Michael Scott | April 26, 2023
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
MotoGP’s Monkey Puzzle
There were several great takeaways from the U.S. GP—and more than just damaged bodywork from a huge number of crashes. Both Saturday’s Sprint and Sunday’s feature race were tense and unpredictable, and the results added further variety to a so-far intriguing season.
Less pleasing was the spectacle of how the riders are increasingly treated like performing monkeys. Shop-window dummies. Show ponies, rather than finely honed racehorses.
These thoughts were triggered by pre-race remarks by Johann Zarco on this very topic. “Of course, we understand that this is a show,” he said, speaking on Friday afternoon. But being forced to perform pre-race Dorna- and fan-pleasing stand-ups shortly before going into action, when they’d rather be getting mentally and physically prepared ‘for racing at 300 km/h’ was disrespectful, inconsiderate and potentially dangerous.
“But it is mandatory. We must do it, otherwise we will be penalized,” observed the always thoughtful and articulate Frenchman.
His concerns were underlined by the early race-day spectacle of MotoGP riders in full leathers shepherded onto a massive Texas-sized truck and trailer, to be hauled round the long COTA track at jogging speed, waving dutifully at early-call marshals and grass banks quite empty of spectators, all the while submitting to lame interviews more suited to half-baked reality TV (Love Island, anybody?) than a pinnacle motorsport.
No wonder the cultured, multi-lingual and intelligent Miguel Oliveira looked bemused. He was not the only one.
There were at least crowds present a bit later on for the equally compulsory pit-lane “meet the heroes” spectacle, where cash cows get their money’s worth by getting close to teams and riders. But, closer to race time, it was another unwelcome interruption to preparation for the main event.
This low-end showbiz has been a growing tendency for Dorna, begun some years ago with the introduction of “social media” moments at pre-race press conferences.
These are nowadays less cringingly embarrassing than at first, when Dorna posed silly questions sent in from fandom, at the level of “what pizza topping would you prefer to be?” The spectacle of world-championship racers trying to decide whether they saw themselves as donuts or lobsters was deeply embarrassing all around.
Nowadays the “social media” moment has grown up a bit. Riders take part in kind of party games and quizzes, which are at least good-natured and not actually humiliating for all concerned. Harmless fun, although still a worrying development. Will riders have to polish up their party tricks—reciting Ozymandias backwards, perhaps, while balancing plates on their nose? Is snappy backchat more important than braking prowess or tire preservation?
At least this takes place on Friday, rather than an hour or so before they climb on board the beasts.
But the mandatory performing-monkey duties go on all the way through Sunday. When they are more than just an unwelcome distraction, since this year’s rescheduled program already robs teams and riders of priceless setup time.
This is the result of the Sprint race on Saturday afternoon, leaving just two Friday practice sessions necessarily devoted to getting a fast single lap time for that crucial grid position, and one Saturday free practice of just 30 minutes to work on race setup and prepare tactics. An entire session has gone missing—and even last year riders were complaining of a lack of preparation time.
It seems the promoters have forgotten that high-level sporting enterprise is as much a mental as physical exercise, so that they have robbed riders of thinking time. And instead put them in the shop window, whether they like it or not.
Motorcycle racing is in general a broad church. Riders come from a wide spectrum, both social and otherwise, and range from the articulate to the tongue-tied, the humorous to the dour, the friendly to the reserved. What they have in common, at world championship level, is almost incomprehensible willpower and determination.
It is this that makes them interesting and exceptional, and it is their sporting and technical ability that makes them admirable and heroic.
This doesn’t rule out riders having personalities, nor milking celebrity status to maximize earnings in what is of necessity a rather a short (sometimes very short) career. Any one of them wanting to work up their virtual impact is at liberty to become any sort of social “ME”dia monkey they like. Although it is still their racing prowess that really matters.
But for Dorna to do it, compulsorily, to boost company earnings robs them of individuality and respect and impinges on their ability to race.
It is understandable that the promoter squeezes every angle in search of promotion, but please preserve their (and our) dignity. And above all when the racing is in progress, let them concentrate on the job. For their own safety, apart from anything else. CN
Click here for all the latest MotoGP news.
