Straight Gangsta ...

Wrapping up the MotoGP title early allows for a viewing of the season from some distance, from a different perspective, a chance to see some of the other realities that the 2016 campaign has brought into focus. The season has been more than just a showcase for the otherworldly talents of Marc Marquez. For those willing to look a little deeper, it showcases some other truths about racing in general, the industry of Grand Prix racing, and where Grand Prix racing fits into the broader picture of those who pay for it. It shows that HRC may just be straight racer gangsta, and that's meant to be a compliment. The object of the day, after all, isn't entertainment or fair competition. It's beating the others and demonstrating, beyond doubt, that you are best.

Consider:

- The spec electronics package hasn't done a thing to make the racing better. Not a thing. Many of the races have been runaways, with virtually no lead changes past the halfway point. Take away the unpredictable weather of 2016, injuries and the frightening tire lottery that Michelin has hurled at the competitors, and you see the same or even bigger gaps at the front of the field. 

Interestingly, an argument could be made that the spec electronics have made things worse, because teams and factories no longer have the wide array of capabilities of last year's electronics to refine their bikes to the edge of their performance abilities. You could argue that the spec electronics have given satellite teams a better shot at the wins. But that ignores the fact that it has been one factory that has made the best use of the rules package this year, and the success of only that manufacturer's satellite teams has been at the expense of the other factory squads. 

In Australia, on a satellite Honda, Cal Crutchlow straight-up, flat-out beat the best that the Yamaha, Suzuki and Ducati factory teams could throw at him. Only those ignorant of how racing works ever believed that spec electronics would "level the playing field" or "make things more competitive" at the front.

- HRC didn't even bother starting to sort out its electronics by the start of the season. It was clear, when Marquez and Dani Pedrosa were complaining about a lack of acceleration, that horsepower wasn't the problem - it's never the problem on a modern MotoGP bike. It's getting the power to the ground. Last year's RC213V had a honed-to-perfection set of electronic rider aids that tamed the wheelies. This year's crappier electronics package wasn't sorted at the beginning of the season, so the bike wheelied and the riders couldn't get on the gas like the Ducati and Yamaha riders could.

HRC's attitude seemed to be, we'll fix it when we get around to it. 

And that attitude is kind of understandable. 

There was no consensus as to when the wings would be banned - not if they would, but when. No sense in developing an electronics suite that worked only with an aero package that would be thrown in the dumpster in a month. 

There were the unpredictable Michelin tires to sort out.

And you have to remember that a race team isn't a stand-alone entity. It's part of a huge corporation, fighting for money with all of the other parts of that huge corporation. And it's hard for a race team to make a plea for funding and resources to make the crappy spec electronics do "X" when someone else in the board room says, "Hey, didn't we give you money to do 'X' with the package you had last year? Where did that money go? And don't we have a bike in the production lineup that already does 'X'?" It's embarrassing for the race team to explain that the MotoGP rules now ban the company's upcoming CBR1000RR's electronics package that will cost - literally - a mere few hundred dollars per unit.

So, in straight gangsta fashion, HRC sat and waited, completely confident that it would get everything sorted out in time to take the championship. Sometimes, the boldest move is to stand still and wait for the exact moment to attack. And the definition of gangsta is knowing that when you do move, you will crush the competition.

It took Honda and HRC until the post-Brno test to get around to sorting out the electronics package, according to Marquez. By then, the wings were heading for the recycle bin, so Honda stuck a pair of big ones on the front of the bike and called it a day on wing research. Marquez was starting to understand the Michelins. And it was clearer and clearer what the engineers needed to do with the spec electronics.

Honda now has won seven of the nine last rounds on a bike that the "experts" criticized as an ill-handling slug at the beginning of the year. With no mid-season changes to the engine spec allowed, the thing is now virtually a match in a straight line for the fastest bikes in the field, the Ducatis. And it handles well enough that not only the factory riders, but the satellite riders, can get the thing going well.

Sometimes gangsta is sitting on the sidelines, knowing that when the time is right, you can stride in and let everyone else on the grid know exactly who the 800-pound gorilla is.


