#motogp I can go to 2001

[batsplat]

hello!! i hope you're having an amazing day 🥹💗 do you have any vale's races masterpost?? thank you so much in advance!!

*takes deep breath* *cracks knuckles* *cracks knuckles again for good measure* *rolls up sleeves* *cracks knuckles one more time* yes of course anon. no problem. let's do this

going to forgo any extended intro as this post will be long enough as it is - though it wasn't always easy to both represent the scope of valentino's career and make picks based on actual race quality. there will be a skew towards the early years of his time in the premier class and there are a few obvious fallow spells, but I hope I've adequately done justice to most of his very, very long career... and used the asterisk system to do my quality control for me

speaking of - another rec post, another escalation of the asterisk system (luckily, we have reached the final boss of motogp and it is impossible to escalate beyond this - here are the casey and marc/dovi lists). * means check it out, ** personal fave, *** classic, **** if you watch nothing else please watch these

I also need to mention mat oxley's 'valentino rossi: all his races', which is an excellent reference book that I consulted a fair bit when compiling this list. it's especially invaluable in making sense of the early years - where the archives unfortunately are sorely lacking and I'm grateful for every bit of additional context I can get. about those early years, a little bit of housekeeping with the codes I'll use to indicate in which form these races are available:

ITA: only italian commentary, which means I've found them on youtube. this is relevant only for the very early races. there's upsettingly few of his 125cc and especially 250cc races available even when you include these (though I haven't included all the ones that are available)

HL: only highlights, which is specifically about some of the 2000-01 races. there's only three full races of valentino's first premier class title available in their entirety on the motogp website, which is unfortunate (technically four including valencia, but who would want to watch that). now, the highlights they provide for all the other races aren't actually bad - they're around twenty minutes long for the race themselves so you will see most of the exciting action and the overtakes and all that (though it does raise the question of 'why don't you just upload the full races')

NC: no commentary, and is mainly an issue for the 2002 races that are all uploaded in their entirety but... well, only a few with commentary. obviously not ideal especially with older races. my recommendation would be watching the very short highlights (aka 2-3 minutes of actual race footage with commentary) available on the website for each of the 2002 races - either after or even before watching the race - to just give yourself a better sense of what you're watching

as ever, the descriptions will frequently provide spoilers for the result. my spoiler-free top ten recommendations are: donington park 2000 suzuka 2001 phillip island 2001 brno 2003 phillip island 2003 welkom 2004 donington park 2005 laguna seca 2008 catalunya 2009 assen 2015

and here, ten more spoiler-free recs because it really is a bloody long career: sachsenring 2003 mugello 2004 phillip island 2004 jerez 2005 sachsenring 2006 sepang 2006 catalunya 2007 motegi 2010 argentina 2015 assen 2017

**brno 1996: I find it very charming when riders have early career races that tell you everything you need to know about them. this is valentino's first grand prix win, achieved from his first pole position. he has an awful start, ends up way down the order, fights his way through, is eventually caught by this 34 year old former world champion who he does not like, fights him for a bit, stalks him and lets him draw them away from the pack in what the commentators consider remarkable confidence and poise from a seventeen year old, loses touch enough with the race leader that it looks like he's surely lost the race before pulling out a crazy last lap with some hard racing™ to overtake that other bloke. after he crosses the finish line he's so excited he almost rides into the wall. deeply excessive celebratory fist pumping that just goes on and on and on. angelic smile on the podium as the bloke he's beaten looks rather peeved - and apparently complained about valentino's riding afterwards. what more is there to say, really

^driving his elders to drink. here's a video where valentino is talking about the race: "and from there a fight to the death came out because we didn't get along very well. we weren't very nice to each other because we were bothering each other throughout the championship". like I said, tells you everything you need to know about him. just watch this one and call it a day

nurbuergring 1997 (ITA): an early strong wet weather performance, at a time when he was still a bit of a wimp about the whole riding in the rain thing. granted, he was a little lucky when the runaway race leader had a mechanical dnf, but he got into a nice little scrap with a few other riders to claim his fourth consecutive victory

rio 1997 (ITA): the thing about 125cc/moto3 races is you kinda know what you're getting, and more often than not what you're getting is a fun time watching them go at it. valentino's first, he's third, he's first again, they're having it out... and then on the final lap, he's taking advantage of the backmarkers to secure the victory. which is so sneaky and so valentino that it obviously deserves to be mentioned here. incidentally, his last ever win at assen 2017 had a controversial involvement of a backmarker on the last lap, which is a nice little full circle moment twenty years later

brno 1997: in many ways, this was a more impressive ride from his title rival ueda, who came back from thirteenth on the grid to take the win. which meant that valentino had to finish on the podium to claim his 125cc title at the same venue where he won his first race... and he just about managed it, with the entire leading group of riders headed into the final corner together

there are race highlights in the 5-10 minute range from his 250cc race years which... well. since they're not anywhere close to full races and this is a race recs list, I can't exactly give them their own bullet points, but I'll just rattle through a few highlight videos here I enjoyed from 1998: jerez (features a nifty overtake with four blokes entering one corner together, also harada fucked with valentino despite being a lap down to help capirossi win?? anyway vale's first 250cc podium, to which harada showed up to clap for capirossi specifically???); mugello (featuring his controversial beachwear celebration); paul ricard (see below); catalunya (he spent a lot of that year crashing but towards the end of the season finally figured it out - works his way back from thirteenth place to win), argentina (controversial title decider claxon; valentino found the whole thing so "hilarious" he was giggling when the drama was going off in the garage. he also referenced the jerez incident in his post-race interview, because of course he did)

^the three protagonists of the 1998 250cc season: valentino, harada and capirossi, all part of the same nightmarish aprilia 'super team'. everything I've read about that season makes me want to break into dorna hq and get my hands on the full race footage. both images are from the paul ricard race, in which valentino was trying to figure out how to stop harada from continuously outsmarting him. they kept slowing down the pace further and further, with harada running his bike comically wide to let valentino through and valentino doing a massive wheelie down the straight (image on the right) to force harada to go back past - but harada still eventually managed to best him on the final lap. valentino was heavily criticised in the press for wanting to 'humiliate' capirossi by letting capirossi catch up to the pair, but really he was just getting creative in his tactics. I may not have been able to 'watch' this season but I love it dearly

donington park 1999 (ITA): the ONE 250cc race I've been able to watch in its entirety. it was stopped and restarted due to the weather and the final outcome was decided on aggregate time across the two races (yeah, this does feel weird but they used to do that). a close fight especially in the first part. not too wet, presumably, given his 250cc performances in the soaking wet were often. hm. not great

1999 highlights I enjoyed: catalunya (was riding with a suspension glitch but kept his main title rival ukawa behind him anyway); sachsenring (won an intense battle with capirossi, admittedly you do not see much of him in the highlights); brno (another intense fight, this time mainly with an older rider in waldmann after they both worked their way through the field); phillip island (worked his way to the win from seventh on the grid and one of those phillip island races)

jerez 2000 (HL): valentino's initiation to the premier class wasn't... the most dignified thing you'll ever see... two dnf's in the first two races by which point he was so bloody terrified of the bike he was just very slow in the third. in his defence, those 500cc bikes were pretty scary, but also it was time to get his act together. which he did in jerez! this was another one of those weird ones where the rain interrupted the race and then the whole thing was decided on aggregate time, but a good ride to bag his first premier class podium

**donington park 2000: maybe it was the bikes, maybe it was experience, maybe it was a mindset thing, but eventually he would get over his moral objections to 'getting wet' and develop into an excellent wet weather racer in the premier class. this was his first premier class win - and a pretty neat way to seal it too. had an awful start, took a while to figure out the grip conditions, and then he was off. the second half of the race involved a fun fight between valentino and both roberts jr and mcwilliams for the victory

^almost gave the commentators a heart attack by running a defensive line through the final corner that took him completely off the dry racing line

rio 2000 (NC/HL - as in, both are available): valentino's second win of the year and his first in the dry, the race after his late charge to a rookie title was scuppered by a crash in valencia. he made some adjustments to his riding style after the valencia fiasco and really started to get to grips with the 500cc, which would stand him in good stead the following year. as is traditional, he makes a truly horrendous start, dropping back from the front row to find himself briefly outside of the top ten. from there, he gets to work. it's confident stuff, getting himself to the lead by about half distance and pulling away from there

**suzuka 2001: the first race of 2001 and a clear statement of intent. as ever, valentino had to work his way through the field... which took him right into the path of max biaggi, a man who had already been his enemy before they started actually racing each other. now, it has to be said, biaggi is a dick here! quite literally elbows valentino while running him off-track and could easily have caused vale to crash (as valentino said afterwards, "I had to learn how to ride motocross-style at 140 mph"), he continues using various body parts rather creatively in defending his position. when valentino finally gets past, he sticks out his middle finger. set the tone for that season rather nicely

jerez 2001: this is the cool-headed, calculating valentino who would prove such a formidable foe over the years. having already won the first two races of the season, he's high on confidence as he engages in a duel with the man who had so captured his imagination as a teenager: norifumi abe. valentino takes his time - but when he finally makes the decisive pass, he pulls clear so easily it feels like valentino may have just been toying with his hero all along

^valentino and norick, the inspiration for 'rossifumi'. in 2008, valentino paid tribute to the other man a year after his passing: "norick for me was a hero. I grew up watching the suzuka 500 race in 1994 with the great battle he had together with schwantz and doohan. last year was a shit year for me when I heard of the death of norick and colin mcrae, for me it was not a great year. I think it is possible to dedicate this championship to norick”

catalunya 2001 (HL): I don't care if there's only highlights - I am not leaving out a race that sparked a fist fight. honestly if I were biaggi I'd be pissed about this race too. valentino was twelfth at the end of the first lap and ended up winning... painful, truly. a really good scrap, plenty of fun to watch as valentino always is at catalunya, and obviously you've also got to watch the presser clips with the knowledge they were throwing hands a few minutes earlier

assen 2001 (HL): this one was low-key kinda stolen from valentino. it's good fun - y'know, one of those assen battles, valentino's doing the stalking and lurking thing and it starts raining and valentino takes the lead and... whoops! time to call off the race due to the rain so let's take the results from the previous lap! biaggi win! imagine getting into a fist fight with someone and losing the very next race to them on a technicality. oof

^post-fist fight handshake to show how it's all fine. they're totally fine. completely fine. no problems here

*donington park 2001 (HL): I'm gonna be so real, if I'm on pole and my title rival starts eleventh and he ends up beating me to the win by 1.8s, I think I just call it a day after that one. valentino had a bad crash during practise where he was lucky to not really hurt himself and then obviously had a pretty terrible qualifying, so a great opportunity for biaggi to claw back some points. worst bit is, vale didn't even make a good start - he was still in eleventh place halfway through the first lap. good fun to watch him pick his way through the field, and in his autobiography he ranks this race near the very top in terms of ones that gave him the most "satisfaction"

****phillip island 2001: look, if you've seen one of those classic multi-rider dogfights at phillip island, then, here, I've got a version of that for you from 2001. it's just so much fun to watch, with so many different riders and rider constellations and run orders at various parts of the race, riders looking like they'll break away and getting caught again etc etc etc. and it is also a match point race for valentino - a relatively comfortable one given his formidable championship lead. he didn't need to win the race to take the title, but would you want to see your greatest enemy take the spoils on your big day? in the most dramatic fashion possible, valentino ends up right behind biaggi on the very last lap and makes a daring overtake for the victory. hard to beat that as a way of sealing your first premier class title

*suzuka 2002: you know how I said in the marc rec post that I found it tricky to pick out a few for 2014 because a lot of the races were good without being all timers? this is valentino's equivalent season - he's winning, life is great-ish, tricky to differentiate, and if you enjoy any of these races you'll probably enjoy them all. mostly I'm just going to include the ones with commentary available, even though I'm too stubborn to let dorna completely make my choices for me here. anyway, this one is available with commentary and it's a good watch... valentino hadn't had the easiest weekend to start off his title defence, crashed badly twice, bloodied his hands, all that. he had a sluggish start in the wet conditions and worked his way up the field, before sitting on the rear tyre of the japanese wildcard akira ryo for a while - who knew the track well and knew where all the puddles were. a smart and composed win and feels very typical of his wet weather performances over the years

jerez 2002 (NC): in my head, this is the sister race to le mans 2014. valentino is pushed down quite a few spots to ninth early on (kenny roberts jr just. shoves him aside and does the thing where he gestures back to apologise, but that doesn't really help valentino when half a dozen bikes have passed him) and then he gets down to business. that whole season really does have that 2014 vibe of 'right this is fun but also feels a little too easy' - but hey, the way valentino picks his way through the field is satisfying to watch. and valentino did always like to play with his food, so he sits behind barros for a fair bit before doing the inevitable

*assen 2002: so, the thing about 2002 is that it was the first year of the rebrand to motogp and the introduction of the four-stroke bikes... but you still had two-stroke bikes on the grid, which tended to be tragically outgunned. the circuits where they were competitive tended to be the ones where they could take advantage of how 'nimble' the old bikes were, with more corners and fewer straights - and honestly, if you go on a race-by-race level you could make the case that on-track barros on his two-stroke machine (for most of the year) was valentino's most important rival that season. this is a head-to-head duel with barros that nicely showcases the respective strengths and weaknesses of two such different bikes and riders riding them, and barros manages to mount a stern challenge to valentino for most of the race

*sachsenring 2002: I do find it a little funny that this is one of the ones with commentary they've provided, because there's a bit of an anti-climax close to the end and I'm not sure valentino should have won that race. anyway, similarly to assen, this is another week where the two-strokes can put up a proper fight, and it's an engaging scrap that involves a lot of riders and quite a few nice little shifts in momentum. like above, another interesting study in how the different bikes compare in direct combat

phillip island 2002 (NC): always fun when someone builds up a bit of a gap on valentino. as was so often the case that year, it was barros (now on a four-stroke) who served as valentino's closest challenger, and valentino took his time hunting him down. from there, it's familiar material from the rossi playbook, stalking and studying before making his move - but barros sticks very very close to valentino until he makes an error on the last lap

^is it a bird is it a plane etc etc... don't think this was supposed to mean anything, just being silly

okay we're now headed into the 2003-05 stretch and I should mention that most of the races in that era will also have been featured in this post, which might also be useful to put them into context

*le mans 2003: valentino tries to make a break for it, but the rain denies him. he raises his hand to get the race called off (you could do this as the race leader back in the day, or I suppose also not do that if you wanted to be an asshole)... and immediately almost falls off his bike so. uh. probably a good idea to get it called off. when the race resumes, it's a three-way tussle between valentino, barros, and new challenger sete gibernau, even if at times it's less tussling and more wobbling. in the last couple of laps, it's down to sete and valentino to have it out in the treacherous conditions - and the last lap is proper dramatic. sete had already gotten one over valentino in welkom... but this defeat, coming after valentino had led the race, must surely have stung even more

*catalunya 2003: I feel a little mean making my first three 2003 picks races valentino all lost in quite painful fashion, but, hey, it's character building and really set up his whole arc for the next season-and-a-half. this one is... well. it's both embarrassing and kinda neat from vale. most of this race consists of a duel with capirossi - and when valentino hits the front, you do think that's going to be it. capirossi keeps close, however, and valentino eventually makes an error, running wide to let him through. shortly afterwards, he makes even a worse mistake and runs off into the gravel. once he's fucked up it's a pretty fun performance, where he starts posting pleasingly insane lap times to recover from sixth back to second

***sachsenring 2003: this race will always be remembered for valentino's penultimate corner overtake followed by his last corner mistake that resulted in sete's unlikely victory, but the race before that is good fun too! valentino looks like he'll make a break for it, and obviously miserably fails in his attempt - this time he's the one to be slowly, slowly, slowly caught by a persistent rival who eventually manages to get the better of him again. after this race, valentino vowed he wouldn't be taking any more prisoners. he didn't

****brno 2003: after a horrifying four race losing streak and the humiliation of sachsenring, valentino came back from the summer break with new determination and hunger and a mission to not let anyone get in his way any more. he does not have an easy time of it at brno, with a classic multi-rider dogfight that features regular and dramatic shake-ups of the riders' fortunes. the finish is incredibly close, and vale could have easily been denied the opportunity to pull out his elaborate victory celebrations: dressing up as a convict to symbolise how he felt imprisoned by his own success. here is a more in-depth post about the race

****phillip island 2003: this starts off in classic phillip island fashion, with a bunch of riders having it out in the early laps. then, valentino takes the lead and makes a break for it, and it looks like the excitement of the rest of the race will be all about the fierce fight for the remaining podium positions... except there's a twist. valentino overtook another rider under yellow flag conditions - and unlike donington that year where he was retroactively slapped with a ten second penalty that denied him the win, this time he is informed of the penalty during the race. this race is about as exhilarating as it is possible for a race to get when you're watching someone riding alone in the front - and you'll be provided with some added spice with the scrap for the last podium place. in the end, valentino crosses the finishing line with an obscene margin of over fifteen seconds

^think I already posted these notes somewhere but I can't NOT mention the commentary for this race. bottom of this post I included the autobiography excerpt about how valentino channelled his fury to win this race - very revealing!

