MotoGP 2009 New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's nearly the new year, so here are some new year's resolutions for the major protagonists in MotoGP.

Valentino Rossi: Keep kicking ass.

Casey Stoner: Stop falling off.

Adriana Stoner: Keep being gorgeous.

Uccio Salucci: Try the Atkins diet.

Dani Pedrosa: Learn to overtake, for God's sake!

Andrea Dovizioso: Rub that dwarf's nose in it!

Jorge Lorenzo: Be confident, but not too confident.

Colin Edwards: Keep talking yourself up.

James Toseland: Practise that piano, you might need it some day (unless you return to WSBK!)

John Hopkins: Stop hurting yourself, dude!

Marco Melandri: Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Nicky Hayden: Keep doin' what you're doin', bro!

Loris Capirossi: Keep collecting the pay cheque.

Chris Vermeulen: Start winning in the dry, cobber!

Sete Gibernau: Stop taking that vicious African dictator's blood money and retire, you tit!

Randy de Puniet: Buy shares in carbon fibre fairing companies.

Toni Elias: Keep being a total fruit loop.

Alex di Angelis: Stay out of Frisco with that crash hat.

Mika Kallio: Give better interviews than Kimi Raikkonen.

Yuki Takahashi: Wring that Honda's neck!

Niccolo Canepa: Stay as close to Stoner as you are on the test track.

Doctor Costa: Buy some new duct tape to  heal the riders with.

Dorna: Stop dicking with the rules!

What Does Honda's F1 Shutdown Mean For MotoGP?

The global credit crunch is really starting to take a big chomp out of motorsport, with the shock announcement that Honda has ditched its Boremula One team and run screaming for the hills. Like virtually all car manufacturers, Honda is in a major crisis as nobody can afford to buy a new car. What does Honda's bailout from F1 mean for MotoGP?

Firstly, let's look at why Honda left F1. For a start, they were performing atrociously, having built one of the worst cars on the grid. Their drivers were quite highly rated in terms of speed, but lagged behind the sheer punchability of the leading pilots. (There has been a shocking drop in Jenson Button's punchability lately, and most people would rather punch an injured baby rabbit than Button's Brazilian team-mate, whatsisname, the guy off Frasier.) Then there was Honda's F1 budget: a staggering $500 million per year. Half a billion dollars to build that crapwagon and hire those loveable losers??? Credit crunch... plummeting car sales... Mayday! Mayday!... Eject! Eject!

Could this happen to Honda's MotoGP project? You'd be an idiot if you didn't say yes, it's a possibility. HRC spends bucketloads of money on MotoGP, some people estimating anything from $50-100 million per year. (Admittedly a bargain compared to their worthless F1 effort.) If Honda pulled their two factory, one semi-factory and three privateer bikes off the 2009 grid, MotoGP would be massively screwed. By my count, that would put the MotoGP field at around 12 bikes. (You couldn't just buy the old Hondas and keep running them without HRC support, these things ain't 2-strokes.) However, I believe that Honda will stay in MotoGP, and here are the reasons why.

Firstly, while Honda made crap F1 cars, they make damn good MotoGP bikes. Not the best, but they are race winning, front-row qualifying machines. Secondly, Honda have some very good riders. Pedrosa is no overtaker but he's blisteringly quick. Dovizioso looks like being quick and a great racer, so the pair of them should get race wins next year. Add that to the fact that Pedrosa is, partly thanks to his sub-atomic size, the best starter in MotoGP, so he will lead the field into the first corner half the time. That's good advertising. Throw in the fact that Honda supply a third of the bikes on the grid and could not pull out without causing the greatest crisis in the history of MotoGP, and this pullout looks extremely unlikely.

One of the newspaper reports about the Honda F1 bailout said that removing F1 racing from Honda makes its whole existence pointless, because car racing is in their blood. Well the writer of that article is an idiot. Honda isn't a car company, it's a bike company that makes cars. (And lawnmowers, generators, outboards, etc.) Old man Honda started out with bicycles, then motorcycle engines, then motorcycles. Honda started winning motorcycle Grand Prix championships (125cc and 250cc) in 1961, two years before they even entered F1.

Honda's first ever production car was the 1963 S500, a beautiful, rollerskate-sized sports car heavily influenced by state of the art motorcycle technology, its tiny 531cc inline-4, double overhead cam, quad-carburettor, 4-stroke engine delivering peak power at a howling 8000rpm through chain drive to the rear wheels. Their first car to be widely sold outside Japan was the 1965 S800, still tiny but with a larger 791cc engine.