 

The Kenan Principle

  
Laurence J. Peter noted that employees tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence and stay there. No higher-up wants to admit they made a mistake and demote someone they promoted. So over time, the principle suggests, in any given hierarchy, most positions get filled by incompetents.

Racing works this way, too. Teams, mechanics, engineers and particularly riders get noticed by winning in the lower ranks and then move into more and more challenging environments. It is easiest to see in rider careers; when the rider stops winning, there are no more promotions. Riders must exhibit not just competence, but excellence, by dominating in the lower divisions before they get the call-up for a front-line shot at the big leagues.



Jorge Lorenzo crushed the 250cc GP field in 2006 and 2007, winning 17 races in two years and taking the title easily both years; Yamaha had his name on a contract to ride its factory MotoGP bike before his second year was even well and truly started. Valentino Rossi won 11 125cc GP races in 1997, and that got him a 250cc GP ride. He won nine 250cc GP races in 1999, and that got him a factory 500cc Honda ride - and the wrenching skills of Jerry Burgess to help out. 

It's interesting to look at Casey Stoner's career, because he didn't dominate the lower classes in the same way, and he wasn't invited to ride the front-line weaponry. Stoner kicked his way into racing immortality through the back door, taking the less-fancied Ducati MotoGP ride and riding that evil, scorching missile straight to his first World Championship.

What Marc Marquez did to the lower classes doesn't even need to be mentioned, to avoid embarrassing his competitors - and you have to use the loosest definition of competitor in that context.

Those four riders account for 15 of the last 16 500cc/MotoGP World Champions. The only interloper was one Nicky Hayden, who got his ride in MotoGP by, frankly, making the rest of the AMA Superbike paddock look slow.

So what of the rest? What are they to do? Especially those who show that they have the talent, the skills and the bravery, to ride at the very front in the lower ranks?

Ego and finances sometimes dictate that a racer chooses to ride mid-pack in a higher division rather than to race for the wins in the lower classes. Personal sponsors pay more for exposure in the higher ranks, and it can be easier to get those sponsors to begin with. And sometimes that will pay more than a salary in a lower division, even the salary of a race- and title-winner. So you'll see riders sign on with satellite teams in, say, World Superbike, rather than race for wins in World Supersport.

Kenan Sofuoglu seems to be one of those racers who had the choice. His career is fascinating. In his rookie World Supersport season in 2006, he won two races, then crushed the competition in 2007 for his first World Championship. The next year, he moved up to World Superbike on a satellite-equivalent team (he was on the third Ten Kate bike on what the squad called a junior team) and wasn't successful. He moved back down to his level of competence, struggled the next season, then came back in 2010 and won his second World Championship.

For 2011, he moved to Moto2. One podium in 14 starts was not the level of success he sought. The next year, he moved back to World Supersport, his level of competence, this time with Kawasaki, and won his third World Championship.

The next season was pivotal. Sofuoglu had the choice to move back to Superbike with a team that does not have full factory support. Had Sofuoglu gone, he would have been in the same place that he had been in 2008. Sofuoglu chose instead to stay in World Supersport. He's since gotten two more World titles. He now has more Supersport World Championships than any other racer. 

He is revered as a sports figure in his home country of Turkey; when his ailing son was dying, the president of the country publicly announced that all of the country's resources would be at the disposal of Sofuoglu's family so Kenan could go race. And Sofuoglu mentors and manages young Turkish riders, one of whom, Toprak Razgatlioglu, won the 2015 European Superstock 600 Championship.

It's easy to say from the sidelines that every racer should always race in the highest possible class. But by functioning at his level of competence, Sofuoglu has not only made himself a legend, but has increased the visibility of the sport and given younger riders chances they might not have otherwise had.

Practicing the Kenan Principle, in other words, has worked out not just for Sofuoglu, but for the sport. Not a bad principle by which to live.

Getting Stuck In ...

 
... is a British informal phrase, defined as to "start doing (something) enthusiastically or with determination." In the world of motorcycle road racing, it is most often heard during the broadcasts of British Superbike series racing, when one of the riders with a reputation for more bollocks than brains arrives on the scene of a scrap for position and an announcer booms out, "Oh yeah! 'eel get stuck in, 'ee will!"