****welkom 2004: still perhaps valentino's favourite victory of them all, and with good reason. his first race with yamaha and one that the entire paddock thought he didn't have a hope of winning... until they hit the track that weekend. valentino led every single session and qualified on pole: he said the pole position felt as good as ten with honda. better yet was still to come, with valentino claiming a victory following a thrilling duel against his old foe biaggi that raged on until the very last lap. such was the pace that third-placed sete was seven seconds down on the top pair at the chequered flag

^valentino stopped at the side of the track after his win, kissing his bike and sitting down for a moment to soak in the moment. he says he was laughing into his helmet: "'and so in the end I was right!' I thought to myself. 'I can't believe it, I screwed them all... what a show!'"

****mugello 2004: this race has so much going on, and all of it is highly enjoyable. valentino might have won the last two races at mugello - but off the back of two fourth places and with mugello's famously terrifying long straight, it felt like surely the more powerful hondas would have the decisive edge. and this one is a hard fight for valentino. it's a hard fight with several riders, it's a hard fight with sete and, following an interruption due to the rain, it's a hard fight in mixed conditions where valentino initially drops back to seventh to figure out the grip levels - before speeding off to the win. all the best types of races rolled into one

***catalunya 2004: right after mugello, it's time to visit sete's home - and here valentino kicks off a bit of a tradition of memorable one-on-one catalunya duels... as well as a habit of beating spaniards at the track. it's hard fought, it's challenging, but again valentino emerges on top

***assen 2004: the third consecutive race that featured an extended duel with sete. initially involving barros too - but he crashes, and it's down to the familiar protagonists. this really works as the last episode of that mini-trilogy because you can tell how badly sete felt he needed to reassert himself in that title fight, and conversely how little interest valentino had in letting him do so. involves a hard last lap overtake that resulted in contact. sete was not best pleased, but valentino had secured the win and the championship lead

^left: catalunya, where valentino dons the doctor's garb to perform a series of 'medical checks' on his yamaha, feat. stethoscope and thermometer, before declaring it fit for duty. right: assen, where yamaha staff dress up as doctors to pay tribute to him

qatar 2004: a good old-fashioned hubris ride. valentino was slapped with a back-of-the-grid penalty for some midnight grid cleaning shenanigans and is furious about this. he gets quite possibly the best start of his career and is eighth after a few corners, continues charging and barging his way through the field... before crashing and mashing up his finger and reopening that year's championship fight. the race does get a little dull after valentino does his thing - here are the ten most relevant minutes of footage as well as some more details about the penalty and the race. the weekend that irrevocably damaged his relationship with sete

***phillip island 2004: an underrated spite ride. if you're in the penultimate race of the season and you know a second place is enough to clinch the title and you're over a second behind your title rival and you historically suck at the circuit where title deciders are held, the sensible thing to do is just ride home in second place when it becomes clear the third-placed guy is not catching up. obviously, valentino does not do this, not least because he is determined to stop sete from ever winning a race again. this goes down to the very last lap and it is either a very cool or a very dumb way to seal a title, depending on how you look at it

****jerez 2005: both protagonists make very little secret from the start of the race of just how much they want to beat each other: this is war. and it's a war in which sete has the upper hand for most of the way through (as much as you can really feel you have the 'upper hand' with valentino sitting on your rear tyre) - until valentino makes his move with three laps to go. it takes an error from valentino on the last lap to set up the dramatic and controversial finale, with the infamous valentino block pass that sent his bike careening into sete's. the actions of a man who had decided neither of them finishing the race was a more acceptable outcome than his enemy taking the win, and the relationship between the two riders manages to improbably deteriorate still further

^satisfied with a good day's work as the furious spaniards jeer. if anyone had any lingering doubts about valentino's trademark ruthlessness, they were dispelled that day

**mugello 2005: another year, another thrilling mugello battle. it's looking increasingly clear that this will be a one-rider title fight, but luckily that isn't impacting the race quality (think marc's 2019, where he was incidentally the same age as valentino is here). similarly to the year before, there's cause for concern whenever you're fighting more powerful bikes at mugello, but after a dramatic multi-rider fight valentino is not to be denied

**catalunya 2005: back on sete soil and oh god how much he would have loved to win this race. it's the tension and hatred and desperation that makes these races so exciting to watch - though sete is hardly helped out in his mission of revenge by teammate marco melandri who keeps sabotaging sete's attempts to defy valentino's curse. but melandri has whatever the opposite of main character energy is and the race ends up being another valentino/sete duel. some excellent riding by the pair of them, valentino is particularly fearsome on the brakes that day, and sete has truly taken his gloves off when fighting valentino. but of course, valentino denies sete once again and makes a break for it shortly before the end

****donington park 2005: the defining wet weather ride of valentino's career - even though it got off to a shaky start (literally) and continued to be pretty shaky most of the way. this race was held in truly appalling conditions that they probably would not race in these days, and it's reflected in the number of dnf's - one of which was courtesy of poor sete gibernau once again crashing out of the lead. for most of the way, valentino is wobbling his way into the lead and wobbling his way out of it again... but after some big scares and some time spent nicely sheltering behind other riders, he finally figures out the grip conditions - and he's off. it's one of those rides that is just demoralising for everyone else in how good it is, with valentino pulling insultingly far clear from the other riders with insulting ease

^valentino plays a violin after crossing the finish line. teammate edwards: "I looked at his data and it was scary. he was locking the front in the rain on a shitty track that was slicker than snot, at every corner. this guy's crazy!" not pictured - valentino hugging himself and shivering while parking the bike... and being provided with an anorak and gloves that he only very, very, very reluctantly relinquishes when stepping onto the podium

*le mans 2005: you realise fairly quickly that this one's building to something juicy. colin edwards, valentino's teammate, takes the lead and heads out on his own, as valentino sets off after him - eventually slotting into his favourite position sitting right on the leader's rear tyre. except, he can't afford to hang around - because sete is going faster than both of them and is rapidly catching up. this one really gets going when the inevitable happens and the three of them collide on track, and of course we end up with another sete/valentino duel. cruelly, it's another one where the winner is still not entirely decided when they enter the very final lap... but the curse will not be denied. valentino breaks the circuit record on the last lap

*sachsenring 2005: the problem with watching these races is that even if you would prefer not to know the result going in... well, every single time the race comes down to a duel between sete and valentino post-qatar 2004, however strong sete looks, however confident, however near he is to the victory... you know he's obviously not going to make it. my advice is to really lean into it - the joy/horror of it all is in discovering how it's going to go wrong this time. this race features another lovely duel between valentino and sete, at a track that suits the honda far better than it does the yamaha. valentino leads early on before sete manages to catch up and overtake him. two laps to go and sete is still in the lead as valentino stalks him around... you know how this story goes

*brno 2005: ah, the misery. listen, if you enjoyed the previous sete/valentino duels I listed, then you're going to enjoy this one too. it's the race immediately following sachsenring and it feels like basically they just continued the last one, and boy are they going at it from the very start. sete determinedly sticks with valentino and surely one of these has to go his way... includes a particularly cruel twist on the final lap

qatar 2005: one year on from the race in which valentino put his curse on sete, and it feels like this might be sete's best chance for the remainder of the season to free himself. he gets perilously close to making a break for it ahead of the battling melandri and valentino... but of course, he can never run far enough. another painful defeat (if one caused by melandri more than valentino) and eventually valentino claims victory at the circuit that had caused him such trouble the year before

qatar 2006: valentino's 2006 season got off to a tricky start when toni elias rode into him in the very first corner of the opening race, and his luck didn't get much better from there. still, the year featured plenty of excellent valentino rides - including the second race of the season, where he fought his way through from sixth on the grid. features his first tussle with the rookie pole sitter, one casey stoner, who defends sternly against his future rival. eventually, valentino faces off against nicky hayden in a decent extended scrap that went on for much of the race

***mugello 2006: boy, did valentino get himself involved in some banger races at this circuit during his time. sete tries to escape at the front, and even in a tough year like 2006 valentino will not allow that man a moment's rest. a duel between sete and valentino ensues (featuring melandri and casey), then valentino suddenly drops down to fifth, then the race turns into a three-way encounter between capirossi, hayden, and... still valentino. he emerges from the feisty fray with a much-needed win

***sachsenring 2006: you could copy paste 'much-needed win' any time valentino won this year, and sachsenring is no exception. not traditionally his strongest track, valentino's urgency produced one hell of a race ripe with tension throughout. the yamaha's struggles made for a difficult qualifying and he fought his way through from eleventh on the grid. even when he caught the leaders and passed them, he couldn't just clear off like in times past, dragging three dogged riders along with him - but he just about managed to hold them off for the win

****sepang 2006: one of the best valentino duels, this time featuring one of his oldest rivals in the form of loris capirossi. part of his remarkable late season charge that brought him within kissing distance of the title. the entire race is enjoyable but the final lap is one for the ages, with valentino vicious in both attack and defence

^no hard feelings: capirossi hugs valentino while vale is still on the bike. 2006 is a rare title fight in which valentino genuinely liked most of his major rivals. vale was exhausted after the battle in the gruelling sepang conditions and had a little sit down after hugging his team

phillip island 2006: the first bike swap race and quite frankly the whole thing is a mess. a lot happens and it's classic late season chaos where the championship standings and implications are chopping and changing by the lap. when the dust settles, valentino has snagged third place on the last lap off poor sete gibernau and chips away a little more at hayden's championship lead

***estoril 2006: sure, valentino lost the 2006 title when he crashed at valencia, but he also lost it by .002s in estoril. this race featured a dramatic twist in the title fight when rookie dani pedrosa wiped out his teammate hayden, and suddenly valentino had to consider just how much risk he was willing to take. he had mostly decided to play it safe - but then couldn't help himself and ended up attacking toni elias on the very last lap. if he had managed to bag the extra five points, then even with the valencia crash he would have won the title on countback

valencia 2006: everyone thought valentino would be winning the title again headed into the weekend, and they became even more certain of it when valentino qualified on pole. but in the end, it was not to be. valentino got a poor start and felt something was wrong with the bike (or maybe it was the tyres, if one casey stoner is to be believed), but admits the mistake that left him on the ground was his own. a bitter pill to swallow after a season plagued by misfortunes, though valentino had always gotten on well with title winner nicky hayden and was sincere in his congratulations

****catalunya 2007: from the start of 2007, it was clear that new ducati hire casey stoner would be a problem. with yamaha's struggles continuing into the new 800cc era, ducati had gotten it spot on at the first try... even if it was only casey who could completely tame their troublesome bike. for a while, it seemed easy to dismiss casey's victories as built primarily on the back of the infamous ducati horsepower, but at catalunya casey proved he was far more than just a powerful engine. one of the true classic catalunya duels, with both riders displaying dazzling race craft, and one of casey's finest career victories

***assen 2007: valentino's season wasn't getting any easier - the yamaha was one thing but his continued struggles with the michelin tyres if anything frustrated him even more. he qualified in eleventh place and doesn't get a particularly good start while casey streaks off in the front. casey is over five seconds clear at one stage, but valentino manages to hunt down his title rival anyway. it's studying and stalking and lurking and all the rest of it, and as ever casey doesn't make it easy for him - but eventually valentino manages to pass him and pull clear

*estoril 2007: casey's championship was more or less wrapped up by this point, though valentino was able to deny him just a little longer at the first match point race. this features a nice scrap between casey and valentino, and then an extended duel with dani that is perhaps the best fight the two of them ever had. it was a much-needed win in a rough patch for valentino on- and off-track - and he dedicated it to one of his idols, the rally legend colin mcrae who had just passed away

**catalunya 2008: yes, okay, I know he won the three races before that one - but this one's a more fun race! after an initial adaptation period to his shiny new bridgestone tyres, his season had finally properly kicked off with the aforementioned three race win streak. at catalunya, valentino only qualified in ninth, and pedrosa streaked off in front - but valentino and casey engaged in a highly enjoyable rematch of the previous year's duel. in the end, it was valentino who prevailed, but casey and ducati had clearly gotten their own house in order...

^the version of valentino that marc first met, before vale's race in his special football-themed livery and leathers

****laguna seca 2008: after catalunya, casey stormed on to win the next three races on the trot, typically by ominous margins. heading into laguna seca, a race casey had dominated with ease the year before and valentino had never gone particularly well at, valentino knew casey might be in danger of running away with this championship... and he was determined to do something to finally conduct this rivalry on his terms. nobody expected there would be a contest for the victory, let alone one valentino won - but he did, in a brutal encounter that served as a masterclass in psychological intimidation. the relationship between the two rivals did not emerge unscathed

*indianapolis 2008: another race, another mediocre start, if this time from pole. it sets up a fun (to watch) race in worsening conditions, as valentino takes his time to get comfortable with the grip levels before slowly and surely working his way through the field and stalking first casey then nicky hayden around the track. he makes it to the front before eventually the race has to be called off - and, in a rare moment of unity, valentino and casey are seen briefly talking to ezpeleta together, presumably to tell him they have less than zero interest in going out again in that weather. they get their way and the race is called off, with valentino bagging his fourth consecutive victory - a streak he of course started at laguna. his second and last win on US soil

motegi 2008: the title-sealing race and fifth consecutive win - not the most exciting entry on this list, but earns its place by featuring a bit of a duel between title rivals casey and valentino for the lead (after they both get past dani, casey in a rather rude way that he apologises for with a hand gesture) (not that he gives the position back and valentino immediately swoops through too). motegi had always been one of vale's weakest tracks, and it must have felt extra sweet to clinch the title at the home race of his perennial enemies at honda (as he miserably failed to do in 2005 in a deeply embarrassing performance)

^'scusate il ritardo', or 'sorry for the delay': this title was special given the heartache of the two previous years. all smiles with casey and jorge (who comes to parc fermé to congratulate his teammate)

*sepang 2008: as was sometimes rare in that era, this race involves several good fights going on simultaneously down the order. the fight for the victory ends up coming down to valentino and dani, and it's a nice little duel they put on - plus there's also dovi's dramatic fight for the final podium position to enjoy

jerez 2009: dani and valentino's young teammate jorge lorenzo are the clear pre-race favourites and there's a slight fear one of them will run away with it... but jorge never quite finds his groove and ends up crashing, while dani very much does not run away with it. valentino finds something extra after being absolutely nowhere all weekend, as he had a habit of doing. features valentino shadowing first casey and dani - and a particularly nifty contact-free block pass at the infamous final corner on casey. valentino's first win of a tough season

****catalunya 2009: one of valentino's finest career victories - and another example of his ability to wrest control of a season when he needed to. off the back of two tricky/embarrassing races at le mans/mugello, it felt like the time had come to demonstrate he was a serious contender in that year's championship... as well as assert himself within yamaha over his increasingly troublesome young teammate. the stakes are clear: jorge sorely wanted to win in front of his home crowd and valentino sorely wanted to beat him there. after a strong start, the physically ailing casey falls back, letting jorge and valentino soar off and fight it out as they take turns to tail each other around the track. a duel for the ages and the victory that transforms his fortunes in that season (some more details in this post)

