbish! My bike is rubbish! My tax avoision scam is rubbish! Waaah! Waaah!

Well, now the Doctor is on Bridgestones, the same as World Champion Casey Stoner. It's incredibly unlikely that Michelin will dominate the year, more likely that they'll be roughly there or thereabouts, so you can't go wrong with Bridgestones. Rossi also has a separate garage from his lollipop-licking "team mate" Jorge Lorenzo. It's well known that Valentino prefers a single bike team. I believe that his liking for Colin Edwards was largely down to the Texan's ability to shut the hell up and stay the hell out of Rossi's way. Lorenzo would've got right up Rossi's hooter, so he'll love the peace and quiet.

Although Rossi's race engineer Jeremy Burgess has complained about the difficulties of switching tyres and going to a single bike team, the Aussie will surely love sinking his teeth into the challenge. Nobody is better qualified to do so than Burgess, who is as much of a genius setting up a bike as Rossi is riding one.

All in all, I think there will be enough to put Rossi close to the front most of the time. He was often the lead Michelin runner last season, so this season he should often be leading races. That should shut him up.

Minor Predictions:

Or should that be

Minor Predictions:

John Hopkins will take podiums on the Kawasaki.
The Green Machine was a quick bike in 2007, and should be just as good in 2008. While Randy de Puniet spent most of his time flying through the air, Hopper's experience should see him staying quick all the way to the finish line.

Marco Melandri will win at least one race.
In testing, Marco had trouble adapting to the Ducati, but he'll win something just out of sheer bloody mindedness.

The racing will be closer.
Last year was utter garbage by MotoGP standards. You could do a scam mind-reading act where you ask somebody to think of a racetrack, then say "Concentrate on the track's name... I'm picking something up... The race there was rubbish and Stoner won by miles."

This year will be different. Michelin will be less rubbish, and even if they're not, Rossi isn't using them anyway. Honda will also be less rubbish. Some of the old riders who just weren't trying that hard most of the time are gone, replaced by psychotic youngsters like Lorenzo and Dovizioso, and hard-chargers like Toseland and West. Toni Elias will have his leg back, and Sylvain Guintoli will have half-decent tyres. It should be fun.


Right. There are the predictions. Hopefully at the end of the season, I'll remember to revisit them and show just how hideously wrong they all were!

Interesting Bike Racing Sites

OK, since there's basically no news whatsoever, everybody is on a testing ban and all that, here's a look at the motorcycle racing sites I keep an eye on.

Blogs

Pure Motorbike Passion is a blog run by Alex, an Italian living in New York. He's a passionate sort of fellow with an interest in MotoGP, and as a trackday instructor he tends to pick up on technical stuff such as the lines that racers use. Also, he can understand the Italian press without using Babelfish or Google Translate, which is a bonus. Look out for his usual head-scratching poll for who will finish second in each MotoGP race.

MotoGPBlog is run by Rob, who unsurprisingly is a MotoGP fan. He always keeps an eye on the technical aspect of racing, and also has opinions worth reading on the politics of the sport.

Fastest Lap is another blog, from Nicebloke. He's a California-based Brit who follows any form of racing of any vehicle with wheels and an engine. It's always good to broaden your horizons by reading the opinions of somebody who's fanatical about four wheels as well as two.

Motorcycle Performance Blog is a site run by a bike fanatic who claims to be obsessed with "carbon fibre everything" and a big fan of bike racing. A recent addition to my links section, and one worth a bookmark.

MotoGPmatters.com, also known as Kropotkin Thinks, is the most serious and professional MotoGP blog on the net, run by Kropotkin, based in the Netherlands. If you miss a race, his blow by blow accounts of the action are unmissable. He is also right on top of any breaking news (even though I scooped him on Ant West signing for Kwaka in 2008... OK, somebody else told me on a forum, but still.)

The Biker Place is a blog that covers bike racing and general biking issues, with information on young British hopefuls on the road to MotoGP.

News Sites

Crash.net is a hideous mish-mash of horrible adverts and pop-ups, but still one of the best sources of bike and car racing on the net (damn them!) Just so long as the adverts don't make you throw up. Did I mention that they have a lot of adverts?

SuperbikePlanet is a very, very American motorcycle racing site. If Tom Clancy wrote about motorcycles, he'd write for "Soup". It'll have you chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" and following the progress of legends Nick Hayden and Colin Edwards II. Their MotoGP coverage is graced by British Eurosport commentator and motorcycle racing author Julian Ryder, whose "Ryder Notes" columns on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of each MotoGP weekend are truly unmissable. They also have great coverage of WSBK, and of course AMA racing, so all you Neil Hodgson fans should bookmark it immediately.

MotorCycleNews.com is a British motorbike newspaper/magazine with a decent racing section. The MotoGP reporter used to have a great blog, which is sadly now defunct, but he still files good stories on the MotoGP circus. They also cover the WSBK and British Superbike Championships. Beware that they do tend to jump the gun a bit when it comes to exclusive scoops, earning them the nickname of "The Comic"...

BikeSportNews.com is the website of another British biking newspaper. It's great for breaking news on the British Superbike scene, but they also have decent coverage of MotoGP and WSBK.

MotorBikeSport.co.uk is run by a British bike racing photographer, who provides race reports, news and press releases on BSB, WSBK and MotoGP.

SpeedTV is the site of an American TV sports network. Their best feature is the presence of top WSBK journalist Dennis Noyes, whose columns are always "must read."

Autosport.com is the website of the car racing magazine Autosport, which has been going since the first racing car was wheeled out of a garage by Tyrannosaurus Rex, and recently started covering MotoGP. Their free news is alright, but you have to pay a subscription to read the opinions of Julian Ryder's commentating colleague Toby Moody (screw that, I want it all for free!) If one-tyre rules make you apoplectic with rage, Moody's your man.

So there you are. The sites that I surf to when I want to keep my finger on the pulse. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some serious snoozing to do.