2008 MotoGP Season in Review

The 2008 MotoGP racing season is in the books, and my season-end review is about a week overdue.  Not that most of you care, I know, but b’gawd I do!  All in all there are more stories to note at the end of this season than there were at the end of the last one.  2007, the first year of the 800cc era, started with a bang but ended with a resounding yawn.  This year was a much more interesting year – for many reasons.  And not just because I went to Indy.  Have I told you guys about that yet?

After losing his title to Nicky Hayden in 2006 and suffering the indignity of a last-race mechanical failure pushing him to third in the championship in 2007, Valentino Rossi came roaring back to claim his sixth top-class world championship.

Count me among the fans who questioned Rossi’s choice to switch from Michelin to Bridgestone tires in the off-season.  I thought Rossi was looking for a scapegoat to explain his 2007 defeats at the hands of Stoner, and tossed the baby out with the bathwater.  Lesson to me:  Never, ever, doubt the genius of The Doctor.  That decision in hindsight looks like sheer, unadulterated genius.  It allowed Rossi to keep racing with Stoner even on weekends when the Michelin riders were floundering.  It probably ensured his return to the top step.

Anyone who followed the season will agree that this moment decided the final outcome.  Leading into the race at Laguna Seca in California, Casey Stoner had run off three victories in a row and was beginning to solidify his position at the top of the championship.  In practice and qualifying at Laguna, Stoner looked unbeatable.  When race day came, it was something else entirely.  Rossi rode like a man possessed, wringing absolutely everything out of his Yamaha to make up for its speed deficiency compared to Stoner’s Ducati.  He managed to grab the lead early, and then rode the best, most defensive lines he could and made Stoner do the work of passing him.  When Stoner did pass him, and he often did, Rossi made dramatic and aggressive moves on the brakes to retake the lead – once running the Yamaha through the dirt on the Corkscrew (and miraculously not crashing) to save him from running in too hot.

They were bar-to-bar and knee-to-knee, and something had to give.  What gave was Stoner.  Rossi’s aggression and ability to retake the lead obviously had an effect on Stoner, who pushed it a bit too hard himself and dumped his bike into the gravel after running into the last turn too hot and running off track.  Stoner remounted and finished second (a testament to exactly how fast the two men were pushing each other – they were acres ahead of the battle for third), but the damage was done – and lasted beyond California.

In the following two races, Stoner took the lead but as Rossi closed in in second place, Stoner pushed too hard and crashed.  Those two DNF’s as Rossi ran off a string of five straight wins from Laguna to Motegi were the margin of victory.  The championship was decided in the dirt there in the Laguna corkscrew.

Despite losing the title, though, the combination of Casey Stoner on the Bridgestone-shod Marlboro Ducati remained strong – downright dominant at times.  With six wins, three second-place and two third-place finishes, Stoner has to be considered the main rival to Rossi’s newly-regained crown.  Unlike others *cough Pedrosa* Stoner is as adept at battling for position as he is at grabbing a quick lead and running away.  Unless someone replaces his bike with a Kawasaki before the race, expect to see a lot of Stoner on the podium next year.  An awful lot.  And that’s a good thing for MotoGP, as Stoner has been (and probably will be again) a great champion for the sport.

And speaking of great champions for the sport, you have to say that this has been a surprisingly impressive crop of rookies this year.  Jorge Lorenzo managed to finish second to Stoner in his very first race in Qatar, won the third race, and was leading the championship for a while before falling back to earth a bit.  James Toseland, on a satellite Yamaha, managed to put up several respectable results and showed good form scrapping with the other riders for position in a few races.  And Andrea Dovizioso wins my personal vote for Rookie of the Year, for riding so impressively on a non-factory Honda.  He definitely earned the Repsol ride next year – and, then again, he surely deserves better than to be paired with that little rat bastard Pedrosa.