**sachsenring 2009: a few races after catalunya, it was once again jorge and valentino to fight it out for the win - unusual for two yamahas at that track. it's a duel that has been overshadowed by catalunya, but this is another gem: a close and dramatic battle at a time when it felt like jorge was the one who had something to prove. but valentino demonstrates how hard it still is to best him in head-to-head combat, and he ends up beating the number 99 bike by the pleasing margin of .099s (listen I have no evidence for this but in my heart of hearts I 100% believe he noticed and appreciated this fact)

misano 2009: this race followed valentino's massive error in indianapolis, crashing and reopening the championship fight at a time when it looked like he had things perfectly under control. his traditional special home race helmet is dedicated to taking the piss out of himself - featuring a donkey because of how "stupid" he had been. but in misano he was the "flying donkey"... look, it's not the best race you'll ever watch, but after a poor start (surely not), he does do quite a nice job to overtake dani for the lead. in parc fermé, his team dons donkey ears, and he gets his own pair to wear to the podium as he greets his ecstatic fans

**sachsenring 2010: valentino's early season was troubled by a motocross shoulder injury he'd picked up after qatar, and he had to push harder and harder to keep up with an ever-improving jorge. eventually, he pushed too hard and broke his leg in mugello. this was his first race back, returning sooner than anyone had expected (except casey, who thought people were making too big a deal out of the whole thing) - and he immediately was on the pace, to everyone's surprise (not casey's, who thought valentino's main problem was just losing a bit of muscle mass). this race features an excellent duel between casey and valentino in the closing stages for the final podium position, with casey stealing it from valentino at the very last gasp. it was an impressive performance by the pair of them, a heartwarming demonstration of how mediocre bikes and broken legs can be overcome by the power of mutual contempt

***motegi 2010: do you ever feel overcome by the sudden urge to watch someone be an absolute asshole for no good reason? if so, then I have the perfect race for you. jorge is very close to clinching that year's title, and in truth it's a pretty sure-fire thing given dani is out with injury. still, it's generally not considered good form to ride into your teammate at the best of times. valentino continues to struggle with his fucked up shoulder late into the season, but spite will do all kinds of magical things for you. it's a race-long battle for third place between the yamaha teammates, and the last few laps in particular are uh. intense. features valentino dangling out his leg to increasingly comical extents - whether to try and mitigate the shoulder issues or whether to physically block jorge is anyone's guess. jorge basically rides right into the leg more than once. there are at least three separate extremely dubious moves valentino pulls on jorge. you can tell jorge is losing his mind. you can feel the sheer concentrated malice radiating off valentino. when valentino gets off the bike, the mic picks up how he tells the yamaha team that it "was fun". not everyone would agree

^you'd think a season in which valentino had broken his leg might be one where everyone lays off the dramatics a little, but somehow this year was the one in which valentino's relationships with both of his main rivals soured considerably and made the final step from 'rivalry' to 'feud'. there'll always be a slight air of unfinished business to the casey rivalry in particular, but 2010 did end up unwittingly providing us with a few gems. in the motegi qualifying press conference (pictured above), vale talks about how he knows he needs shoulder surgery - but is determined to delay the surgery until the end of the season. it wasn't a good decision for his shoulder

**sepang 2010: the race that immediately follows motegi. valentino doesn't qualify particularly well and starts worse, dropping back to 12th during the first lap as jorge and dovi set out in front. but valentino determinedly sets after them - and when he catches up, they engage in a lovely three-way scrap in the race in which jorge can seal the championship... as long as valentino doesn't knock him off. this doesn't reach the viciousness of motegi, but it still involves three riders who clearly really want to win and also really want to beat each other. his first victory after the broken leg - and his last one for a long time

jerez 2011: thing is, right, if you just ignore the bit where he wipes both himself and casey out and then has to pick the bike up and start again, it's actually a really good ride! can't fault it! did his thing in the wet again! just one little. uh. blot on the copybook. I wouldn't even say the ambition outweighed the talent as much as it was his patience, given he knew it might be the only chance he'd get for a big result for a while on the struggling ducati. it's the kind of misjudgement he makes relatively rarely in his career, and speaks to his frustrations with the continuing shoulder problems as well as the underperforming desmosedici. casey was less than sympathetic

le mans 2011: it's le mans, it's raining, you know how it goes... these conditions were pretty much the only times valentino could manage a decent pace in his ducati years. this one should've gone on the dovi list too actually, not least because jorge executes an extremely rude move on dovi I feel confident in saying dovi did not appreciate (he gets jorge back with a far more polite and civilised move). casey runs off with the win by a fairly obscene margin but behind him there's plenty of talking points - not least the hugely controversial clash between dani and sic that leaves jorge, dovi and valentino fighting for the two remaining podium spots

*le mans 2012: valentino might have expressed mixed feelings over the course of his career about riding in the wet, but it sure did its job during the ducati years as the great big equaliser. now, point of order: in my casey rec list, I described this as 'not a great casey race', which I don't stand by at all. the last casey/vale duel (that also heavily features a vale/dovi/cal crutchlow tussle), with valentino stalking and harassing casey both at the start and the end of the race - though he did exercise some advisable caution... initially. involves a last lap overtake and is valentino's best ducati performance

^the last podium valentino and casey shared, in the race after casey announced his retirement. usually it's a bit easier to tell when a valentino feud is at its worst, and the two of them joked in the press conference about how they were thinking back during the race to their 2011 jerez clash. ducati were in such a miserable place in those two years that in truth, nobody could have done much with that bike - casey certainly could have done more, but by 2010 the bike so awful that valentino outscored casey that season even after fucking up his shoulder and breaking his leg. vale's sole dry podium in the ducati seasons came at an emotional home race in misano the year after sic's passing, though unfortunately it's not a particularly watchable race. there are some other rides in those two years that are strong in isolation, but valentino isn't the star of the show - and really, it'd be a waste of our precious time to talk any more about two years that were a waste of valentino's precious time

qatar 2013: the first race back with yamaha and the first race of a 'qatar trilogy' of sorts, i.e. 2013-15, where valentino just keeps executing extremely watchable races by qualifying poorly/dropping back at the start and then fighting his way through. by the time he catches up with the pack, race winner lorenzo is long gone - but valentino can still have his first fight with the next big thing in motogp, the rookie marc marquez. there's an optimism to this race, the hope of new beginnings in a series that perhaps needed some life breathed back into it... and so did valentino. all three men on the podium have good reason to be delighted, and show it. valentino truly had not known if he could be competitive again after the dark ducati days, and he looks happier here than he has in ages

*assen 2013: his first victory in the post-ducati days and a track at which he had always been strong. partly helped out by jorge's collarbone injury (though assen had always been a bit of a bogey track for jorge), valentino overtook stefan bradl, marc and dani for the win. it's not the most thrilling of races, but is still perfectly enjoyable - and you can tell by valentino's reaction how much it meant to him

qatar 2014: bar a few high points, valentino's 2013 season had been troubled and frustrating as he found himself unable to match the top three in the championship. he decides to make one more big move - this time not by switching teams, but instead by firing his long-time crew chief jb. the start of 2014 is all about seeing if he can become competitive once again... and if he cannot then he will retire. qatar is a promising start, coming back from a poor qualifying to engage in a tightly fought duel with marc that lasts until the penultimate lap

misano 2014: valentino clearly stepped up his game this season, making him decide to continue on racing in motogp in a year in which marc was dominating the competition. race wins, however, remained elusive - but there is nowhere valentino would have rather emerged victorious than his own backyard. the opening stages are a proper fun three-way tussle between valentino, marc and jorge. valentino gets to the front and marc pursues him, so doggedly determined to get the better of valentino that he ends up crashing. the rest of the race isn't all that exciting, but it's notable as the first race in which valentino directly outperformed both marc and jorge when they were fully fit. the ranch visit happens after this race

phillip island 2014: never the most gifted of qualifiers, valentino would continually struggle to get to grips with the new qualifying format introduced in 2013 - and his grid position of eighth was typical of the time. but you can't fault him for his ability to pick his way through the field as he does here, which culminates in his enjoyable duel with jorge for what was then p2. he got lucky with marc's crash out of a sizeable lead, but it was still a good ride to ensure he would be the one to take advantage

***qatar 2015: it takes one corner for the 2015 championship to be blown wide open, when two time defending champion marc marquez goes off and drops to the back of the field. for much of the race, it looks like jorge will be the primary benefactor, battling it out with two revitalised ducatis. valentino starts badly and drops to tenth, but he works his way through the field - and eventually it is he who fights the ducatis for the win. this is actually a really nice marc comeback ride too, even if he never comes into victory contention. it is also a statement victory from valentino. game on

^valentino started the season on a high, daring to hope that the elusive tenth title might finally be his. the optimism would last roughly until they got to europe and jorge hit his stride, after which it was a gruelling defensive campaign to try and cling onto his points lead

**argentina 2015: the thing is, right, qualifying poorly isn't great. starting poorly also isn't great. but if you want to be fighting for titles, you should maybe pick a struggle and stop doing both. valentino's championship bid that year has all these charming races where he's still at the fuck end of nowhere after the first lap before heroically picking his way through the field, which feels needlessly exhausting but there we are. it is, however, exciting to watch how he creeps closer and closer to marc - and he eventually catches up on the penultimate lap. the resulting duel is short but memorable

****assen 2015: a duel that will always be remembered for the controversy surrounding the final chicane, but the whole race is a fantastic watch. valentino needed a result after jorge had won four races on the trot and had led 103 consecutive laps - and he played the weekend perfectly to achieve it. his only pole of the season and, excitingly, actually a good start too... but marc quickly slots in to sit on his rear tyre and it's a fight that continues the entire race. did valentino know what marc had been intending to do at the final chicane, given marc had admitted to repeatedly executing the move during that weekend's practise sessions? or was it just quick thinking that allowed him to read marc's move and realise he only had one counter available? we'll never know for certain - though marc was suspicious of valentino's motives and eagerly made his thoughts on the matter known in the post-race press conference. the beginning of the end

**silverstone 2015: after brno, valentino had surrendered the championship lead for the first time that season on countback and it was obvious he was in serious trouble. silverstone had proven a fairly happy hunting ground for jorge over the years and it looked like he would continue doing his thing that weekend... but then the rain came to the rescue. valentino spends most of the race with fellow wet weather expert marc stalking his every move, until marc goes down and valentino is left managing the gap to a late-charging petrucci. one of the finest wet weather performances of his career - and in several ways jorge got lucky to limit the points damage

^valentino's shadow, until marc pushed it too far and crashed. was marc more determined to beat valentino here than he would have been anyone else? valentino sure seems to think so - he later references both this race and misano as ones where marc aroused his suspicions. who knows, he might be right, but there's still a sizeable difference between competitive fervour and conspiracy

****phillip island 2015: one of the classic multi-rider fights. what valentino lacked in outright pace, he made up for in wheel-to-wheel skill and fighting spirit... except in the end, he couldn't completely make up for the deficit. all year, valentino had been fighting against the odds to keep his championship dreams alive - but at last, they were truly slipping, slipping, slipping away

**sepang 2015: one last roll of the dice, classic rossi-style... but this time it all goes horribly wrong. when the duel between marc and valentino arrives, it has an air of inevitability about it - as, perhaps, does the final outcome. but the fight itself is captivating to watch, in a raw brutality that befits the tragedy we are watching unfold. the penalty that valentino receives after the race is what truly dooms any remaining title hopes

valencia 2015: another doomed title decider, though valentino's race itself cannot really be faulted. he picks his way through the field from the very back and makes it to fourth, but he could never have hoped to catch up to the top three. quite a boring race afterwards bar some late marc/dani scrapping

jerez 2016: it is admittedly hard to vouch for the quality of this race precisely because it is such an extremely non-valentino way to win. clear and complete domination of the race - in a way he had otherwise been incapable of doing post-2009. while the title fight ended up being a bit of a dud for various reasons, early 2016 held promise that this year valentino would be able to match his two enemies on raw pace

***catalunya 2016: after the dramatic closing stages of the 2015 season, everyone was of course waiting for the first proper on-track duel between valentino and marc. it took a while to get going at catalunya, with valentino getting a typically poor start and having to ruthlessly work his way through to even get to the marc fight. but it's worth it once he gets there - like all their on-track encounters, it's a fierce battle of wills nicely complemented by the contrast in styles, and you can tell how ferociously determined they are to get the better of each other. the race that prompts the slight rapprochement between the pair of them

silverstone 2016: maverick vinales ran off in the front to claim his first premier class win, though the fight behind him is well worth watching - and warranted a mention on the marc list too. the first part is good, but the final laps are what it's all about, as the multi-rider scrap distills into another vicious little encounter between valentino and marc. as ever, with these two it's personal, and they're hardly shy in their ferocity fighting each other. but valentino makes clear afterwards he has no complaints... even if marc always reserves a "special treatment" for him

cota 2017: a lovely whiff of controversy to one of the better races cota has produced. valentino is involved in a feisty clash with the rookie johann zarco, who was well on his way to acquiring a certain kind of reputation within the premier class. it's fair to say valentino was not a fan, and he's certainly not a fan of zarco's attempted overtake that valentino argued forced him off-track to avoid taking them both down. he's slapped with a three tenths penalty his team decided against informing him of - which he's still unaware of when closing up on dani with a few laps to go

^not quite the hand-holding of yesteryear, but it was something. the pair of them disagreed in the post-race presser about zarco's aggressive riding - and, perhaps, valentino's off-track excursion that supposedly granted him an unfair advantage reminded marc of a certain other previous incident. riding standards remained a major talking point for all of that season, most notably in assen and phillip island (though valentino himself ended up coming under some criticism, in particular by pedrosa after aragon). the two rivals agreed more often than not, even if valentino still had his reservations. after phillip island: "all riders are very aggressive, so you have to be more stupid than them"

**assen 2017: his last grand prix victory and it's as true to him as brno 1996. a rough, bruising tussle between riders who aren't afraid to exchange paint, with plenty of high quality racing on offer. some rain adds to the excitement - and valentino still faced a sturdy challenge on the very last lap. he remains the only rider in history to have recorded a grand prix win over twenty years after his first. he said afterwards that "sincerely I race with motorcycle for what you feel the five, six hours after the victory". in many ways, it feels like a scarcely believable amount of commitment for so fleeting a reward

****phillip island 2017: multi! rider! scrap! in! australia! valentino's strongest result after a broken leg in a motocross accident took him definitively out of the title hunt (the second serious motocross-related injury that year for him). anyhow, they're at it again and it's a brutal battle between several protagonists who are happy to get their elbows well, well out. valentino's leathers were marked by rather a lot of rubber by the end of the race - but the most important thing is that everyone had fun!

sachsenring 2018: valentino's 2018 performances were generally stronger than the results would suggest, with yamaha increasingly out at sea in a new era hurried along by the return of the michelin tyres. still, he put together a strong first half of the season and was marc's main challenger points-wise. even this late in his career, he demonstrated his willingness to continue to learn and improve by studying satellite yamaha rider jonas folger's performance fighting marc the year before at the circuit, joking after the race that nobody had ever told folger the yamaha wasn't supposed to be good around there. while in the end valentino couldn't really pose a significant challenge to marc, he gives it a good go and gets involved in a fun fight with jorge along the way

****assen 2018: one of the classic multi-rider dogfights, and valentino contributes very nicely to the drama of the race - not least as a result of his deep love for the final chicane. while the winner always had something extra in his back pocket, a rather unfortunate late coming together ends up (probably) depriving valentino of what would have been a deserved podium place

argentina 2019: marc disappears the moment the lights go out, but the battle behind him provides plenty of excitement. there's a bunch of riders fighting for the remaining podium places, elbows nicely out, but eventually valentino and dovi have it out in an entertaining contest that goes down right to the very last lap

^winning a last lap duel against andrea dovizioso... what, like it's hard? a year on from an eventful argentina grand prix, marc memorably likens his handshake with valentino to kissing a girl. the last podium the two of them share

andalusia 2020: some silly good defending against his teammate throughout the race that mainly had the effect of allowing fabio to escape. valentino's result was quite the heroic feat given the gruelling physical conditions: 36 degrees celsius with horrendous track temperatures, with only 13 of 21 riders making it to the end. the blistering heat also hardly helped with the tyre preservation that plagued this portion of valentino's career; managing these tyres was one development too far for his ever-evolving riding style to adjust to. two academy riders could have denied valentino's final career podium, but both their bikes had the decency to break down

^three yamaha's stood on the podium that day for the first time since 2014 phillip island, and presumably for the last time until around 2064. valentino celebrated enthusiastically to the empty jerez grandstands, 21 years after his infamous visit to the portaloo at the same circuit. valentino's decision to retire was complicated by the pandemic, his past ability to bounce back from rough patches and - most of all - his inexhaustible passion for racing, but eventually he called it a day after the 2021 season

[redbullmocktails]

Dani Pedrosa, how can I even begin to describe that man? I can be not so long into MotoGP, but he at once had caught my attention and when I learnt more about him, I saw him racing and his interviews, I knew he is my favourite rider and I know he is going to be my favourite rider ever. I wish I could see him racing more, I wish I could see him win that MotoGP title he deserves, but I know I am not alone in this, but to many people he is THE inspiration, THE true definition of sportsmanship, dedication, talent and hard work, not giving up, being kind and humble man we know he is. How many people, if they were him, would actually stand so many injuries and get back to racing? I always said he’s the walking miracle.

