Michael Scott | April 14, 2021
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Pan Rossi at Your Peril
Want to become unpopular for no good reason? I am already an expert, but now I refer you to Marco Lucchinelli.
“Lucky” is the Italian who narrowly beat Randy Mamola and Kenny Roberts to the 500cc World Champ in 1981, went on to win Superbike races then to run the factory Ducati Superbike team back in the late 1980s. Now the elder statesman is in the dogbox for downing Valentino Rossi.
VR, he opined, is over the hill. He should make way for the young guys who are currently kicking his backside.
Rossi could, he told Tutto Motori, “run up to [when he is] 50—seventh or eighth every Sunday, sometimes fourth and maybe every so often a podium. [But] the Rossi we knew fought for victories every Sunday. Something important has changed.”
After the opening two rounds at Doha, seventh or eighth would be very welcome for the senior figure of the grid but never mind that now. Lucky had more to say.
Elsewhere he described early-days Rossi as “a genius, a Martian. But now he’s back on earth.” Now, “he takes the bike off a young man, hasn’t won a race for more than three years, and the last title in 2009. He always competed to win. Now it is just to finish.”
Back at the height of his powers, MotoGP dreaded Rossi’s departure. He was the one-man figurehead with an army of fans, the other riders were just supporting cast, extras on the set. When news broke that he was flirting with a switch to F1, the doom-sayers were in the ascendancy.
Not anymore, continued Lucchinelli, whose opinion was borne out by the second Doha race’s closest-ever top 15, inside nine seconds. “The others also put on a show. Now even rookies are fast. There was a time when you broke your bones for three years before you were fast.”
Not sentimental, but well argued, you might think, and I happen to agree—have done for some time, and increasingly over the past year or so. Rossi is playing the unedifying role of bed-blocker. Or maybe dog in manger.
The more so in 2021, when his reluctance to cede to the inevitable combined with his stranglehold over Yamaha imposed unwelcome conditions on the vigorous and successful new Petronas Sepang Racing Team.
The squad, present in all three classes, came into racing at a high level in 2020, with a major intention being to develop fresh talent, which it could feed into Yamaha’s factory team. As happened brilliantly with Fabio Quartararo.
In its second year, however, Petronas SRT has been obliged to accept VR, now a factory-team cast-off.
Worse still, second rider Franco Morbidelli, who won three races last year, has been left with a two-year-old bike, while Vale has the latest-spec M1.
It’s an old racing truism that “the first person you have to beat is your teammate.” This means that last year’s results make uncomfortable reading for Rossi fans. The other Yamaha riders (average age 23 to Rossi’s 41) finished second in the championship (Morbidelli), sixth (Vinales) and eighth (Quartararo). Valentino was 15th. Between them, the younger trio won seven races, Rossi claimed a single third-place podium.
This year, demoted to a satellite team but still on a top-level factory bike, things have started off in a similar manner. Rossi qualified a worthy fourth for the first Doha race, but finished 12th. Former factory teammate Vinales won.
A week later at the same track, he qualified a dire 21st, a career worst, and finished out of the points. It was now Quartararo’s turn for victory as top Yamaha, with Vinales fifth, barely two seconds adrift. Morbidelli had problems for a second race but made the points in 12th, still only six seconds away from the leader. Vale missed the points in 16th, five seconds away from the pack and 14 seconds off the winner.
So, Lucky’s not blowing hot air. A respectable racer himself, of a comfortably raffish outlaw type compared with today’s squeaky-clean marketing units (yes, he did a jail term for a cocaine offense), he knows the game.
But he’s been widely belittled, the groundswell heavily in Vale’s favor. Social media doubtless came up with a few death threats, while in Italy, insulting Valentino is up there with the worst kind of sacrilege.
Valentino in turn responded with trademark brutal charm, ear finely tuned for the stinging soundbite. “I hope I am not like that when I get old,” he said, adding that he was surprised because hitherto Lucchinelli had always “kissed my arse.”
The moral of the story? Criticize Rossi at your peril, no matter how reasonably. You’ll get a big kicking.
I could have told Marco that.
And from experience, and just in case, I’d add, don’t rule out a Rossi bounce-back either.CN
Click here for all the latest MotoGP news.
