#YOUR reckless block passes versus MY sensible blind corner overtakes at 160 miles per hour

[batsplat]

I’m not sure if this is something you’ve ever done so if your answer is “lol no” totally fine!! But I was wondering if you’d be willing to do a kind of race breakdown of Laguna seca ‘08? Or maybe just of the key moments? I watched it and a) fucking loved it. Truly incredible. 24 laps of these guys within a second of each other like HOW???? Can’t believe that actually happened this sport is so insane. But b) I think maybe I just don’t know enough abt motogp yet but I don’t understand why Casey was sooo angry with Vale after? I get the 4th lap corkscrew send was extremely dicey but like…the rest of it just looked like hard racing to me??? Am I missing something?? And Casey seemed to be racing him BACK just as hard? Even when Casey goes off & falls that wasn’t even really fully Valentino’s fault, I didn’t think? Like his overtake pushed Case a bit wide, BUT they’d just been trading overtakes back & forth, and also it looked like his original push wasn’t enough to make Casey go off but then Casey kind of made a mistake and wobbled a bit further into the gravel? Am I wrong?? What do I not understand yet lmaoooo help me batsplat you’re my only hope <3

yay laguna 2008 enjoyer <3 okay so, full disclosure, somebody sent me an ask about this... uh, quite a long time ago. and it's something I do want to do because a lot of my casey posts keep dancing around how I don't have a specific laguna post to refer back to. AND it's so key to the psychology of that rivalry that you do kinda need to go into the weeds with that race to really get their whole deal. AND it is a race I have extremely extensive notes on, in terms of the build up (which I've obviously already posted a lot of on this blog) and the aftermath, but also for the race itself. so this WILL be posted at some point, hopefully like. this year

the main stumbling blocks have been a) for lap by lap analysis, it makes sense to have a bunch of screenshots. which is finicky anyway, but even more so with tumblr's image limits. just takes time to do - and I've been busy enough these last couple months I've mostly been posting things I write up quite quickly. and b) that sense of... well, it's fine if I do it in my own notes where it's just for me, but if I'm posting analysis in public - even if about four people are reading it - I am deeply, deeply aware of the gaps of my knowledge in this sport. like, I've done my due diligence in that I have read as much reporting as possible about the race, listened to both versions of the commentary I have available on numerous occasions, etc etc. but I've only ever posted sports Analysis online for tennis. which is a sport I am actually an expert in, and feel entirely confident in my ability to analyse as well as anyone. tbh. and the contrast does make me painfully aware of my own limitations when it comes to analysing An Actual Race in motogp, like you can tell when someone doesn't know what tf they're talking about

which is particularly pertinent given that my read on this race does take a somewhat sceptical view of some of casey's assertions, based on all of the evidence I have at my disposal. and I am wary of that, because obviously he would know a lot better than me!! one problem is that casey does lean into rather vibes-based descriptions himself at times, which aren't particularly easy to fact check. like, he talks about being able to read other riders' body language on the bike and just never quite feeling on the same wavelength as valentino. which may well be true, but obviously I have absolutely zero way of assessing that

with laguna specifically, he's repeatedly said that while he DID have a problem with the corkscrew overtake, it was actually a lot of the other stuff that was bothering him too. as far as I understand it, a lot of it's about the lines valentino was taking - which is more about defending than the actual overtakes. I think the main actually identifiable culprits are... first of all. how valentino behaved down the main straight, with casey consistently getting a better run out of the last corner and the ducati straight line advantage giving him an edge in that bit of the track. after having been overtaken on the inside of turn 1 early on, valentino took care to hug the inside before running casey wide towards the outside edge of the track - making it so that any overtake into turn 1 would be quite dangerous. now, it's worth pointing out that an overtake into turn 1 is ALWAYS quite dangerous. the rider consensus on that turn (which is really more of a kink in the track before you get to the tricky turn 2 hairpin) is that it's more terrifying than the corkscrew - very fast and because of the elevation change, you're taking it completely blind where you quite literally cannot see the track ahead of you. one of the truly all time great overtakes in the sport actually comes in 2011, casey on jorge into turn 1 around the outside. it's something casey specifically is just crazy skilled at, to an extent where he's said that HE doesn't find it dangerous because he knows he can pull it off. but it is always a helpful reminder that laguna 2008 was very much an insane guy-off. valentino started it but casey DID respond, and repeatedly overtakes valentino at the most terrifying bit of the track. his perception of what is 'risky' or 'dangerous' is still not exactly in line with that of normal people