MotoGP lost today a man that was integral part of this series since his early days in 125cc class back in 2001. For me, it’s like my whole life, and definitely, I know it’s end of an era. If he decided to retire, I can just accept his decision. I’m going to support him no matter what.

Thank You, Dani. That words are too simple, but it’s all I can say. I’m honoured I can see with my own eyes your last season in MotoGP. For all this years. For all this races, win, smiles and tears you shared with us. 

Gràcies.  

[meaningofmotorsport]

Mid-Week Motorsport Headlines - 17th March 2021

F1

Pre-season testing ahead of the new season has finished, and left us none the wiser, as to who could be on top next weekend. Red Bull looked bulletproof, whereas Mercedes were struck with issues on the technical and driveability side. That being said we should not count them out, they have struggled in testing before. Elsewhere, McLaren and Alpha Tauri look menacing for 2021, and the new partnership at Aston Martin has got off to a rocky start. I for one cannot wait to see what happens when the season starts in Bahrain.

In much sadder news, the infamous Motorsport commentator, and voice of F1, Murray Walker has died at the age of 97. He was able to make so many huge moments in the sport, just that much more special. His enthusiasm was contagious, and he was loved by everyone he worked with. He was involved in F1 until very recently, despite retiring from full time commentary in 2001, he just couldn’t stay away from it. Despite the sadness of his passing, we should be glad of what he was able to do for Motor Racing, and we should try to keep his legacy going on into the future.

Williams have said, that they have built this years car to ‘yo-yo’, meaning they have focused on a certain set of tracks, and tried to make it as good as possible on those, with the hope of achieving the odd point or two. In some ways it makes sense, as their best chance of points is to be good on some tracks, as opposed to average everywhere. However, it does leave them open to a tough year, if it does not work out for them.

Formula E

The sport’s CEO, Jamie Reigle, has said that the plans for Ford and GM to switch to EV’s in the future, could open up opportunities for them to join the sport. GM is already partially linked with electric racing, with Chip Ganassi’s involvement in the Extreme E series, so it could be possible, however I see a full factory team effort as being unlikely, for either of the two companies.

The Dutch city of Eindhoven has sent a letter to Formula E, expressing an interest in hosting an ePrix in the future. This could help to boost the European market for the sport, especially in Holland, where two of the current FE drivers are from.

MotoGP

Talks are growing between Dovizioso and Aprilia, for a potential future ride, the team showed well in pre-season testing, when you consider how they have done in previous years. Although we must bear in mind that they may have been trying to look good, to attract sponsors, or even Andrea himself. The move could be entirely possible, especially if Aprilia do show some improvements for this year.

Rossi is really enjoying the atmosphere in his new team, perhaps the more relaxed feel of the non-factory squad, is allowing him to feel more comfortable. Whereas for KTM, Binder seems to be trying to downplay any potential issues which there may be. The bikes did not show any pace over testing, yet Binder believes they can be fighting near the front again this year. As one of only two teams able to develop their bike, there is an expectation of improvements to be made, any sort of stagnation or worse, would not look good.

Other News

Alpine has released photos of their LMP1 challenger, which it will be running against the new Hypercars. The car itself has been brought from Rebellion, after they left last year, but will be developed throughout the year, even though it is the outdated regulations. The team is used to endurance racing, having run many years in LMP2 recently.

Corvette will run in the Spa round of the WEC, as well as the historic race at Le Mans, this will be a relief for the organisers, with a quickly diminishing GTE Pro field on their hands. It will be intriguing to see how the ACO plans to solve this crisis, to keep all of the WEC classes filled.

After a lengthy partnership, of 23 years, Loeb and his co-driver Elena have split, which will bring to an end a very fruitful run for them, including 9 World Rally titles.

-M

[daleisgreat]

20 Years of PS2: Flashback Special

October 26th this year marked the 20th anniversary of the North American launch of the PlayStation 2 (PS2) and I am ready to commemorate it with another flashback special recounting my highlighted highs and lows with the system since its launch. Like with my previous console retrospectives I have un-vaulted a few of my older podcast episodes focused on the PS2 and uploaded them to YouTube that you can check out embedded at the bottom of this piece for your listening pleasure. One of those episodes was recorded around the then-10th anniversary of the PS2 in 2010 where we brought on two hosts from the PSnation podcast and we waxed nostalgic for three hours about our favorite PS2 games and memories. The episode proved to be our most downloaded ever to the point we had to purchase more web server space to handle the downloads. Now I think the best way to start off this special on the PS2 would be to remember that leading up to its October 26th, 2000 launch, that it was impossible to ignore….. ….The Hype The PS2 was the first Sony console I purchased. I never owned a PSone because our family opted with the N64 (of which I have no regrets and many great memories of), and by the time I got my first job a decent way into 1999 where I could afford a system with my own income, it was either heavily speculated at that point or confirmed the PS2 would be backwards compatible with PSone games. This was a big deal learning of this in 1999. Up until that point in America, backwards compatibility only hit consoles (excluding handhelds) in small waves with the limited Master System library working on the Genesis with an adaptor, and the under-performing Atari 7800 having back-compat built inside the hardware so it could play 2600 games. So for having the mega-successful PSone library being guaranteed to work on the PS2 on launch day sold me on saving my money on a PSone system and waiting for the PS2.

The other big selling point for the PS2 was that it would be the first game console in America to support DVD movies. DVD players first started hitting in America in 1997, but it was a very slow growth process for them because they remained at a high price point their first few years on the market, and VHS tapes were exponentially cheaper. For you younger kids growing up with streaming tech, I feel obligated to say how big a deal was that PS2 was able to play DVDs. When I first saw what DVDs could do in 1999 at a friend’s place I was blown away with no longer having to rewind tapes, being able to pick certain scenes to jump to, interactive menus, extra bonus features and the big jump in picture quality. This is also why Dominic Toretto and his motley crew were hijacking semis in the first Fast & Furious film in 2001 for their precious DVD player cargo. With the PS2 being able to play PSone games, having guaranteed third party support from most of the PSone game publishers, being able to play audio CDs (which were still a major seller in 2000) and DVDs all for the launch price of $299 made the system garner mammoth hype leading up to the October 26, 2000 launch. The Launch After instantly getting sold on DVDs at my friend’s place in 1999, I started to collect some of my favorite movies on DVD leading up to the PS2’s launch and by launch day I believe I had roughly a dozen movies already with some of my then-recent favorite films at the time like Fight Club, Go and Detroit Rock City being early DVD favorites. The console was the first game product I remember our local Software Etc. offering to pre-order, and I was able to pre-order early enough to confirm a system for me at launch, which was a relief after hearing how Sony announced shortly before the launch they would be reducing the amount of systems available at launch by half from one million to 500,000. I pestered a co-worker at the time, Troy, a couple months before launch if he would be able give me a ride to the store that day to pick it up since the store was opening early before school started and he gave me his word. I thought it was not going to happen when he quit where I worked a few weeks before the launch, but somehow I was able to figure out where his next job was at and called him up at his other job a couple days before the PS2 launch to see if he would still honor his word and he assured me so. I showed Troy many thanks by covering breakfast for him that morning!

22 games launched with the PS2, and despite the variety, there was never a ‘killer app’ on the PS2’s launch. Despite Sony being a powerhouse of a first party publisher on the PSone, they only had one game available for the PS2 at launch with the puzzle game, Fantavision. I have always felt the PS2 launch got an unfair look over the years, as indicated in this AV Club piece. While there was never one end-all-be-all game, there were still plenty of solid ‘fans of the genre’ titles in my opinion. Racing game fans were covered with Ridge Racer V, the original Midnight Club and MotoGP. Over the years I became a fan of the three launch PS2 tag-focused fighting games Street Fighter EX3, Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore and especially putting a ton of time into the first Tekken Tag Tournament. FPS fans had a solid port of Unreal Tournament, and the heavily anticipated TimeSplitters with the gaming press at the time hyping it up to be the GoldenEye-killer since a fair amount of the development team worked on that hit FPS title. EA Sports had their latest NHL and Madden entries at launch, and the first game under their “EA Sports BIG” label with the original SSX. I think it is forgotten at that time the gaming mags and early online gaming press outlets heralding SSX as the surprise best original game out of the PS2 launch. For myself all I wanted was TimeSplitters and Madden NFL 2001. I knew my friend and former podcast co-host, Chris would be picking up TimeSplitters, so I stuck with Madden and a memory card for my pre-orders. Troy and I got there an hour before the store opened, and only one other person was ahead of us in line, so we were in and out of there in a breeze….only after the store manager jipped me out of a memory card I pre-ordered because there was a shortage on those too, but apparently the manager got first priority on the several she pre-ordered and offered to sell me one outside the store. I asked if it would be for MSRP, and she just gave me a knowing grin, and I was not having any of that and said no thanks and was fine waiting for their call when their next shipment of memory cards arrived (which was only about a week later, and for Madden it was not that much to get worked up over).

Those first few months of the PS2 launch from late 2000 into early 2001 were a memorable time during my senior year of high school. I played a plethora of Madden NFL 2001 against my neighbor friend Rich, and my brother-in-law, Shawn. I watched the hell out of those first dozen DVDs and threw in a few random PSone games I picked up too. Chris picked up several PS2 games at launch and for about two weekends a month I met up with him and the two primary games we played were TimeSplitters and Tekken Tag. The original TimeSplitters blew us away with its customization options for FPS multiplayer with being able to play against a huge variety of bots and in-depth level creation editors. We would create a map where we started in a room with all the ammo and weapon pickups, and a sea of mindless bots would march down a lengthy hallway to enter a room where we would be anticipating their entrance so they could rush into a hasty demise. I totally devoured Tekken Tag with Chris and got into its roster of characters and tag-style fighting, and especially its five star bowling mini-game, Tekken Bowl. Chris’s family had access to purchase bulk boxes of those rectangular bricks of school cafeteria pizza, and I have nostalgic memories putting away that delicious pizza while consuming the PS2 launch window games. Early-through-Summer 2001: My First Apartment Three Blocks Away From a Blockbuster Video As the months wore on after the launch window, the only early 2001 game I really enjoyed was the PS2 port of Quake III, even with its ridiculous loading times! For not having a powerhouse PC at that time, it was a fun alternative to experience the deathmatch chaos that was dominating the PC scene at the time. In the spring I got Onimusha: Warlords, and while I was digging the samurai/zombie action, the Capcom tank controls eventually got the best of me and I had to step away from it after a few hours. It was not until well into the summer of 2001 that I started experimenting more with the PS2 library when I got my first apartment with my friend Matt. We lived a few blocks away from a Blockbuster Video and so we made frequent trips there on weekends chancing random games that popped out to us. We did not have a computer at our place, and the high-speed Internet era was about another year or two from catching on, so that was one of the last years you could really just chance a game by going by the box and from whatever was available in print at the time.

Capcom debuted two classic single player franchises in the first year of the PS2 in the forms of Devil May Cry (left) and Onimusha: Warlords (right) We rented plenty of stuff throughout the remainder of 2001. Some titles like the quirky action/adventure game, Okage, was decent, but nothing remarkable. Others we ate up like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, where it perfectly encapsulated the addicting hack ‘n slash, action-RPG loot-fest gameplay of the acclaimed PC Diablo series on console. We took turns passing the controller progressing away at the stylistic action title Devil May Cry, which blew us away back then. Speaking of stylistic Capcom titles, we re-busted out Onimusha and I witnessed Matt get past my hang-ups and go on to blitz through it. It recently got remastered on PS4/Xbox One and worth checking out if you have yet not. Summoner was a so-so fantasy themed action game, but we were looking at the options screen for that game and for whatever reason we decided to check out the credits from the options. After a minute of that we realized this was a waste of time and pressed the X button to proceed on out of there, and instead were bamboozled at the following bonus cinematic it unlocked. We must have watched it at least four or five times throughout the day, because we got more out of that sketch than Summoner itself. It was a radio skit that was CG animated for this game and kind of went on to have some notoriety in gaming circles, but if you are unaware than I will encourage you to click or press here to experience it for yourself. Holiday 2001: A Flurry of All-Time Classics Arrive

The fall of 2001 was a big quarter for PS2. Several classic exclusives hit that holiday season for it. Metal Gear Solid 2 was the first entry in the series I played. Matt and I rented it, but its stealth-focused gameplay was too much for us at the time and both us kept messing up sneaking through the speech scene near the end of the opening boat mission. It would be over a decade before I revisited it and finally played through it in its entirety off the PS3 HD collection of the PS2 and PSP games. I loved both Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater, but I would have to give the nudge in favor to Snake Eater with its superb origin story, nonstop 007-homages, an extraordinary ladder climb like no other, one of the best theme songs in videogame history and one of the best final boss battles in videogame history too. The first of many yearly WWF/WWE games hit in fall of 2001 with WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It. We had the multi-tap, and for that game it greatly benefitted because it became a hit with our neighbor friends where we would play a seemingly infinite amount of Royal Rumbles and Survival elimination matches. I threw it in again a few days ago to prep up for this and to relive the dozen zany created wrestlers that still lived on in my save file. The graphics have come a long way I can say for sure! Twisted Metal: Black was a big deal for Matt and I at the time. The gritty, M-rated cutscenes for each character’s opening, middle and ending cinemas that were unlocked from their story mode completions inspired Matt and I to play through the story mode in co-op with every single character. Thankfully the game saved the cinemas unlocked, because Matt and I were so impressed by how they stood out at the time that we forced them upon several friends that stopped by over the coming weeks. Gameplay-wise, it was a well-refined, straightforward Twisted Metal car combat game, but its M-rated makeover from the T-rated PSone entries struck a chord with us.

Speaking of M-rated games that were huge for us that year, that was when Grand Theft Auto III released and changed the gaming landscape as we know it. I was vaguely familiar with the first two games, but with the third one having 3D gameplay and a more expansive open world, it seemed like it would be a surefire hit, and boy was it ever. I loved SimCopter on PC (an early 3D open world game), and the gaming mag previews gave me the impression that it would be SimCopter, but with guns and violence, and it delivered on that front in spades. I dug its primary narrative for it too, but I think it is safe to say that I was like nearly everyone else and eventually wound up having more fun getting lost and immersed in Liberty City’s world and eventually causing so much mayhem just to see how long I could hold up against a five star wanted rating. 2002: Highs and Lows The early months of 2002 I recall was when I kept going back to those same fall 2001 games I just broke down, but later came around on going all in on those aforementioned PS2 fighting games. I picked up a copy of Tekken Tag for myself around this time and invested a lot of time into it. I took a chance on Street Fighter EX3 and after getting over the initial awkwardness of a 3D-based Street Fighter game I got crazy into EX3 with its devastating meteor attacks, optional tag team fighting and its colorful cast of characters such as the affable Skull-o-Mania! This was right when Guilty Gear X released too and I absolutely ate up that title with it upping the WTF quotient like no other fighter before it. Its unique roster performed all kinds of bizarre attacks, and learning its intricate control systems with complex mechanics like instant kill maneuvers and ‘roman cancels’ had me studying its manual for days!