Endurance racing requires a different type of "getting stuck in." It requires brains and controlled aggression. It takes a rider who is blindingly quick and equally smart, someone who knows exactly when to dive to the inside of another rider for an apex and who knows when to hold off. Raw speed remains critical, but discretion usually is the better part of valor in an eight-hour or longer contest. Actually, it's usually the smart move in a race as short as a GP or a Superbike World Championship sprint race.

But sometimes, sometimes ... 

 
Let's just say that there is such a thing as being too smart. Motorcycle racers do things that seemingly defy the laws of physics. And when you try to do something that you're not sure if it's going to work, if you open the throttle 10 yards earlier than you thought was possible or brake 10 yards later, the resulting euphoria can be addicting. Abandoning caution - and making it work - can take your breath away. Racers live for moments like those.

Anthony Delhalle is one of the best in the business when it comes to balancing speed and aggression. He's a multi-time World Champion in the discipline of motorcycle endurance road racing. His speed is undeniable, his mistakes rare, and the combination of the two makes him one of the most-respected figures in his field and a pillar of the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team rider squad.

Into Delhalle's orbit entered one Juan Eric Gomez, also a World Endurance co-champion for SERT and a manager for Racing Team JEG, which races in the FIM CEV Repsol European Championship. It's a private but professional operation based in Spain that helps give up-and-coming riders and mechanics in the sport experience in the field of motorcycle road racing. 

Gomez kept offering Delhalle a spot on the Superbike he fielded. Delhalle always had a good reason to turn the offer down - he was a contracted Suzuki rider at the time JEG campaigned a competing brand. There were conflicting race dates between the FIM EWC and the Repsol CEV championship.

But this year, Gomez went out and got a Suzuki. And Delhalle had no reason to say no anymore. Dominique Meliand, SERT manager, wasn't thrilled with the plan, but didn't say no. "Obviously, I do not think he jumped to the ceiling saying "whouaaa, it's great," Delhalle told Moto Revue.

So Delhalle went sprint racing. He offers very logical reasons. It's good training, something he can't get with SERT, which can't afford to go testing whenever its riders want to go riding. A front-line EWC bike is an expensive, sophisticated piece of kit. And in the Repsol series, Delhalle rides a different brand of tires and can learn something, and he can push his personal limits as well.

The point of all of this is that if you haven't seen it yet, go to Youtube and watch the Repsol CEV Superbike races from Jerez this season. The highlight, beyond any question, is watching Delhalle getting stuck in, good 'un proper.

The first indication that Delhalle is dropping "controlled" from "controlled aggression" comes about two-thirds of the way through the first race of the double-header. Aboard the Racing Team JEG Suzuki GSX-R1000, Delhalle is drafting the Leopard Yamaha Stratos YZF-R1 of Alejandro Medina down the front straight. At the end of the straight, the GSX-R1000 veers toward the apex at a rate of speed that, from half a world away, you can see isn't going to work. Delhalle makes the pass (undoubtedly Medina heard Delhalle yelling "Yee-haw!" as the Suzuki went past) then runs wide, the front slides, the rear slides, and Delhalle is closer to the outside edge of the track than the apex when he finally turns the big Suzuki.

Notice served.

The next laps continue in this vein. Delhalle gets past Medina and promptly spins up the rear tire on a corner exit, launching himself out of the saddle. Every turn is a spectacular near-disaster. Marc Marquez would have covered his eyes watching this. And the climax comes in the run to the flag, where Delhalle and Medina throw elbows and swap paint. If Delhalle did this in an endurance race, Dominique likely would run out onto the track, grab Delhalle off the bike as it went past, and French-slap him all the way down Pit Lane. But it was a sprint race, and it was all (barely) within control and within the limits of acceptable risk-taking in a sprint contest.

Delhalle put it on the box, taking third spot. He learned something, certainly. He sharpened his skills, got familiar with new tires, trained in a competitive environment, etc., etc. All good. All legit.

But best of all, 'ee got stuck in, good 'un proper.