the other substantive critique is... well. casey hasn't quite gone all the way on this, but he certainly flirted with accusations of brake checking. which would obviously be quite a serious allegation and it's the one specific thing he said which valentino didn't take kindly to - most of the other stuff valentino just brushed off. again, casey's not gone all the way here.,, and this one also isn't easily verifiable for the layperson. you can definitely see that in the lap where casey crashes, valentino is taking some.......... uh. creative lines, like one of the corners after the corkscrew he does LEAP across the track to a comical extent. it is reasonable to believe that valentino was deliberately mixing up how early or late he was braking to unsettle casey, and something like that might have helped cause the crash. casey at this point was frustrated enough that he was really hugging valentino's back tyre, maybe even in order to try something before the main straight this time. when he almost runs into the back of valentino, he does have to adjust his line and is too hasty in trying to make up the ground again on valentino... which leads to the very slow tip off where he runs his bike from the shallow gravel into the deeper stuff. his mistake, yes, but did valentino contribute to it? and did valentino cross any lines in doing so?

the one thing casey has said where I do kinda call bullshit is him writing in his autobiography that some of the sketchier stuff wasn't shown by the tv cameras. maybe he doesn't feel like they provided the ideal angles, but for the duration of that battle casey and valentino are on screen like. a decent 80-90% of the time. I made a note of every time they switched away from them, and it really isn't a lot - certainly not for any overtakes minus that extremely annoying thing in lap four where casey is clearly sizing up a move into turn 1 and they randomly show hayden's back camera. neither myself nor the commentators were particularly thrilled about that, but it's casey's move and almost certainly the only actual overtake the cameras missed. casey says "a couple off moves off camera added to my frustration" which... this does feel like a bit of a sleight of hand tbh, like buddy you're going to have to provide a little more detail there on what exactly you think the cameras avoided showing. it's not like the tv direction is attempting to stitch him up here - they were eating this shit up and wanted to show every last second of it

in general, this is something that's true of a lot of casey's criticisms about this race: he's talked about it a lot, talked about how much it changed for him, but he does have a tendency to dance around actually making specific complaints. if you're being generous, you can say that he'd get a lot of shit for doing so. but, well, it's not like he's exactly holding back when criticising valentino a lot of the time. if you think he brake checked you, then just say that!! in one of his more valentino-esque traits, casey does have a tendency to heavily hint at a substantive accusation without QUITE spelling it out. it's the same trick he pulls with the suggestion that valentino blocked him from yamaha... which he obviously implies very heavily in his autobiography, but doesn't ever actually say outright. and it's a pretty neat trick in that it does allow certain talking points to get assimilated into popular narratives without setting them up to be fact checked. which is fascinating in its own right and a necessary corrective to the general narrative of casey as a forthright straight shooter who hasn't put a lot of thought into how to sell himself, but it's also a bit annoying if you're actually trying to assess 'the truth' of what happened. please, casey, enough talk about how you learned of the darkness in men's souls on that day... a little more detail, I beg

now fwiw, I do actually think casey is perfectly justified in complaining about valentino's riding. the main reason for this is that valentino himself has merrily confessed he was willing to do anything to stop casey from winning that race - which means that casey's belief valentino was ready to crash them both out was 100% correct. you can quibble about the specific moves, but at the end of the day valentino did obviously go into this race with the aim of intimidating casey. he could have injured both of them in order to prove a point, and I think that is something you can entirely reasonably take issue with. 10/10 for execution, good job on not actually crashing (even though a bit of his bike actually broke during the corkscrew overtake so it was completely lap of the gods stuff) - but that doesn't necessarily make valentino's approach morally defensible. casey's problem, of course, is that you have to say that it did WORK. if ever there was a single race that won someone a title, it's probably this one

which obviously just sucks for casey!! it plays into so many of his issues so perfectly that OF COURSE it's not something he's going to easily get over. and this is something that I do want to discuss in more depth in the actual laguna post, since it's definitely more my wheelhouse than analysing motorcycle overtakes - but my god was the psychology of this race horrendous from casey's pov. and you're flirting with quite a thin line where... I don't want to dismiss casey's interpretation, I think it's a reasonable stance to take, but also what's most fascinating to me is the emotional side of things. where it's less about completely rational assessment of whether xyz move should be allowed, and more about what casey felt - which is obviously also the arena valentino was interested in, more than actually winning the race. that's the selling point of this race: usually, you deploy tactics based on your understanding of your opponent's psychology to win the race you're actually in. valentino's primary goal was to get into casey's head and make him suffer. this was a long-term investment, right... and assessing exactly what it did to casey emotionally, why it felt so awful to him and how valentino achieved the desired effect - that's the really juicy stuff to dig into