In late spring of 2002 I moved out of my first apartment so my renting marathons with Matt were over, but shortly-thereafter I landed my first sort-of major gaming press gig. I was independently submitting reviews to GameFAQs for a few years at this point, and the management at the website Game 2 Extreme (G2X) contacted me to coming on board and said while they would not pay me, they would offer me free review copies of games. As a freshly turned 19 year-old, I looked at this as an opportunity to bigger and better things and jumped on it. I will never forget the very first review copy I received for the so-so monster truck driving game, Monster Jam: Maximum Destruction. I spent the rest of the decade jumping to different websites to write for every couple years and lost track of all the titles I got to review. I can attest for the PS2 there was a wide range in quality of titles I received to review. For some of the higher performing games like SOCOM III, Hitman 2 and Star Wars: Battlefront I was able to review, there were bottom of the barrel licensed titles like Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly and Hard Rock Casino to balance things out. Also around this time of mid-2002 my PS2 became my first console to brick on me. Worst of all, it was a gradual, painful death. First, it stopped reading blue-disc games on CD-ROMs, and then it started getting sketchy performance out of certain silver-disc games on DVD-ROMs. My brother at this time had his own PS2 that he won in a local grocery store contest a few months earlier. The PS2 network adaptor coincidentally came out in mid-2002 as well and he was freaking addicted to playing the original SOCOM online all the time. I did not want to shell out $300 for another system so I believe after testing that SOCOM still worked fine on my degrading PS2 I offered to trade my breaking-down PS2, for his newer model for $100 and the condition that if my system I was trading to him would stop playing SOCOM that I would go back on the trade. Thank goodness that never came to be, and as an impressionable 19-year-old at the time I became kind of bitter to the PS2 for a few years with it being the first system I purchased to break down on me. A few years later though after having a couple 360s and my PS3 also all brick on me, I later came to accept that sometimes these systems go bad, especially when getting the first wave of systems rushed through manufacturing in time for launch. For the last two game console generations I have since waited a couple years after each system launch to purchase it in hopes of the console’s manufacturing process being less prone to producing faulty hardware. Sports-ball Love There was a ton of sports games on PS2 and I was lucky to review a lot of them. The football titles in particular I had to plead with editors not to trim down on 3000+ word counts because I exclaimed how the readers wanted to know each and every little detail of what was improved and added in the latest game. I had fun reviewing some of Midway’s arcade sports offerings that generation with NFL Blitz 20-02 and MLB Slugfest: Loaded. Another quirky arcade baseball game was 2K endorsing Konami to release MLB Power Pros in North America. It was a cartoony, cel-shaded baseball game that saw adorable pint-sized versions of MLB players duking it out, but fleshed out with in-depth single player modes. On the PSone I was happy to see Arena Football finally receive its own videogame, and on the PS2, EA acquired the license and released two AFL games that were faithful renditions of the sport, especially the second game that added both AFL divisions. They were sadly the last games released to get the AFL branding as the long running indoor football league finally folded operations last year after a 30-year run.

Two under-the-radar sports series I recommend tracking down on the PS2 are the Power Pros and Arena Football games. I played almost all of the 2K games on Xbox, but as I mentioned above I played a lot of Madden and NCAA Football on PS2 because the PS2 versions had exclusive online support for a couple years, and additionally because of my rivalry with my brother-in-law, Shawn. This generation saw both of EA’s football games explode in popularity and it was no longer apparent the NCAA game was the NFL title slapped with college teams and rules over it. Shawn and I played a lot of Madden at first, but eventually shifted over to the NCAA games more, with the 2003 and 2004 editions we especially played to death. I liked the variety of teams and unique playbooks, and found myself picking Navy a lot because of their unorthodox playbook that focused on fullback running plays. Shawn only played the football games to the point where I could hardly compete with him. One priceless memory of mine was having an awful game full of turnovers and pick-6s, and I swear to god I am not embellishing this: we were playing five minute quarters and it got to the point I wanted a moral victory to avoid a shutout and make one score, and somehow luck struck on one play where I connected on a deep throw in the final minutes of the game and proceeded infuriate my brother-in-law as I celebrated as if I won the game. I understood his frustrations because I will forever remember the final score of that game: 100-6. A Terrific Twilight The PS2 sold so well into the 360/PS3/Wii generation that its cross-gen viability lead to a regular slate of games releasing through 2009-ish, and a handful of sports titles sneaking out after that with the final PS2 game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2013, being released in North America in 2012. If you were keeping up with release schedules, you will notice that two types of games dominated the PS2 in its cross-gen years. One were ports of PSP games from Sony, with titles like Motorstorm: Arctic Edge and the pair of Syphon Filter games getting ported up to the PS2. The Wii was technologically not that far advanced from the PS2, so a lot of cash-cow licensed games on Wii also got ported to PS2 with titles like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Ghostbusters being completely different playing games by other developers when compared to the bigger budget versions on the 360 and PS3. Some PS2 exclusives also snuck out in this timeframe like the first two Katamari titles and the first two Guitar Hero games. I was a big fan of both games and invested serious time into both series. There are many fond holiday 2005 moments of passing the guitar around to family members trying to best each other’s high scores.

I recall being stoked that the PS2 became the first home console in North America to get an official FirePro Wrestling game with 2007’s FirePro Wrestling Returns. I remember speaking to some of the people working for its publisher, Agetec, at E3 and how excited they were that they finally got Sony to loosen up on its restrictions of releasing 2D games on the system now that the PS2 was in its waning years. Another hit stealth PS2 release from this time was Silent Hill: Shattered Memories that hit America in early 2010. I had a friend visiting from out of town that was huge into the series, but was unaware of this PS2 entry and so we stayed up all night deep diving into that unique take on the series. The first two Yakuza games hit late in the PS2’s lifecycle and I was especially eager to play them because they were being hyped as spiritual successor’s to the Shenmue games that I ranked so high. I played a good ways into the first Yakuza, but recall getting stuck at a funeral escape stage in that game, and unfortunately never got back to it. Yakuza 3 on PS3 is the only title in the series I finished, and now with the Kiwami remakes of the first two games I need to one day just dedicate a year to only playing the many Yakuza games that have since released. MISC Memories -I never got too invested into the online PS2 scene. Usually that was because my brother was always using the PS2 to play SOCOM online a lot. I would use it from time to time to test out online play for games I was reviewing, with Star Wars: Battlefront and SOCOM 3’s online play standing out the most of what I reviewed. I do recall taking up Sony on its mail-in offer for a free copy of Twisted Metal: Black – Online with purchase of the PS2 network adaptor and having fun online in that for a couple weeks. My brother got the PS2 version of Final Fantasy XI, and I briefly dabbled in that for a couple hours, and it was interesting at that time playing an MMO on a console with a controller. The original Xbox had a significantly better online interface with Xbox Live, so that became my preferred console online play option. Only exception to this was for the 2003/2004 installments of Madden and NCAA Football because EA Sports held off on implementing online play for their Xbox games for a couple years, and that was key for me opting in on their PS2 versions when both of those football titles were surging in popularity and lead to the most consistent online play I did with PS2.

-There were so many PS2 games being released in its heyday from 2001-2006 that I would take random payday visits to Best Buy when they had gargantuan videogame aisles in hopes of discovering games I never heard of from smaller label publishers. This worked out both ways in learning of little known ‘hidden gems’ of that era, and eventually finding utter trash. -One odd peripheral I received for review was the PS2 ‘Clash Pads.’ It was a pair of controllers that were connected together with a little accessory box that had switches to give your gaming partner/opponent advantages and disadvantages for gameplay. The controller was a mess to operate, and the added perks and penalties it implemented were mind-boggling. I will instead recommend Namco’s light gun for the Time Crisis games….but only if you still have a standard-def TV. -Popular in the retro gaming scene lately is HDMI cables for retro game consoles to up-convert a system’s signal to HD and provide a much improved looking display than the muddy, watered down graphics that would result when plugging in composite cables into an HDTV. I picked up the HDMI PS2 cables from Pound last year, and they worked nicely on my slim PS2. I understand there are more expensive alternatives out there that yield noticeably better results, but for $30, the Pound cables provided enough of a bump up in quality for me.

-I busted out several games over the past week to prep up for this flashback special. I was finally able to play my copy of the BMX title, Downhill Domination and regretted not trying it out sooner. I had a blast revisiting a couple old favorites in Rumble Racing and Motorstrom: Arctic Edge. Wish I could have tried out more games, but the PS2 was giving me ‘read disc errors’ with half of my attempts and I could not determine if it was the HD cables causing this or if it was the PS2 itself simply aging out. -I touched on a couple wrestling games on the PS2 already, but as a whole I would give the slate of wrestling games for the PS2 in America a hearty thumbs up. I believe I played the entirety and unlocked everything from all the first-run SmackDown games on PS2. When firing up Just Bring It again, I cracked a smile because I completely forgot Fred Durst was a playable character, complete with “Rollin’” for his entrance theme. FirePro Wrestling Returns was a long anticipated console debut for the franchise in America. Multi-platform games I played on other systems like the car-combat spinoff, WWE Crush Hour and the pair of Backyard Wrestling games were fun alternative wrestling games to take a break from the annual core WWE game. Yes, there was a car combat WWE game, and it is surprisingly halfway-decent. I picked up the PS2 version of TNA Impact, but it was a victim of the ‘disc read error’ from the past week. Ditto with the Ultimate MUSCLE-licensed Galactic Wrestling. I picked that one up long ago, but never played it all these years and was stoked to sit down with it on a couple occasions this past week to play it, but alas it was not meant to be.

-A game that was able to load on the PS2 this past week was Namco Bandai’s The Fast and the Furious. It turned out to be an ok-open world street racing game, much like Need for Speed: Underground on the PS2, but with more of a focus on drag races. Odd memory of the day I picked up this game I will never forget: I was out of town for a hockey game killing time at a pawn shop a couple hours beforehand with a buddy where I randomly bought this with a handful of other games. In a gut-punch of irony, it was later after the game while re-fueling on gas, I was catching up on my timelines when I found out earlier that day was when Paul Walker perished. -Another game I was hoping to throw in this past week was 24: The Game. I am a huge fan of the show, and I remember playing a demo of it at E3 2005 and thinking it was surprisingly alright for a licensed-based game. Sadly, that disc was also a victim of the ‘disc read error’ message, so instead I will point everyone to this highly entertaining spoof video review you can see by click or pressing here from then-GameSpot staff member, Alex Navarro.

-Speaking of PS2 games based off licensed TV properties, I want to shout out The Shield: The Game. It was a very by-the-numbers third person action game, and featured unremarkable gameplay, but having the show’s cast well represented visually and aurally in the form of voiceovers was enough to quench my fandom for that show. Despite the five out of ten I gave it in my review at the time, if you were a ardent fan of The Shield, then it was just something you had to play. -I am a big fan of the PS2 slim, but it is worth mentioning a major caveat of the slim: it does not support the PS2 multi-tap for reasons perplexing me to this very day!

-It is almost a prerequisite that I purchase faithful videogame conversions of my favorite board games and TV game shows every console generation and the PS2 was no exception. It had an adequate version of Risk with multi-tap support which was a semi-worthy substitute when we were not up for setting up the board game. Its versions of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune had a bountiful amount of hosting video clips from Trebek and Vanna, respectively, to perfectly capture the look and feel of the show. The PS2’s version of Family Feud however is easily the worst version I have ever played. Insanely short entry response times, unresponsive button inputs and overall clunky design forever marred the Family Feud brand! Looking back at my review I am guffawed that I scored this a six out of ten. -The last fighting game I was really into on PS2 than the others previously mentioned was Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. I first played it at Chris’s place like how he introduced me to most other fighting games, and Chris would school me at it nonstop. A short while later, I was staying over at my sister and brother-in-law’s place where they also had that game. I stayed up late after they went to bed and spent hours mastering Wolf since he was the sole pro-wrestler of the roster. Next time I met up with Chris I finally won ONE match against him, but after that he refused to play me again!

-Now while I gushed earlier of my adoration for TimeSplitters during the launch window of PS2, I would be remiss if I did not give some well-earned props to the third game in the series, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. In the past several years, that game has remained in the rotation of go-to couch multiplayer game with my friends Derek, Brooke and Ryan. It retains the same style of FPS gameplay and creation options as the first game, but now with a ton of extra characters, weapons and levels available. My preferred playlist would be rocking the disco level with its appropriate theme music, and playing as a big bear (complete with bear claw strike!) and whamming everyone with gigantic bananas on the dance floor. Classic times! One of the Best Systems Ever? That is what hardware sales and overall critical reception trend to be when looking back at the PS2. While I now look back fondly at the PS2 as a whole, especially my first two years owning the system, I cannot deny for a few years in the system’s heyday I was not too keen on the system due to it bricking on me and preferred playing games on Xbox and GameCube instead. Like I stated above, I came around on this a few years later and had a blast with the PS2 in its cross-gen sunset years, and revisited its vast library numerous times over the years. While I cannot say it is my personal, all-time favorite console, I can safely rank it among my top tier of favorite systems.

If you want even more PS2 nostalgia coverage from me, then check out the three PS2-centric episodes of my podcast I have un-vaulted from my personal archives and embedded below. Right now I have my general all-encompassing PS2 retrospective I recorded on its 10th anniversary and the PS2/Xbox/Wii installment of the history of comic book videogames episode uploaded. Finishing it off is the PS2 installment in our history of RPG videogames series.

This episode has special guest hosts from the PSnation podcast where we deep dive for three hours of nostalgic memories of the PS2.

Matt and I spare no expense at elucidating on every major and minor comic book game on the PS2.

Just over three hours we spend breaking down nearly every RPG to hit the PS2! My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

You’re Still Here!?

Somehow you still made it to the end of another tome of a flashback special from me, so that means I must reward you with an oddball PS2 anecdote of my past! I referenced in past specials how I attended several retro videogame conventions that took place every year in Milwaukee - The Midwest Gaming Classic. At the time the podcast known as Team Fremont Live would always host Jeopardy-style game show each year. My brother and I were picked to be contestants that year! To spice things up for the crowd and get them involved, after every few questions of trivia there would be a quick videogame challenge for extra points and prizes for the crowd and/or contestant. I got picked to play a single stage of the space shooter/shmup, Castle Shikigami 2. Two incredibly loud kids got picked from the crowd got selected to only verbally trash talk and distract me, and if I lost one life then the kids would get a game, but if I somehow overcame the odds and finished a level on a single life then I would win. Now I enjoy playing an occasional shmup, especially in March (it is intergalactic Shmuppreaction month, ya’know!), but I nowhere consider myself legitimately good at the genre and usually lose at least a couple lives a level for almost any shooter I play. Somehow the shmup gods were on my side that day, because even with one of those kids unleashing maximum effort with trash talk directly against my ear, I somehow zoned them out and unbelievably managed to finish the stage and beat the boss with one life. I was at zenith-level of goosebumps during that boss battle and had a cool-down moment of emotions as soon as let go of the arcade stick. My prize? Metal Gear Solid 2, which I would eventually give a serious effort to and finish several years later! That moment, along with the 100-6 loss in NCAA Football 2004, are my two most cherished PS2 moments I will forever remember….and now you can too, because the MGC staff record my attempt and posted it on YouTube. I have embedded it below, or you can click or press here to see it yourself.

[mistressemmedi]

Ten things to watch for in the 2018 Dakar Rally

By: Valentin Khorounzhiy, News Editor at Motorsport.com (x)        

The 40th edition of the most gruelling rally event of all, the Dakar, begins on Saturday in the Peruvian capital of Lima. Here's everything you need to know ahead of the two-week marathon event.

#1. Rain, rain, go away

The 2017 rally's route was received considerably better than that of its predecessor, with many a competitor praising the increased focus on off-roading and navigation and a lesser reliance on 'WRC-style' road stages.

The downside was that a significant chunk of that route didn't actually feature competitive running, with persistent heavy rainfall dominating the Bolivian leg, as well as sections in Argentina.

Day-to-day conditions were rough (particularly in Bolivia's Oruro bivouac, which turned into a swamp overnight), a number of stages were shortened and two – including the much-anticipated 'Super Belen' in Northern Argentina – were canned.

Rain in Bolivia is no one-off issue, and the troubles of the 2017 event left the likes of trucks frontrunner Gerard De Rooy and Hans Stacey, as well as top car-class privateer Erik van Loon, calling for a rethink of the route.