And speaking of which, Pedrosa’s late-season tire switch from Michelin to Bridgestone has to be one of the strangest tidbits of the season.  Such a thing has never been done as far as I know, and I will admit to being thoroughly stunned that the staid suits at HRC allowed it to happen.  (It makes me wonder what kind of threats Dani used to pull it off.)  It obviously didn’t catapult Pedrosa right to the top of the podium, but that was to be expected.  Changing tire brands on such a sophisticated piece of equipment as a MotoGP bike doesn’t just make everything click overnight.  It took a while for even Rossi to work it out, and he had Jeremy Burgess as his crew chief.  As somebody who criticized Rossi for the switch, I think Dani’s midseason switch looks even more petulant…but then again, I don’t think anybody held out hope that Michelin was going to pull out a miracle at that point in the game.  I suppose there comes a point in the season when one might easily prefer looking like a petulant winner to looking like a stoic loser.

The end result of the season, of course, is that everyone around MotoGP got completely fed up with the “two races” phenomenon of guys fighting it out for third or fourth or sixth place just so they had the dubious honor of being “first on Michelins.”  Starting next year, there will be a control tire for MotoGP – everybody on the same tire, and those will be Bridgestones.  I’ll miss the craziness of qualifying tires, but then again Michelin’s great Q-tires allowed them to grab some poles and good lap times and hide how crappy their race tires were all season long.  Which is why some guys like Hayden could qualify well but then faded in the race as their tires went away.  I think ultimately the new rule be a great thing for the sport – clearly it’s helped level the playing field in World Superbike, so I’m hopeful it’ll do the same for GP.

So, what else?  I suppose I could spend a paragraph each on Nick Hayden’s break with Honda, how Marco Melandri’s nightmare season on the factory Ducati led to him being released from his contract (although not, as was speculated, at midseason) and replaced by Hayden, the noticeable backslide of the once-almost-competitive Rizla Suzuki team and the utter abyss of the once-vaguely-resembling-competitive Kawasaki team.  But I suppose everybody who cares already knows, and those who don’t are already wondering when the hell this post is going to end…

I will say, and forcefully, that Hayden was given a raw deal by HRC and that I hope he is wildly successful at Ducati.  Personally, I’d love to see him take the title again on a Ducati, beating out both Rossi and Stoner.  I think that’s somewhat unlikely, but it sure would put a smile on my face.  Oh, and I’d also like to forcefully state that Alberto Puig can kiss my pasty white ass.

So, what can we expect for the 2009 season?

Hopefully, more close racing and fewer parades in which there are a few passes in the first three or four laps and after that the first five or six positions are pretty much set.  A field of riders in which more than three men are regularly standing on the podium would be nice.  Here’s the podium (top 3 finishers) breakdown for 2008:  Rossi 16 (out of 18 races), Stoner and Pedrosa 11 each, Lorenzo 6, then Hayden, Edwards, Elias, and Vermeulen with 2 each and one each for Capirossi and Dovizioso.  Hell, that’s even worse than last year’s, when Stoner had 14, Rossi and Pedrosa 8 each, and several other men got in three or four each.

I’d love to see more teams competitive.  The factory Suzuki and Kawasaki teams are pretty much write-offs right now, along with the satellite Ducatis and most of the satellite Hondas.  More or less there were five or six people in front of every race:  Stoner on the factory Ducati, Rossi and Lorenzo on the factory Yamahas, Pedrosa and Hayden on the factory Hondas, and occasionally Dovizioso on the satellite Honda and Edwards or Toseland on the satellite Yamaha.  It sure would be nice to see that change.  (Although it could be worse, it could be just the Hondas and Yamahas…mostly the Hondas…like it was in 2002.)

Predictions?

I predict that the Suzuki team will be marginally better but the Kawasaki team will still struggle.  I predict that Mika Kallio will win Rookie of the Year, but that Marco Simoncelli or even Ben Spies would have been a better choice for a GP ride.  I predict that Dovizioso, Lorenzo, and Hayden will win races next year…possibly enough for one of them to push Pedrosa out of third place in the championship.  I predict that Casey Stoner will still be ridiculously fast on the factory Ducati.
But if there’s one thing I learned this year, it’s to never, ever, doubt the genius of the Doctor.  I predict that Valentino Rossi will hoist the rider’s championship trophy at the end of the season.

Hope you all enjoyed the season – rest up for a few months, the wheels start turning in anger in Qatar on April 12!