there's also something else worth addressing here... part of the issue is that your perception of the racing is going to depend on what version of the sport you're most familiar with watching. a lot of the actual hard racing from laguna 2008 probably won't register as particularly out of order because there's also been a bit of a shift in riding standards in the intervening years. in 2011-12 the three competitive aliens kind of got away with dialling the aggression way, way, way down - just as a group taking a very conservative approach to what constituted an acceptable pass. 2013 reverses that trend, first and foremost because of marc joining the premier class. since then, the amount of aggression has generally crept upwards. there'll be several different reasons for that - rivals having to adjust to marc's level of aggression, the speculation that moto2 as a category was producing crazier rookies (this was a big talking point in 2017 with zarco, who valentino memorably had his issues with), and also technical changes. in the current formula of the sport, it's just a lot harder to overtake - and a lot of the previously common styles of overtaking also just wouldn't really be feasible nowadays. so you've got a lot of block passes, divebombs, shove it up the inside from a mile back (because that's as close as you can generally get to your competitor) and hope for the best... overtaking with contact has been completely normalised - something like pecco's first (?) cut back on marc in jerez this year would have been controversial in a different era, but now basically everyone just went 'good job yeah'

how you feel about this shift is always going to be a matter of personal opinion, and I'm definitely not completely in the laissez-faire camp on this myself - but it does undeniably mean you need a bit of extra context for what was considered 'hard' racing back then. and yes, obviously valentino himself is to some extent directly responsible for this shift. it's not like he never complained about other riders back then, he's always had a stance of 'fine if you can pull it off but don't be an idiot', but he definitely became more uncomfortable with some of the riding by his competitors over the years. which is ALSO a reasonable stance! riding aggressively by the standards of your time doesn't mean you have to take a complete carte blanche approach to all hard racing for evermore. it's their lives at stake, at the end of the day, so I do always feel like people should afford riders an open mind when they're giving their opinions on aggressive riding. even when their opinions vary rather dramatically. one moment that always sticks out to me in illustrating this shift over time is casey overtaking dani in motegi 2008 and gesturing back to apologise for pushing him wide. and......... I cannot stress enough to you how harmless that move looks to my eyes. it does not even register as hard racing to me, let alone something that would warrant an apology. things really have changed

then again, obviously you do have to remember that casey's complaints weren't exactly popular back then either. yes, you can chalk some of that down to favouritism towards valentino - but I've gone through quite a lot of forum posts too, and even the neutrals/casey fans really did love this race and took issue with casey's complaints. the commentariat certainly did - including sources I personally don't view as biased towards valentino over casey. everyone was super excited to HAVE a battle like that again. proper racing had become so rare in the 800cc era that this felt like a real throwback to the golden age... casey was never going to get much of a sympathetic hearing from a fanbase who had gone from the glory of the 2006 season to the dire tedium of 2007. it is casey's misfortune that he not only had an approach to racing that is less appealing to the casual fan, but also just happened to emerge as a frontrunner in a season everyone already kinda hated for non-casey reasons. almost everyone felt like he overreacted after the race and had conducted himself poorly both with valentino and in the media. that's why he apologised for what he'd said a few weeks later when they reconvened in brno, saying it had been a heat of the moment reaction (an explanation valentino readily accepted) - but obviously this is not an opinion casey earnestly held. the psychology of that apology is obviously fascinating in its own right, like that must feel like shit to have to do,,, but it is another bit of important context that gets forgotten about sometimes. it's not that casey's complaints are illegitimate - it's just ALSO likely that his stance has been made more radical by how truly awful the whole experience was for him, in ways that aren't just related to the literal riding. and at a certain point, he kind of needed to make sense of all of this, come up for a narrative for this race to help keep himself sane. if the world thinks you lost a race because you were a weaker person, perhaps you need to tell yourself you lost because you were a better one

all of which will be discussed in a lot more depth at a later juncture! even in this post I've deliberately kind of buried the lede in terms of where I'm at when it comes to the psychology of this race. this IS a race I obviously just have.... so so many thoughts about, always - which is why responding to this was so quick and easy lol, no consulting my notes required for any of it. at some point all of this will be written up with actual sources provided and lap-by-lap analysis. it's such a fantastic little case study for how sports psychology works, like I could write research papers on this thing. love the race, love them both, don't particularly want to side with either of them in their interpretation of this race but enjoy both sides and think they're both Valid. we'll never see the like again