Dakar is still going to Bolivia this year – albeit for a shorter stretch – and none of the three aforementioned competitors will be with the rally this time, De Rooy in particular deciding to contest the Africa-based Eco Race instead.

This is by no means a mass exodus, but Dakar organisers will be wary of the rally becoming too much of a hassle for the European privateers that make up most of its ranks.

They could really use a smoother run in 2018 – and for the returning Peru leg that opens the route to be a success.

#2. Last hurrah for two veterans?

The news that Peugeot would be bowing out after the 2018 race was a big deal in many respects, not least because it could be the catalyst for retirement for both Stephane 'Mr. Dakar' Peterhansel and Carlos 'El Matador' Sainz.

Peterhansel, comfortably the most successful competitor in Dakar history, was inundated with retirement questions immediately after claiming his 13th event win last year.

With the 2018 race marking Dakar's 40th anniversary and Peugeot calling it quits, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see Peterhansel hang up his helmet now – but the 52-year-old is yet to commit one way or another.

He recently told Motorsport.com: “I don’t really have plans. After Peugeot’s announcement to stop the Dakar programme, we weren’t surprised because we suspected it, and there isn’t any nostalgia for the moment as it’s not over yet! But there is a bit of sadness.

“We lived four years of an exceptional adventure so now, I just feel like leaving this behind me and focusing exclusively on this next Dakar and doing the best I can.

“Then I will see what I will want to do next. But currently, I don’t even give any thought to what’s going to happen after crossing the line of the next Dakar.”

Sainz, three years older, has struck a similar note. But with no obvious new manufacturers on Dakar's horizon, both his and Peterhansel's options would be limited if they wanted to keep going – and it's not at all unlikely that one, or both, will decide this race will be as good a time as any to step aside.

#3. Loeb's moment of truth

Sebastien Loeb's successes on the 'WRC-style' sections of the 2016 Dakar were to be expected, but it was his and co-driver Daniel Elena's strong performances in off-roading and navigation last year that marked the crew as potential champions-in-waiting.

Well, about that... Peugeot's announcement that its Dakar programme would conclude with the 2018 event suggested Loeb and Elena won't get as many chances as they really ought to, and the Frenchman's subsequent blunt confirmation that this year would be his “last chance” has now driven the point home.

Loeb clearly has what it takes to win the Dakar this time. He already looked Peugeot's fastest driver last year, but ran out of time to make up for a navigational mistake in a head-to-head duel against the shrewd Stephane Peterhansel.

And despite his obvious talent, Loeb still hasn't won a cross-country rally. Most recently, he squandered a very real chance in the Silk Way Rally when he crashed out, handing the win to fellow Peugeot man Cyril Despres (who should likewise be a factor in this year's Dakar with another year of car experience under his belt).

So, it's now or never, and the pressure on Loeb will be considerably higher this time around. And while a Loeb victory would be popular, Peugeot has insisted it is not planning to stack the deck in favour the nine-time WRC champion.

“The only thing we know ahead of the race is that many things will happen – with weather, with incidents, with driver, co-driver and navigational errors,” said Peugeot's Bruno Famin.

“It is impossible to know who will win, whether it'll be Loeb or not. For us, the important thing is that one of us wins – and then we'll be satisfied.”

#4. Spoiling the farewell party

Nasser Al-Attiyah topping the opening stage of the 2017 rally for Toyota prompted Carlos Sainz to say Peugeot had been treated unfairly by changes to restrictor regulations – with the 4x4 cars allowed an increase and his two-litre buggy getting a reduction.

But that, of course, was very much a false dawn. Al-Attiyah crashed out of the rally early, and while his fellow Toyota drivers kept in touch with Peugeot over the opening stages close to sea level, their heavier, normally-aspirated cars were no match for the 3008DKR at altitude.

Come 2018, further measures have been taken to level the playing field, with the buggies made heavier while the 4x4 cars get a weight break and increased suspension travel.

That should take the Toyota camp halfway to preventing another blowout. The other half would be its chief hope, Al-Attiyah, staying out of trouble.

After his bruising 2017 exit, the two-time Dakar winner dominated the Cross-Country Rally World Cup for a third straight year, and should have a strong shot at ruining Peugeot's farewell party.

Still, even if the rapid Qatari doesn't keep the car in one piece, fellow Toyota driver and 2009 champion Giniel de Villiers almost certainly will, the South African having finished each of his 14 Dakars so far - and only once outside of the top seven.

#5. Mini's double-spec strategy

The recent unveiling of X-Raid Mini's all-new 2WD buggy means the team will play both sides in the 2018 race.

Mikko Hirvonen and Yazeed Al-Rajhi, who have spearheaded the outfit's recent efforts, will be piloting the buggy, whereas 2014 champion Nani Roma – back in the Mini fold after one year with Toyota – will stick with the 4x4.

But despite a two-fold strategy and a formidable line-up, toppling Peugeot and Toyota might be too tough an ask for now – at least according to former Dakar champion and Mini tester Jutta Kleinschmidt.

“It's difficult to say because we never saw it racing, they only did tests in Morocco,” she told Motorsport.com. “For my experience, it will have some technical problems, I'm quite sure, because it's a long race.

“I don't think it's already competitive, I would be very surprised. It could make some good results but to win is so hard. Peugeot suffered the same in its first year [in 2015] and then the second year was really good.

“I also think they put all the effort in the buggy, they hadn't developed the other car, not much at least.”

#6. KTM-Honda rivalry approaching boiling point

Last year, KTM continued a stranglehold on the Dakar’s bikes category dating back to 2001 thanks to Sam Sunderland, but the Briton's maiden triumph certainly wasn't without controversy.                            

It owed much to a one-hour penalty that was handed to all four Honda factory riders on the fourth stage for illegal refuelling – at a stroke turning Joan Barreda’s 19-minute lead into a 41-minute deficit. Barreda went on to lose by 43 minutes.

One month later, during KTM’s MotoGP launch, CEO Stefan Pierer made headlines when he accused his “most hated” rival Honda of trying to cheat its way to Dakar glory.

Honda eventually returned the compliment when Ricky Brabec accused KTM of always getting its own way with the organisers in October’s Morocco Rally, won by Mathias Walkner.

In response, KTM rally sport manager Jordi Viladoms told Motorsport.com: “[Brabec] says there is a person who speaks well with the FIM and with the organisation, it’s clear he’s referring to me.

“I appreciate the sentiment that I do my job well, but it’s not KTM’s style to talk about other teams like that. We are a little surprised, but they have their style and we have ours.”

Those comments have set the tone for what promises to be another fascinating Battle Royale between the Dakar’s pre-eminent two-wheeled brands.

#7. Barreda's year at last?

If anybody has emerged as the heir to Dakar bike legends Marc Coma and Cyril Despres in recent years, it’s Joan Barreda, winner of no fewer than 18 stages in the South American event since 2012. And yet, the Spaniard has never finished on the overall podium, let alone won the title.

Last year’s one-hour penalty was merely the latest in a long line of misfortunes for Barreda, who lost strong victory chances both in 2016 and 2015 due to mechanical trouble.

The Spaniard’s luck didn’t improve after last year’s Dakar either. He broke his collarbone in March and then broke his wrist in August, compromising his preparations for this year’s event.

Following surgery, Barreda is finally ready to return to competitive action. But the 34-year-old insists finally capturing a maiden Dakar victory is the not the be all and end all for him.

“I want to try at least to win one Dakar because it would be the prize for the work of all these years,” Barreda told Motorsport.com. “But it is not something that obsesses me or stops me sleeping. What I dreamt of, I have already achieved: to be the reference rider.”

Barreda’s opposition will be stiff, not least within his own Honda team, where impressive 2016 rookie Kevin Benavides – who was forced to skip the event last year – will also start among the favourites for victory.

At KTM, reigning champion Sunderland is joined by 2016 winner Toby Price, last year’s runner-up Walkner and former enduro star Antoine Meo, while FIM Cross Country Rallies champion Pablo Quintanilla spearheads sister brand Husqvarna’s assault.

Not to be discounted either is Yamaha, which has recruited Franco Caimi from Honda to join Adrian van Beveren and Xavier de Soultrait in its works line-up.

#8. Replacing de Rooy as Kamaz's chief headache

The two Dakars Kamaz has lost since 2009 had both gone to De Rooy, who is sitting out this year's race – so the Russian truck manufacturer should fancy its chances.

It'll have a strong line-up as usual, with champions Eduard Nikolaev and Ayrat Mardeev, rising star Dmitry Sotnikov and Anton Shibalov in an initial support role.

Sotnikov's fortunes will be of particular interest - his Kamaz is to be equipped with a new straight-six engine instead of the traditional 16-litre V8. And it is not as big a gamble as it might sound, given that Sotnikov has already headed a Kamaz Silk Way Rally podium lock-out in a similar configuration.

That's not to say Kamaz will have a clear run at victory, as the team still has to overcome the likes of regular frontrunner Ales Loprais, his fellow Tatra driver Martin Kolomy and Martin van den Brink.

And while de Rooy is absent, his IVECO team should now be spearheaded by Argentine Federico Villagra, who too can be a formidable rival.

A former WRC regular, he has finished in the top four in his first two truck-class Dakars and further proved his credentials by winning the Morocco Rally last year.

#9. Karyakin versus Casale

The quad class might lack the wide recognition and marquee names of other categories at Dakar, but it gives no quarter when it comes to drama, competition and unpredictability.

A cursory glance at this year's entry list would paint the 2018 event as a duel between the reigning champion, Russia's Sergey Karyakin, and '14 champion/'17 runner-up Ignacio Casale.

Casale, having lost by over an hour last time out, feels he was “in very poor shape” then and is approaching the event with renewed confidence, but Karyakin will be no weaker this time and is motivated to prove his maiden triumph was no “fluke”.

Of course, these usually don't work out so simple. Last year's race featured five different leaders and six different winners, and all of them are back in 2018.

Among those who could disrupt a potential Karyakin-Casale showdown are fellow past champion Rafal Sonik, Argentine riders Jeremias Gonzalez and Pablo Copetti, Bolivia's main hope Walter Nosiglia, Dutch cross-country world champion Kees Koolen and Peruvian Alexis Hernandez, who ran at the front of the race in 2016.

But most curious, perhaps, will be the speed of French duo Axel Dutrie and Simon Vitse, who both mounted a serious dark-horse challenge on their respective debuts last year.

#10. From the touchline to the cockpit

The sight of non-motorsport celebrity isn't a particularly rare occurrence for the Dakar Rally, with cameos ranging from Margaret Thatcher's son Mark's infamously disastrous 1982 outing to ski champion Luc Alphand's slow and gradual path towards a full-on Dakar win in 2006.

And this year's race will mark the latest addition to the roster in the form Andre Villas-Boas, 40-year-old Portuguese football manager who just a few years ago was seen as the next big thing in the sport.

Villas-Boas remains the youngest manager to win a European club competition, his Porto side lifting the Europa League trophy when he was just 33. But subsequent stints at English giants Chelsea and fellow London powerhouse Tottenham were ultimately inglorious, swiftly halting his rapid ascent.

Still, he is no spent force, which is what makes this cameo particularly exciting. He has just walked out of a lucrative deal with China's Shanghai SIPG and is frequently linked to various football clubs in search of managers.

He's also clearly not contesting the rally on a whim, long-known to be a motorsport fan intent with a dream of racing at the Dakar.

That, of course, is no guarantee he'll do well – but he has commendable enthusiasm, a handy co-driver in former KTM rider Ruben Faria and a solid piece of equipment in the Toyota Hilux.

If you're partial to football, or just keen on more mainstream recognition for the Dakar, Villas-Boas will be worth keeping an eye out on.

[youreamonocoque]

1, 2, 22 and 29 :)

Thank you Eve! You actually sent me two so thank you so i’ll add them in on this one (7, 15 and 34)

1. How did you get into F1 first? My dad used to race in the 80s/ 90s and has always been a fan of the sport so it was always on. I loved it when i was younger and then it became ‘uncool’ to like F1 and when i was starting my second primary school i stopped liking it but then got back into it because of Seb in around 2009 i think (i have no idea) and then the rest is history but it’s really only been since like 2012 that i’ve followed it closely.

2. How long do you watch F1? Do you remember the first race you’ve watched? Minus the year or two I missed out on (it was only really a year) That’s my age minus 1 so 15 years and the first race i remember watching is really vivid as Lewis cut a corner I think (i was a fan at the time) and i asked my dad if he was allowed to do it and then when he was penalised i didn’t understand why, i think it was Spa 2008? But i know i watched races before then so my first race was probably erm San Marino 2001 after i was born (just a guess, dad never misses a race so he probably had me as a baby in his arms while he watched it)

7. Least Favourite Driver(s)? Lewis Hamilton and erm i don’t really like Dany but Lewis is definitely my least favourite.

15. Senna or Prost? NOOOOOOOOOO OH GOD WHY?? Erm Senna? But i like them both!

22. Do you watch all the practices, quali and race, or quali and race, or just race? When i can i watch all the practices, quali and the race. Sometimes i can’t watch FP1 and FP2 because of school but i always watch FP3 and the rest of the weekend, i’ve only missed one full race weekend this year and one other time i missed all the sessions except for the race so i’m pretty committed.

29. Do you have any suggestions how to make F1 more interesting and popular? Ermmm utilise social media more (which Liberty are doing so good for them), erm louder engines (Bring back V8s at least!), there needs to be more than two drivers competing for the championship or at least more than two competing for race wins (think 2010 and how any of the top 4 could have won the championship at the last race), increase overtaking and competition because a lot of the races this year have had great first few laps while the field sorts itself out and then sort of just fizzled out before getting really good at the end, so something needs to happen in that middle bit which makes my dad remain in his seat rather than going to do something else. That’s all the ideas i have right now but idk really!

34. Do you watch any other kind of sport? Which one? Oh so many, so a lot of the other motorsport i watch like WEC, WRC, MotoGP etc,  I watch tennis, cricket , swimming and cycling as well. Also when the Olympics and Winter Olympics are on i watch pretty much everything! My other two main ones are Football and Rugby Union, probably more Rugby than football because i can deal with not watching a football match live (ish...not really) but i haven’t missed a rugby match for ages! 

Thank you again Eve and sorry it took me so long to do and sorry i rambled for a bit, thank you lovely! 

