MotoGP, because after Valentino Rossi a new character is important

Punctual as the sales after the holidays, in mid-January the presentations of the Teams that will take part in the new 2022 racing season, in particular the World Championship, with the spotlight on MotoGP began. These are official teams or “satellites” with motorcycles, riders, structures, high-level sponsors. Unlike in the past, today in the world championship circus but also in the main national (Italian Civ) and international (Spanish Cev) championships – ditto in the SBK World Championship – the “private” rider is no longer there because all the riders are official or supported by super teams with semi-official bikes and structures, however of great quality and professionalism.

once upon a time

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No rider participating in the world championships or even in the main national championships arrives on the circuit anymore alone or with the friend on duty or with his partner as a mechanic-handyman and with the bike patched up and disassembled inside a ramshackle car. Once the “official” driver was the exception: in the World Championships at the time of Giacomo Agostini, from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, married Italian riders could be counted on the fingers of one hand when, unlike today with the sun three categories (Moto3, Moto2, MotoGP), there were six classes (50, 125, 250, 350, 500, sidecar) and forty or more riders participated in each class. Of course, even in this 21st century motorcycling, not all that glitters is gold, especially when it comes to business, specifically the compensation of the riders. The great champions with huge salaries – to be clear today a Marc Marquez, yesterday a Valentino Rossi and first a Jorge Lorenzo or a Casey Stoner – are very rare and, obviously, they perceive (or perceive) mountains of money because they are “productive”, that is, winning on the track and runners-characters with the image of world stars.

the change of status

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In fact, only with the Dorna management from the early 90s (Dorna Sport since 1998) did the World Championship become a global sport and show business, spectacular for the spectator of every continent on the circuits and in front of the TV and attractive for the investor-sponsor, above all thanks to the image returns due to live television. In motorcycling, however, no driver has ever earned or earns today as much as the aces of Formula 1 or not to mention other sports with the various McGregor, Messi, Ronaldo, Prescott, James, Neymar, Federer etc. Unthinkable figures in the World Championship in the grip of a pandemic where, especially in Moto3 but also in Moto2, the rule of the “rider with a suitcase” still applies. This rule is the basis in the Civ and the Cev, championships characterized by the ancient adage: “Pay money, see camel”. Just yesterday the CEO by Dorna, Carmelo Ezpeleta, admitted in an interview that until the recent past “There have been people with a lot of money who bought their seats in MotoGP, now not anymore”. In short, even the driver with less talent but with a lot of money could “buy” his place in the sun in the premier class, perhaps “stealing” it from those who really had the handle but not the money necessary for the coveted pass. Ezpeleta did well to make “official” what was already well known about a practice that mortifies motorcycling and the whole sport, however, limiting itself to MotoGP and leaving out Moto2 and Moto3 (but also the SBK World Championship) – not to mention other championships – where the “pilot with suitcase” rule still applies. The knot lies at the root of how motorcycling is structured at various levels, in a pyramid where passion is the basic “push” to get into the loop and start the “game” but where the financial resources are to develop and sustain the everything. If you don’t have a suitcase, especially at the first steps, you cannot grow and climb in the various championships. The exceptions confirm the rule.

the necessary money

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From this we understand how complex motorcycling is and certainly not devoid of contradictions and even uncomfortable truths: sport, as well as (very) risky, also (very) expensive. And the more you climb, the more it costs, but it also costs a lot in the first steps of the minor championships, cutting down the nursery, without which there is no future. On the other hand, the teams are not “mutual aid” companies but companies in all respects, with income-expenditure budgets to balance. Comparisons are always difficult because every situation, even in sport and specifically in motorcycling, is the daughter of its own time and must therefore be contextualized. It is a fact, however, that in motorcycling from the post-war period to the end of the Agostini era or thereabouts, there was no “rider with a suitcase” burden: everyone managed on their own, helped by a group of friends or from your own Motoclub. One became “official” exclusively for the qualities shown on the track before, by private individuals, thanks to the results acquired in the field with scarcely competitive vehicles assembled after work, in the basement or in the garage of the house. Often private individuals, to supplement the daily allowance, a pittance, ran on the same day in several categories, alternating driving their own motorcycles of different brands and different engines. The goal was to achieve results, to show off. In the heyday of MV Agusta, the secret doors of Cascina Costa only opened for the rider who was considered “number one” at the time. And if the new marrying red-silver racing car did not immediately prove with the facts (lap times and race results) that he lived up to expectations, he was left on foot and replaced. And shut up. That was the unwritten rule that also applied to the other large Italian and non-Italian houses. Motorcycling has always had to compete with the replacement of motorcycles (the houses enter and leave the racing circuit according to their legitimate business interests) and riders, on the track for a few years due to age or accidents.

after rossi

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In 2022, after a quarter of a century, the world championship will no longer have Valentino Rossi at the start. The question repeats itself: will MotoGP suffer a backlash? Not so much on the competitive level, because today there is no shortage of talented young riders on the track, but on that of the image because great motorcycling lives on the great duels between consecrated big names, on the charisma of the “champion-star”. However, today we do not need the “clone” driver of a champion who is also capable of piercing the television screen like Valentino but, if anything, we need a winning champion, of extraordinary quality on the track and full of character and communicative “originality”. Without the new “champion-character”, motorcycling returns to being a niche sport in the illusory and false logic of the few but good. It is not just a matter of filling the stands of a circuit but of attracting millions and millions of people everywhere in the world to the TV without whom the great racing car jams and then jumps. Since the postwar period, for over fifteen years, motorcycling has had great champions, both Italian and non-Italian, capable of attracting large masses of enthusiasts to the circuits around the world. But since the mid-1960s Giacomo Agostini was the first centaur to understand, interpret and implement the strategic effectiveness of the image, communication, marketing, sponsoring, projecting that Continental Circus motorcycling with passionate handymen riders. , with empty pockets and greasy hands, in a new dimension of mass and global sport, in line with the revolution of TV and then of the internet in today’s motorcycling show-business, golden but certainly not devoid of fictions, smudges, excesses.

the first teacher

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Agostini, not only for the authority of his triumphs on the track, must be given the credit for having shaken in all its structure that static motorcycling that carried on living on its laurels, experienced by most as a loop-the-death sport, unable to open up. to a new world. Agostini was the prototype of the professional-runner, of the character-runner, forerunner of the star-runner then interpreted – with sublime touches but not without discord – by Rossi. In short, the pilots and the races, even the great pilots and the great races, alone are not enough to keep the quality and show booth up. On the other hand, motorcycling with the motorbike carried on the circuit on the open trolley of the car in the logic of the “few but good” is an illusion that would make the races marginal, until extinction. Motorcycling has its own rules: sport of technique, show and risk and has its own culture linked to the past that cannot be erased but cannot simply repeat itself by basking in amarcord. It is not that returning to poorer motorcycling, focused on “private” riders and technically “simple” motorcycles, we have better motorcycling (the private riders of the Continental Circus had a passion for racing but all aspired to become official riders on Grand Prix bikes and the champions have become) because racing, if anything, must anticipate the new, the tomorrow, coherently with the world that turns. That romantic motorcycling of days of glory and tragedies is part of memory but cannot be reproduced today where, in addition to top professionalism, business dominates which – yes – must not be an end in itself. The mythical Continental Circus of passions and also of mourning must be kept alive in memory but delivered to history, in full respect of the “private racer”, a dark giant protagonist of motorcycling-legend, almost a quixotic hero with his wife and children always in tow. a trip from circuit to circuit, today unthinkable in a dazzling world championship which still remains the most prestigious outlet and theater of an unchanged passion.