The Podcast In Print: Point/Counterpoint by Ed Sorbo and Michael Gougis
(Eds. Note: Racers Ed Sorbo and Michael Gougis talk incessantly about motorcycle road racing on the phone and in podcasts. Apparently, that’s not enough, because they also exchange emails on the subject. We’ll publish some of their exchanges.)
MOTOGP IN 2015:
Ed Sorbo:
I think 2015 will be another mind boggling year of MotoGP racing. The unanswerable question is who will win. The four Aliens have the speed to win. They all work hard, understand how to find the best set up, communicate well with their team. They all make good strategic and tactical decisions – in other words, they are chess masters sitting still and going 200 mph.
During the off season, the stage will be set by unnamed gear heads and geeks. By staffers, planners and drivers. By the changes the riders make in their training. By the support given by family, friends and significant others.
Who is the most motivated? Who learned the most useful new thing near the end of 2014? Who will have the most luck?
Don’t underestimate the effect of the gear heads and geeks. We are in a new era of bikes with more power than they can use. If the code is wrong and the bike can’t hook up or the cuts are too big, there is little any rider can do in that race but ride for points.
I say Dani Pedrosa. Most will pick Marquez, I understand that, I love how Lorenzo rides and I want the old guy to win as much as any other AARP member. But Dani knows he has to step it up. He made a big change to his team. You can be sure he is motivated and has changed his off season approach. His racing family knows this too, they will be working and thinking just as hard. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, put away your anger over that mistake years ago, look for the guy with the drive.
Open class: Nicky Hayden. His wrist is fixed. His bike will be much faster and he has the drive too.
Michael Gougis:
Ed: You couldn’t be more wrong.
In terms of motorsport, 2014 might have been the biggest ass-kicking of modern times. Of four people on roughly equal, front-line competitive machines (the Honda and Yamaha factory bikes) one guy took 72 percent of the wins.
He beat his teammate on the same bike 13-1. During the “bad” part of his season, he won more races than anyone. During the “bad” part of his season, he won as many races as Dani Pedrosa (the third-winningest rider in MotoGP history) and Valentino Rossi – combined. He beat Rossi by the number of wins – 11 – from Rossi’s best year, which last happened a decade ago!
And this is nothing new. He dominated the 125cc class when he rode there. He demolished the Moto2 class of “equal” machines. By the end of his Moto2 career, race organizers were making up reasons to make him start from the back of the grid. I didn’t know the MotoGP rulebook forbid wearing white shoes after Labor Day. He didn’t give two craps – he would just slice his way through from the back and win.
Marc Marquez has more of the one thing that matters more than anything in racing – speed. He has had this advantage in every class he’s raced in, over several seasons. And nothing that racing has thrown at him over the course of several years has fazed him. Most of the time, he is riding with speed in hand, waiting for the right moment to simply pull away from the best riders in the world.
Predicting anyone other than Marquez to win is like predicting a shift in the orbit of the Earth tomorrow. Not saying it won’t happen, but based on the evidence at hand …
Sorbo:
MG, you ignorant slut:
No problem being more wrong, picking anyone outside the Aliens would do just fine for that.
MM has been winning, we all saw that. He looks set to continue. Step out on a limb and pick the guy at the top of his game, you are in the majority. I’m not saying he will slow down. I think he will be faster and stronger than ever. But it’s harder to take big risks when you have a big advantage, you have more to lose.
Pedrosa has the least to lose, he has the speed, the bike and a new crew. He knows what he needs to improve, the first third of the race.
Buy popcorn in the economy size bag. Turn the volume up to eleven. Lets get ready to bask in the reflected glory of what these humans will do.
Gougis:
Who you calling ignorant?
It’s not just the record. It’s the margin, the gap that the opposition has to close. I’m looking forward to, say, this year’s Superbike World Championship, because the rules have been gerrymandered to try to get a Ducati into the winner’s circle – and quickly. There’s a change in the machinery that could – potentially – shake up the order.
Similarly, in AMA Pro Road Racing, the Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 has been not too far off the pace of the Yamaha YZF-R1. The first few races will tell the tale, because if the Yamaha guys are off their game just a bit as they work with the new bike, the Suzuki guys will pounce. You don’t ever underestimate a Hayden in leathers. And the existing gap is small.
But in MotoGP for next year, there is a huge gap between Marquez and the rest that would have to be closed for things to be different. And the rules are the same, tires are pretty much the same, and the machines and riders remain unshuffled – with the possible exception of Ducati finally figuring out how to get a bike to turn.
With so little change to the elemental components, it’s hard to see the final amalgam looking much different.
Sorbo:
Rules, data, cams and gears, computer code, all important, true. None of that has heart, drive, determination, emotion. Multiply that feeling by the crew, the staff, family, the desk clerk who says “Go get ’em” as you walk out the door on the way to the track and you have the power to change the world.
The gap per lap between MM and the other three is small. They don’t have to beat him like he did to them. Only one of them as to earn just one more point than MM does.
Either we will see another exciting repeat of last year or we will see the wins spread out evenly between all four. I see the battle coming down to the last round with three of them in with a chance for the title and one spoiler trying to help his team mate, if that team mate has been nice to him.
Pedrosa is the Little Engine That Could.