[hippieeloquent]

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if you were to direct a motogp movie (or make a one season of television) what season or rivalry would you make it about? and more interesting what artistic liberties would you take? it doesn’t have to be a straight up biopic bc imo those are often boring, instead it could be something like velvet goldmine (1998) aka fictional characters whose real life counterparts are pretty obvious, veering in like rpf territory. anyways👀

did you know. one time this guy put a curse on this other guy. and he never won a race again

anyway, look, I do feel like by this point that's the BORING answer from me, but obviously it's where my mind first went. I'm not sure I'd actually want it out there in film form because by now it's badly enough remembered that it's like, my cute little niche story, and I think there's something fun about the Wider World even within the motogp fandom not exactly getting how bonkers the whole thing was. (I know other humans have canonically watched motogp 2004 but I swear even journalists have forgotten some key key details and it's kinda annoying but also fun.) bold words from someone who's been blogging about it!! weird gatekeep-y instinct. but basically my job here is done as far as outreach is concerned - I wrote a very long post, now I get asks about it twice a week that allow me to think about it some more with the four other people who care, perfect balance. that rivalry doesn't need to go mainstream!! the whole point of it is that it's kinda cruel but narratively pleasing that it's gone under the radar, because it's another sign valentino won. but obviously, I cannot literally make a film about this, so the hypothetical repercussions I think maybe we can put aside for a moment here

okay I came back to this bit of the post after I increasingly got into of the spirit of coming up with dumb ideas, but it did make me flesh out what I'd even WANT from something like that. I'm with you anon, a lot of biopics are boring!! if you want to just know what happened, please just literally go and 'watch the races' and 'read books' like what are we actually getting here. you kinda want to give it a purpose for existing, right, a way of portraying real/mildly fictionalised events in a manner that is also taking some kind of stance on the material AND is doing stuff you can't do 'in real life'. thing is, look, you could make 2006 into a film, and I'm sure it'd be perfectly nice because it's fundamentally a solid underdog story (well, inherently winning a title with repsol honda is NOT being an underdog but you can write it that way), but also what are you doing beyond just telling people what happened? I feel like that generally about single seasons, they're not really doing anything for me. I was also turning around the biaggi/valentino rivalry in my head in part because that's the one valentino gave as his answer for 'rivalry he would turn into a film' (marc big wet eyes sitting right next to him), but like. a film about that rivalry from valentino's pov is fundamentally not something I'm interested in. you have all these isolated very memorable moments that make it work as a rivalry, like you can absolutely spin them into a dramatic yarn that goes through the genesis of their conflict to middle finger gate to punching gate to assen + donington + sachsenring + phillip island 2001 and it's basically *insert rousing music* successful coming of age. at most you can lean into the fact valentino became successful at being a dick. like idk it's fine but also what's the point? valentino is challenged in a sports context by biaggi, he's challenged because he realises his words have consequence and the press actually reports the words he says to journalists (the horror), but he is fundamentally not challenged on a personal level. that's the entire point, right? it's the ultimate comfort zone rivalry - biaggi is a dick who it is quite easy to hate and also reacts poorly to valentino's initial provocation. the animosity escalates and it is inherently fun to beat him. valentino is mean to him, but it's not like he even really crosses any lines to beat him. like you can make it into a film, and if you twisted the material a little bit you could make it satisfying, but I don't want to!

now the way the writing process of this post worked was that I was going to breeze through a bunch of non-sete/valentino rivalries and explain why I think some of them don't work for our purposes here, but then I ended up writing myself into changing my mind. so my take on the biaggi rivalry is that actually, you CAN make it work but it has to be from biaggi's perspective. basically, I think you've got to amadeus it (a web weave I have been thinking of making at some point btw). so,,, it's a meditation on talent and how unfair it all is, maybe minus the bit where salieri poisons amadeus (I know that doesn't happen in the film) or dresses up as amadeus' father to, y'know, make him write a requiem on his death bed. and it's not amadeus in that HERE, the clown prince gets a happy ending! but it's more like, in thematic terms, I think you have to zero in on this bit. biaggi didn't have parents who shoved him on a bike when he was three years old, he didn't have parents who were invested in his motorcycling career (or even necessarily particularly invested in him), he started the sport late and discovered that, yes, he did have a prodigious amount of skill in it - but one that he started honing far later than valentino did. he approached his career with a sort of grim resolve, surly and irascible and not interested in making friends with any of his competitors but very, very good. he goes away from the race track and dates all these models, he irritates fellow riders, he's not part of the gang and he's happy about it. he's very successful! four 250cc titles, wins his first ever race in 500cc at a time when doohan was very much winning everything. he's also just like,,,, an interesting and spiky enough character it's not hard to make him come alive

but then of course you have this gradual emergence of the amadeus character, the one who challenges his established position in the court of,, well... motorcycle racing, and also as the guy italians rooted for! and valentino's obviously, y'know, in so many ways the exact opposite from biaggi, and he's super young and cheerful and lively and is doing all his silly celebrations and is being a bit camp and goofy and treats motorcycle racing as a party (you really want to lean into the culture clash here, like in amadeus it's because you have stuffy austrian court vibes but here it's because everyone is having their bones broken every two minutes and just how... kinda grim a lot of motorcycle racing was). and he's also this innocent! yes, he insults biaggi, and yes, in retrospect we know valentino is kinda evil, but at the time he was a kid with a big mouth who was a little taken aback by how that biaggi feud sort of escalated beyond what he'd actually intended it to do! and biaggi just, hates him. and I think, sorry to the real man max biaggi here, but you've got to play with how once they're actually competing with each other, it's miserable how there's just this unbreachable gulf in talent. like, whatever biaggi does he cannot win! he isn't going to defeat valentino over the course of a full season! which is depressing and horrible and CRUEL, because there's this inevitability to the whole thing... and also! because valentino doesn't DESERVE it. and you don't have to go full salieri pleading with god to explain how god could give this CLOWN all this talent, but it's kinda the same vibe! how is it valentino, who is constantly just having a laff and canonically maybe wasn't the biggest gym-goer in the paddock and is just generally seen as, y'know, a bit of a dandy, this foppish clown who everyone loves and who doesn't have to work hard to be good - how is he the one who is winning so much!! it's miserable and unjust... and I think how you portray this is that you really emphasise the kinda, repetitive nature of the defeat. like, I think you probably want to make this into a non-linear narrative where all this biaggi backstory is communicated somehow but you don't just start it when he was born or whatever - you start it in 2001 when they're competing for a title and already hate each other. and then you heavy on the time loop vibes. the whole cinematic language and all that other shit should emphasise how all these weekends are structured in exactly the same way and if you're losing to this one guy, all these different weekends can start feeling the same. it bleeds into each other, it feels inescapable, you're trapped in this narrative you can't change... worst of all, you even return to the same places again and again - like play with that! biaggi keeps coming back to where they had the fist fight, to where valentino first insulted him all those years back. you play up the disorientation and the misery of it all, plus biaggi canonically gives us all this kinda messy freudian shit to play with like how he was dating 'valentina' and his relationship with her was falling apart because of how miserable valentino was making him. it's all there!!

ANYWAYS the way you conclude this story is!! welkom 2004!! so again we can artistic license this a little bit and, uh, ignore sete (though I do also think it's fun if you lean into biaggi being displaced as a rival and staring at them being friendly and happy with each other from the outside) - but the key bit is that valentino is finally making the big error. biaggi wasn't winning titles on a yamaha, since he left yamaha has gotten worse, now valentino is making this big mistake out of his own hubris. language of cinema that shit and make everything brighter and more hopeful.... the time loop is finally over, biaggi has escaped, this year will be different!!!! everyone in his circle agrees, valentino is fucked. step off the plane at welkom (pre season testing didn't happen in this universe) and it's literal dawn of a new day... staring out at the sun and finally, biaggi can move on, can live a new and different life. anyway. obviously we all know what's coming next - you have this big dramatic climactic race where biaggi throws himself at valentino again and again and again and he comes so close to winning it... but he doesn't. and you have valentino living his best life, being delighted, but the film is focusing on how like,,, we're bleaching the joy back out of biaggi's life, how actually he's returning to what he already knew. and it ends on the podium, with the camera focusing on biaggi on that fucking second step or zooming in or whatever (idk how cinema works) and it just finishes on this shot of biaggi dead-eyed in a bleak world, trapped again for eternity aka until the end of the 2005 season. done!! I'm not sure this is quite what valentino had in mind, but. well. that's how I'd do it

this is from the pushkin play from 1832 not the 1984 film but like. low key pushkin already kinda nailed the essence of sports rivalries in the 1830s and we just have to acknowledge that sometimes

right. so the casey rivalry is where I'm going to go completely off the wall. skip this bit to get to the slightly saner stuff. this is also one I fully admit to sometimes playing around with in my mind anyway, but. uh. I'm gonna be taking this one in just. well. places. I do have a vision here but I also don't quite know how to explain it in a way that doesn't make me sound like I've lost my mind, but well if you're still reading this then that's on you. so lemme get this out of the way: the classic sports biopic formula would work well with casey. if I had to point to a single rider I would sports biopic-ify, it's casey. so you have all this kinda,, obvious adversity that's easy to get across, and it's a narrative you can follow chronologically without too much trouble. you've got all the childhood stuff, the australian racing club not letting him join them, the move to britain, the rising through the ranks, it's also this very biopic-friendly 'nobody ever believed in him apart from like three people' stuff. and the premier class is also narratively satisfying, from the rocky rookie season to the kinda shock success to then all the lows of 2008 and 2009 and the physical ailments and the anxiety and then the switch to honda and the title and then him deciding to retire... that's all good stuff! you can absolutely biopic-ify it! gun to my head and sure, I can walk you through exactly what bits of his life I'd focus on and put in what order and so on, and I think ultimately you could make a very good sports biopic from that

[some mild gore to follow in this next section]

but also. thing is. that's fine. it's just not where I want to go here, because again I feel like at that point you can also pick up his autobiography and just read it - because what you're basically doing here is just filming that. and I get how this stuff works, you're bringing the story to a wider audience, you can show stuff in a different way in that medium etc etc, and that's all great but also I don't care about bringing stuff to a wider audience. I care about doing fun stuff in my brain. so what I'd actually do here is just, basically, go in the exact opposite direction and ditch all the realism. genuinely, ditch the live action stuff, we're going animated - what I'm interested in here is stuff where we need to be able to fully suspend our disbelief and lean into some surreal shit. I'm not going to bury the lede here: my idea is that you take that thing where casey said he hated how ducati was ruining the bike by letting valentino's yellow encroach on it and, basically,, just go all in on that bit. like come on, that is so singularly visually evocative, it truly captures a lot of what's going on thematically in that rivalry. (see also x and x for the most relevant casey posts.) casey sees valentino as the malevolent force, this infection! he associates him strongly with a specific colour, one that can be sickly or unnatural or just... evil. malignant, malicious, malevolent, all the m words. to casey, valentino is a personification of everything that is wrong with the sport. valentino is literally the walking manifestation for so many of his issues, from the dangerous riding to the lack of respect to the lying to the cult of personality to the obsession with image and the media to the backroom games to the politics to the injustice of how different riders are treated differently, like!! he's literally all of that! this is a topic for another post, but this plays out in a lot of kinda, weird and funky ways where it's a two way street and sometimes when casey talks about motogp you go 'actually I think that's just valentino?' (btw he also does this about 'europe' right I don't think those are europeans you hate casey that's literally just valentino) and sometimes when he talks about valentino it's kinda? this feels like it's about a little more than the bloke himself? and basically, right, I think you need to take this to its natural conclusion where casey used to admire him and look up to him and want to emulate him on track and then gets disillusioned when valentino's worshippers turn against casey and casey is the one to bring valentino down to earth and... listen, I think you need to play around with valentino being a literal god. and I think you need to have casey stab him to cover up the yellow on the ducati with blood

okay. look. the idea here, right, is that we're basically making the subtext text, and just digging into that process of 'bringing valentino back to earth', of taking on a god and having the audacity to succeed, and also treating valentino as this sort of. infection in his own mind. the bike is literally being infected!! casey may have left the ducati but he STILL has some fidelity and love for this project, those were his people he worked with, and now valentino is coming in and just twisting everything around himself!! but also I think how this functions is that, okay, so you have all this normal stuff that's the actual 'plot' in the 'real world', but the ISSUE with the real world is that there's a lot of stuff that just. isn't possible there. like the thing casey wants in that rivalry but is never going to have is... a captive audience. a big problem casey has in that rivalry is that he doesn't get the chance to actually say a lot of stuff to valentino. he starts using the media more and more and plays the game on valentino's level, but there's still this disconnect where mr straight talking is the valentino rival who valentino never really blanks or freezes out like... there's a disconnect! there's valentino the person, who casey never quite figures out how to just straight up hate, and then there's valentino the character, the racer, the rider, the god who casey DESPISES. but when they're doing small talk at pressers and podiums, casey doesn't get to talk to that version of valentino! he just talks to valentino the person, who obviously isn't literally a different person but is also not going to explain to casey where he's coming from, is he, and also isn't someone who casey can explain to where HE is coming from. and that gulf... it does bother casey. I don't think he can quite verbalise why either, but there's just... this creeping tension. I think it'd be easier for casey if valentino really were more of a caricature, just kinda a dick in all walks of life. and there's just these canonical hints of that... the way casey talks about how he's sure valentino as a guy is fine, but he never knew valentino like that, the whole 'I'd like to go with valentino for dinner to tell him where I was coming from in that rivalry' thing, like!! it's there

so basically EYE think what you should be doing is using the wonders of storytelling to actually. embrace that element. and just leave realism behind now and again. valentino is a god, he is literally worshipped, he's part of this pantheon that casey is trekking to reach. casey is brave enough to take him on in combat, he is the first one who is truly able to draw blood. he sees how valentino isn't just a god of joy or battles or speed or the SUN or any of that other stuff - he's a disease, an illness, a god who is also a false prophet... the worship never quite goes away, because who ever truly gets rid of their valentino rossi complex, but casey eventually is given the chance to face a chained valentino and kinda,,, ritualistically publicly humiliate him using the ducati as both this sick thing that has to be 'cured' and this symbol of valentino's failure. I'm sorry, visual language goes brr here, like chain him up, do weirdly eroticised torture idc!! (psst psst valentino's fucked up shoulder also extremely goes brr here, casey low key a teensy bit weird about valentino's injuries? his thing after the 2010 leg break where he goes 'why's everyone making such a big deal about this other people break their limbs too' and then after 2011 jerez immediately asking whether valentino's shoulder is okay in just a very obviously passive aggressive way. literally he opens with that, valentino isn't using it as an excuse or anything, for some reason it's already on casey's mind and I would politely contest it was out of genuine concern for valentino's wellbeing!! it's just kinda? I'm so compelled by it? I suppose it is kinda about how valentino's suffering gets taken more seriously than his own? how those absences are received differently by the motogp world? idk I find this fun because casey does know this is one thing valentino can't really be blamed for himself, so it just slips out a bit? but yeah, casey + valentino's injuries, nobody's talking about it but I sure will, let casey get weird and mean and a teensy bit sadistic about valentino's injuries in an artistic manner.) crucially I like animation as a medium here because I think it's easier to lean into surrealism when you don't have to hand hold the audience so much through the suspension of realism, also there's just some imagery you can do in cooler ways through animation where in live action it may just look. weird. (I think you can also do one of those things where you have a live action film with only those specific bits animated but also... why? it just feels like in live action you need more 'justifications' for things, like am I saying casey is having some weird hallucinations and is losing his mind? no I just want to have weird vision sequences ffs.) the colour stuff!! valentino/casey is big on the colour coding as a rivalry, to the extent casey is even, y'know, drawing attention to it in the literal text!! yellow and red are banger colours, valentino is big on imagery himself with all his sun + moon motifs, it's kind of all there to make the easy next step to kinda zany surreal imagery. ritualistic stabbing works better in animation, you can kinda get the blood to like. drip down and overwhelm the yellow illness that's slithered out across the bike

and. AND of course what this entire set up allows you to do is.... give them an opportunity to talk. they can't talk in real life! casey CAN'T give him his real thoughts on anything, and fundamentally valentino can't either. they're opponents. they're strangers who chat sometimes. it's not just that they aren't friends, it's that fundamentally they cannot be friends - because their ability to do their actual jobs depends on a certain level of professional distance. valentino of course does have a decent read on casey, and vice versa, because when you're figuring out how to defeat someone then (if you're valentino) you're looking to play the rider too. valentino's entire approach depends on focusing in on his rivals and attempting to throw them off, to make them unravel. he's watching casey closely!! the entire journey of casey's first three seasons in the premier class essentially becomes like, this god of their world focusing in on him. figuring him out. trying to gnaw away at him. obviously, animation also allows you to go big on the panopticon-y imagery which is kinda fundamental to their rivalry, because of their fundamentally oppositional stances to 'performing' for the ever present cameras where there IS a little bit of common ground in they have both struggled with it. but valentino isn't going to ever say that to casey! casey isn't going to open up to valentino! so if you give them,, you know, a different arena to express themselves, where casey actually has this external figure to talk to (as he's like, cutting him open I guess) whereas valentino actually is put in a position where he's allowed to respond, where he can taunt casey a little bit, where he can interrogate casey's approach and also the similarities between the two of them and how casey has been forced to become a little more like valentino to challenge him... because the thing is, right, valentino is so big on message discipline with his rivals and has completely stopped talking about that rivalry post mid 2013 that, first of all, you have this complete imbalance in who's been telling this story for the past decade, but second of all you kinda don't have a sense of what valentino would respond? idk!! I think this is mainly fun as a thought exercise for me specifically but also I do think it's kinda, digging into some of the bits that make this narratively work as a rivalry, how valentino in this rivalry is actually just kinda... removed. like he's not really emotional about it!! at most he's a bit bitchy, but even that just feels about The Game. it's the most extreme in this regard followed by jorge - but with valentino's other feuds you kinda... see a bit more an unguarded moment, see something a little more real there. the casey rivalry feels so uncomfortable precisely because valentino is a little... inhuman in this one. I mean, if you want to have valentino as some kind of cross between a deity and a monster in any of his feuds, this is the one. casey's just an obstacle to him. idk don't you think casey kinda wants to chain valentino down and stab him and make him see casey a little more... well, I think he should want it and I think it'd be fun to see and get them to talk to each other. ugh and also all the implications of making the faith vs non-believer elements more literal... casey the heretic!!!