So Honda's bailout from F1 is worrying, but their MotoGP programme shouldn't be in immediate jeopardy. Their budget may well take a hit, but so will everyone else's. Still, it will make everybody in MotoGP a little uneasy knowing that the impossible can happen when there's a big enough credit crunch.

Top 5 Reasons Why Rossi Won't Do F1

The old rumours about Valentino Rossi moving to Boremula One are doing the rounds again, even though we all know he won't do it. Here are the top 5 reasons why Vale will never lower himself to competing in F1.

1. MotoGP might be dull and predictable in the 800cc era, but Formula 1 makes it look like pure chaos. The whole F1 circus disappeared up its own rear end many years ago, turning to pit-lane "overtaking", and is now soul-destroyingly tedious to watch. Vale couldn't bear it.
   
   
2. Rossi is too interesting. F1 drivers make Dani Pedrosa look like the life and soul of the party. They are the most boring bunch of platitude-mouthing, smug, punchable dullards ever assembled outside of parliament.
   
   
3. F1 isn't customizable enough. A MotoGP rider gets to customize his leathers, which are on show all the time. Rossi's are covered in luminous yellow. MotoGP race numbers are also customized, like Rossi's huge yellow 46. F1 drivers get to customize the bits of their crash lid in between the corporate logos, and if they're lucky they get different coloured wing mirrors to their team mate. Their race numbers are all but invisible amongst the sponsorship decals. Too uniform for Valentino.
   
   
4. The F1 paddock is too obsessed with appearances. Drivers don't have their tubby former school pals to help them out, they have their inflatable blonde du jour standing in the garage pretending that she knows what's going on. Uccio just wouldn't fit in.
   
   
5. Rossi isn't good enough at tax evasion. This is the one area where F1 drivers truly excel. Witness Lewis Hamilton moving straight to Switzerland when he got famous. OK, Lewis told arrogant lies on a popular TV chat show about it being a move to avoid the paparazzi, becoming unpopular with the British public in the process, but he never took his eye off the goal of avoiding taxes. Rossi is rubbish at tax avoidance. He would be laughed out of the F1 paddock.
   

DVD Review: The Doctor, The Tornado & The Kentucky Kid

The festive season is on the way, and people are casting around for gift ideas, so here's a review of a MotoGP documentary DVD: The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucky Kid. It comes from the makers of the definitive MotoGP documentary, Faster. It's narrated by Ewan McGregor. It tells the story of MotoGP's return to the United States, at Laguna Seca in 2005.

This documentary is obviously aimed at the U.S. market, as it follows three American MotoGP riders: Nicky Hayden, Colin Edwards and John Hopkins. Alright, Hopper is English by blood and Edwards is half Australian (his Aussie dad is interviewed) but it's basically Yankocentric. Although Valentino Rossi appears in the title, there isn't anywhere near as much of him as of the three Americans.

While Faster followed MotoGP in the transitional period where 500cc 2-stroke bikes were being replaced by 990cc 4-stroke machines, The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucky Kid is centred on one race weekend in the 990cc era, giving it a different feel. It doesn't bother trying to introduce all of the racers and engineers, just sticks with its three main characters. That's no bad thing, as Nicky, Colin and Hopper are all hugely likeable and charismatic individuals.

The first part of the documentary introduces our three heroes, tells us how they got started in racing, talks to some of their family members, and describes the history of the Laguna Seca racetrack. Next it guides us through the practise and qualifying sessions. Finally, it shows us the race from the viewpoints of Nicky, Colin and Hopper.

This is where the documentary really shines. There is a great deal of on-bike footage, with voice-overs from the three lads and Valentino talking about what they were thinking at that stage of the race. The in-depth treatment makes the difference between this documentary and Faster. Having watched this year's series of 800cc snoozefests, it's great to see a good, honest 990cc race. Grumbling, torquey bikes and overtaking are the name of the game, and it's brilliant.

It isn't just an update to Faster, like Faster and Faster (which was packaged as part of a 2-disk set with Faster). It's a separate documentary that stands up on its own.

So, would I recommend it as a gift, or as something to put on your wish-list? In a word, yes. The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucky Kid is well worth having. It complements Faster nicely, and it makes you yearn for the 990cc era. The running time is a generous 1 hour 43 minutes, and there are plenty of DVD extras, especially with the 2-disk version. Any MotoGP fan will love it.