With a restructured entry system and a new champion there’s much to look forward to in the motogp season
Last year’s Motorcycle Grand Prix world championship season was supposed to be all about the return of the sport’s resident megastar Valentino Rossi to Yamaha and take on teammate and defending champion Jorge Lorenzo after the former suffered two years of sub-par results – by his stratospheric standards – at Ducati. Instead the 2013 MotoGP season turned into Lorenzo’s valiant but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to stop Honda’s superstar rookie Marc Marquez from becoming the youngest rider in MotoGP history to win the crown and the first rookie to do so since 1978, when Kenny Roberts triumphed.
However, already it seems like 2014 is going to be a race for Marquez to get fit enough to ride and defend his crown.
The 21-year-old was, at the time of writing this, recovering from a fractured fibula bone in his right leg that was picked up during pre-season training.
Because as of this moment, Lorenzo is poised to make the strong start to the season he usually does while consistently banging out fast laps and either causing his opponents to up their game astronomically or fall by the wayside.
Marquez did it last year, some are betting on Rossi to do so this year as the Italian gets used to not having long time race engineer Jeremy Burgess by his side and re-cement his place in the Yamaha squad as the number one rider.
AWAY FROM THE BIG TWO
Another interesting battle between riders to be top of the heap in a team will be the factory Ducati team. America’s former MotoGP champ Nicky Hayden has had enough of suffering at the Italian squad too and has returned to the constructor that gave him a bike worthy to win a title in 2006.
Hayden will be riding a Honda in the ‘Open Class’ – as opposed to the ‘Factory Class’ where the top squads from Honda, Yamaha and Ducati do battle – that features bikes that use a different throttle mapping system on the Engine Control Unit from the Factory Class machines.
Hayden’s exit has brought Tech 3 Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow to the factory Ducati squad in his place to compete against Andrea Dovizioso.
It will be of interest to see if Crutchlow can carry forward the form he showed in 2013 – four podiums and fifth place in the points standings – or will he just wilt under the challenge of trying to get the Ducati to be more than just a team that sells merchandise and get back to title and race-winning form of 2007 and 2008.
Twenty-one-year-old Englishman who was the runner-up in the Moto2 category will step up into MotoGP in an Open Class Honda as the sole entrant for the Honda Gresini squad, which has split its participation by entering Alvaro Bautista in the Factory Class.
CLASSES APART
The 24-rider field has been split 11 to 13 between the Factory and Open Classes this year, with Honda being the only enrant to straddle both. It’s a sign of the times perhaps – even though the split is just in favour of the Open Class – that you see less riders in the Factory Class.
The problems of controlling costs is taken just as seriously in the top billed two-wheel show on Earth as in its four-wheeled counterpart.
TESTING TIMES
MotoGP too cut its in-season testing drastically enough to not allow factory riders to participate in the development sessions that the squads’ reserve riders would do duty in.
This year, prior to the start of the season, MotoGP riders get 12 days of pre-season testing split among Sepang, Philip Island in Australia and Losail in Qatar (six, three and three days, respectively).
The issue of the lack of testing available was cited as the reason for Rossi to never succeed at Ducati while a more ‘natural’ rider like Stoner managed to force race wins out of the ill-behaving bike given to him.
It’ll be worth checking out if there will be a massive change in the form book due to Marquez’s injury woes or if his new status as the top dog on two-wheels will only continue to grow.
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