there's some obvious stuff here you'd have to figure out, like 'how do you make this work as a narrative even to people who aren't familiar with casey stoner at all' and 'who the fuck do you think the target audience is here' and 'you do know this is not the kind of thing that would ever be made, right, go back to the casey stoner sports biopic like a sane person' but!! I do think it's material you can make work if you're just,,, efficient and smart in how you're actually telling the 'real life' version of the rivalry. also in my head this is. idk. an animated limited series not a film, which then brings in other stuff like 'episodic structure' because I'm fundamentally opposed to tv shows that think they're films. and look, I'm not going to write an entire film script treatment here, I just think a good writer can figure this stuff out. blood on the ducati is the framing device for everything else, simple. lots of animated floating eyes I reckon, first casey is watching valentino and then valentino is watching casey and the whole world is watching them... and it does bleed into real life just a little, where you're wondering whether casey is actually imagining/dreaming this stuff or valentino is or if they both know it somehow... you can get away with more ambiguity in animation. anyway, if you do want more thoughts on this one specifically for whatever reason, let me know because this one I do actually have more on

also laguna 2008 is a bit tortoise and the hare coded if you really think about it

[end of gore]

so. on to jorge. hm. the thing about jorge is that he was kinda writing a coming of age film in his own head, so like - yes, that's what you do go for? you can play it straight and follow how jorge has cast his rivals, or you can pin the whole narrative on the fact that jorge has cast them - the kinda artificiality of the narrative, the way jorge is this storyteller who isn't being recognised as much as he thinks he should be, isnt adequately appreciated. the way there's this three way discourse between what jorge thinks the story is and what the public thinks the story is and actual. you know. reality. I think this is a bit more light-hearted, like you know how the best stories about teenagers take their emotions seriously but also let them be kinda silly? because young people are silly! jorge was silly! he's got a lot of CHARM because he's so cocky and naive and full on and intense and awkward and kinda off-putting and tactless and a bit all over the place and so painfully, painfully young, like he's a good protagonist because that's a KID. but also, obviously there's also a lot of extremely not light-hearted bits of his story - everything about his father, his manager... idk this one's another one where, I don't just want to make it a generic sports biopic, and I'm trying to figure out the clear narrative arc here? I mean, you can point to the end of 2010 and really lean into him choosing victory on-track over popularity off it. the problem with 2010 is that it does not work as a dramatic season, yeah sure with the magic of biopics you can hack at it to shit but also. idk. what are we getting out of it. I think for narrative purposes you want to maybe narrow in, and end it at the end of 2008, with the switching of the numbers this kind of moment of emancipation? but also! this feels like we're straying a bit too far away from the fun sports elements and I don't want to REALLY suggest all the ways in which you could mine jorge's personal trauma in a jokey tumblr post, so I'm gonna move on from this one

the problem is 2015 just straight up doesn't work as a jorge-centric narrative, except in a very kinda comic way that leans into how absurd his role in that season was. 2012 as a season is a bit... y'know, it's fine. okay it's mostly terrible, but that's fine too. but it doesn't have a great narrative hook. which kinda leads you to the problem that I do think the valentino rivalry is more... juicy from jorge's pov, because for valentino, jorge is just kinda? an obstacle? idk he's more normal about it, it's just his job to destroy the guy, you know how it is. but also 2009 does work better narratively from valentino's pov, like it's the build up to catalunya specifically you can dramaticise... idk though, I do love catalunya but my heart isn't really in this exercise because I think valentino isn't really being... challenged here? it's a title fight where he's fundamentally using a set of tools he's already perfected, to beat a guy he doesn't really give a shit about. when the italian press is down on him pre catalunya, it doesn't spark any genuine self-doubt - it's just a handy source of extra motivation. there's no epic highs or lows that season, not real ones. and yes I know I was talking about making valentino who gets stabbed repeatedly to cover up an infection a moment ago, but that reflected real EMOTIONAL truths!! I'm committed to thematic fidelity more than I am to literal fidelity

genuinely I think the best way to tackle jorge is with the jorge/dani parallel journeys... what, film? tv show? maybe show actually - you don't have one coherent narrative Statement per se but you're constantly charting those journeys in reference to each other, really rooting it in their respective points of views, no neutral detached cinematic language like I want everything to be very much written to be from their eyes!! going from one to the other and back again. and you're charting these different journeys, right, and how they both captured different flavours of like... emotional successes and failures. I think it's actually about failure, yeah, about having to accept there's something you can't have and might never be able to get - whether that's universal love or a premier class title or whatever - but Actually, that might not be the end of the world. and during this process, they go from being enemies to tentative friends!! guys who realise they can maybe actually understand each other better than they thought!! this real moment of interpersonal connection. you have all these media narratives and the managers and so on and the fact they're competitors as these built in reasons why they've just been pitted against each other from the start... but y'know, again, it is also just a bit about maturing, about being able to set that aside, about making your peace with defeat and failure as an element of growing up. you can't win everything, maybe there's something you really really really want and you're just not going to get it, but at the end of the day it's kinda... yeah. self-acceptance. idk this is the nice one

so with marc you can go several different ways here I guess, and again he's also perfectly decent sports biopic material, probably second to casey in that category like yeah sure do the comeback story. but also, we do already have a very good self-produced documentary about what he thinks the narratives of his career are? idk this is also just a personal taste thing, I'll leave him to doing all the injury stuff himself, I don't have much to add there. we'll get to the obvious one in a second, but I was trying to figure out if there were other places I massively felt like you need the cinematic touch. and, again, the 2013 season is obviously very exciting!! but also, you have it covered in.,,,, multiple documentaries, I don't feel I have a take their either? his rivalries with dani and jorge aren't really substantive enough to sustain a bit of cinema. dovi... I mean, what are you saying there? what's the arc? I feel like if I tackled dovi, I'd go somewhere else and really go all in with the ducati stuff, and make it a bit more... you know, stark, stripped back, basically just the emotional component of how much he gave to that project and how he managed to beat away one rival after the next and how it all ended up falling apart in a kind of anti-climactic way? he's also good sports biopic material, but in a way I think the marc rivalry is the bit of his story I have the least to say on. so eg, 2017 is a dramatic season, but he's also kinda fine after it? he always knew it was a long shot, he tried his best and he got really close and then he lost. you can't amadeus it because dovi isn't (fictional) salieri. basically, I think what I'm saying here is that dovi is too well-adjusted to feature in this post. though I'd totally watch a film about his 250cc seasons, like it's a bit annoying because HE is the underdog who loses both title fights to jorge, but it'd still be kinda fun idk. I wouldn't really know what to do with the material but if someone made the film I'd absolutely watch it

right then. the thing about sepang 2015 is... yeah, sure, of course you can do it, it already exists as a narrative but... yeah, what are you adding!! idk I always think when you're adapting something, you kinda need to have a reason for it? I mean, what are you doing that's not already there in the footage? idk maybe this is just a sign of having been a fan of this sport for one too many years but to me the idea of sepang 2015 can get a bit boring (or maybe just repetitive) where I need a new TAKE on it to really get into the idea of fictionalising it. like where's the auteur's touch y'know, what can I still add to this!! but it also needs to WORK for someone who is new to the story, which kinda just makes you want to tell the story straight.... y'know the story is strong enough and COMPLICATED enough to stand on its own and it IS good but I don't really have anything interesting to say beyond 'yeah sure that'e be neat'. I can't tell you why, but I also don't think the casey approach quite works here? the idea of providing a framing device with which valentino and marc can actually talk to each other... eh. don't like that. hm. okay wait actually I just turned it around in my head for... a while and I think I've got an idea to make the worst motorcycle racing film of all time. so, my central stupid film-making gimmick here is just. centring the fact we're completely reliant on a few guys and what they're telling us in making up our minds, and our removal from that story and the imperfection of their perceptions and so on. so I think you kinda make a point of... not actually showing the motorcycle racing? like, you always show it by showing other people watching it, you're showing the tv screen rather than the actual racing. even in the cinematic medium, you're centring the theatrical aspects, where you drill it down to just a few characters. valentino. marc. uccio. marc's fuck ass manager. maybe a crew chief or two. keep it limited though, all the others are kept at a distance - you're constantly focusing in on the same few characters. and very early on you basically just like... get them to fourth wall break by telling you, the viewer, with their actual words how racing works for them, what meaning they take out of it - and again it's this remove because we're never allowed to actually feel the racing for ourselves (no helmet cams), and it sets up that as the tragedy unfolds, again and again we're just hearing from them what happened. it's all zoomed in on how claustrophobic the entire situation is, like doing the race direction room after the sepang 2015 is perfect for that kind of thing, and crucially they're only ever addressing the audience because they can't address each other. but fourth wall breaks also obviously draw attention to artificiality! I realise they are very much like, lame gimmick central, but also are these men not inherently about lame gimmicks... idk it's basically the same story but at least it feels like a kinda interesting way of telling it. kinda trite, but cinema allows you to get to the point and let valentino actually play with the camera... so literally take it into his own hands and lead it around and tell the story from his point of view. and you can play with how they do both change in what stories they think they're telling, how they're constantly revising their own stories, how their stories completely clash with each other... like. make them literal narrators. that's my pitch

so. one interesting pattern that has come up with my approaches to these rivalries is that with the exception maybe of the 2015 stuff, I feel like I'm more naturally inclined to treat valentino as a narrative device and centre his rivals. a big part of this is that valentino is a fantastic narrative device. he's kinda. this looming presence in every narrative in this sport where you can just sort of use him as a sort of way to poke away at all these other riders. the monster everyone loves who you are trapped with. BOO!! he's gonna eat you! which is fun! but ALSO, crucially, several of these rivalries aren't that emotionally challenging for him!! again, with casey right, he wants to beat him, but he's not having a crisis of faith over losing to casey. he thinks casey is annoying, he wants to beat him because he wants to win. valentino is casey's foil, but casey is not valentino's. valentino makes for an excellent personal antagonist to casey, but the reverse just isn't true. casey isn't forcing valentino to reexamine his approach except 'ramping up the levels of being a dick on-track' - like, yes, that's a serious competitive challenge, but also valentino is very comfortable in his own skin in that rivalry. sure, you could have valentino have some kind of massive revelation about the casey rivalry, but like. he doesn't in canon. he changes his behaviour towards casey in pretty predictable ways depending on what the relationship demands from his perspective at any given time. there's nothing more there

now, obviously you know where I'm going here. there IS a rivalry where you can make the argument he changes as a result of it, there IS a rivalry that tips him over the line and makes him to do stuff he hadn't done before that, there IS a rivalry that happens to coincide with a period of his competitive life that challenges him both personally and professionally. now, look, I have already talked about the sete rivalry. you know what I think about this rivalry - and if you don't, I really already have told the story here and here and here and here and also here. I think this works perfectly well as a narrative in its own right, and it's one you can tell from either perspective... but you kinda need both. I think again you probably naturally lean towards starting it from sete's perspective and that first proper meeting (I mean, idk if it is their first actual meeting, but it's the logical obvious place you start this story) with sete giving valentino advice during his first 500cc test and valentino just, y'know, ignoring him and being a cocky shit and then crashing. so you get to see sete being kinda exasperated by the whole thing. also, obviously ibiza is like, a key framing device here, like it's the most obvious in-your-face way of tracking their relationship with each other. I don't actually know how often they partied there together, but it must have been at least twice and if the commentators are to be believed it must have included 2003. artistic license and you can add one or two more times, but mainly you want to focus in on 2003 onwards right. so you've got this 2002 one where it's, y'know, high point of their friendship and in the name of narrative efficiency, you establish here that sete is looking to make the honda switch. the emphasis is on how valentino has been winning everything but on the flip side you're getting the first insight into his discontent. and there's a bit of a vibe of, what could you possibly have to complain about? like you are winning so much? so it's late one night where they've had this slightly unguarded alcohol-fuelled moment of genuine vulnerability but in the end it's actually characterised by how... unsubstantial the link between them is, because they wouldn't talk about this kind of thing with each other and they might both be similar in some ways but also don't gettttttt each other. it means you can return there as a location in 2003, where you've just had sachsenring and valentino's dramatic loss but they're still partying together and it's like. obviously In The Air that not everything is quite right... their relationship is already gradually altered and twisted because you're introducing this element of actual stakes and competition (obviously in 2004 they do NOT spend that time together, as far as we know anyway, and you can show them being very much not together at ibiza as a very obvious Oooh Things Will Fall Apart and maybe already haveeee)

and I do think basically I've already said what I think the themes here are,,,, several times by this point, so I'm not going to belabour the point. I think all of this fundamentally works as a narrative with like, minimal massaging and rearranging of the elements for dramatic effect. it's all there already, everything from sete's arc with the [insert non-tasteless way of covering a real life tragedy that fundamentally alters the course of sete's career] and how that leads to sete becoming the challenger and how he does want to win and his eventual downfall. with valentino, you have the element of liberation and self-discovery and... well, growing into your own but also kinda having the narrative drawing attention to how 'growing into your own' can involve becoming a fully realised character who is essentially quite cruel? you have this kind of... build up, right, towards this moment of revelation, where you lay bare who these two people actually ARE at sepang 2004, and then again at jerez 2005. valentino has gone his own way, he has freed himself from the chains of honda, he has embraced individualism and the chance to define himself and his own legacy and stand on his own two feet and not rely on the strongest bike or all this stuff within honda where they chose him as their flag bearer, for better or for worse... like he comes to his own here! he takes the step from 'great rider' to 'legend' because he gets to this dramatic moment of stepping into the unknown, he takes this massive risk that could have cost him so much, and it ends up elevating him. but it also puts him under duress, and in that moment he reveals himself - whatever sete did or did not do at qatar 2004, EVEN IF sete did all that shit, what you are left with is valentino vowing to ruin this man. valentino uses sete to make himself 'better', to fuel himself as a competitor. valentino turns sete into a tool in his own story. and again, thematically you've got all this stuff about how sete was managing the image of the rivalry and how valentino took advantage of that - how sete needed it to remain respectful and valentino was completely willing to abandon that. like, you have two protagonists who really are similar in quite a few ways, who think they have this shared understanding with each other, but when it comes down to it? they end up being super painfully different

now I can go on about this and how to play it straight, basically, you can just do that rivalry and I think it'd be cool and fun and very easy to arrange in a good narrative way. BUT I've kind of already. done that. like I don't want to suggest a film that is basically a nicer version of my tumblr posts. so I want to take this in a slightly different direction, and I think what we need to consider with this rivalry is this: what if you made the curse literal? basically, what's always kinda charmed me about this rivalry is that the curse should not work and all the misfortune that befalls sete after that is so comical that it's kinda... what do you do with that? and the answer is you just lean all the way in. my pitch is this: what if valentino sells his soul to the devil?

so, you know faust, right, and you know the bit at the start of goethe's faust where god and mephistopheles are basically making a wager over how corruptible this one human is. and faust is like... he's kinda disillusioned, he feels that everything he's dedicated his life to in academia is fundamentally hollow, gets very close to committing suicide. and faust has gone a bit new age-y, gotten into all this mystical shit and he's got this pentagram that ends up preventing mephistopheles from leaving his presence in their first meeting... and basically what the devil can give him is like, the chance to attain some true pleasure, and for that faust is willing to bet everything - so if faust can just have that, then maybe eternal damnation is worth it. and look, I'm not going to summarise the entire plot of faust here and it does go off the wall a bit with all the gretchen stuff, but the point is you have this version of the devil who is fundamentally a cynic and is attempting to win an argument with god by making this human succumb to his own nihilism. and what faust basically does is like, abandon his normal life where he's trying to live by normal virtues and goes off on this journey with the devil. and there's this little moment where mephistopheles,,, pretends to be faust and takes on the role of an academic adviser (you know how it is) and seduces this random student away from the word of god and sends him down a wretched path, which ends with this bit:

like, a big part of faust's tragedy is supposed to be about... well, hubris, of the relationship of god to man, of no longer being afraid of the devil... and obviously, this is all framed very much in terms of religion, but at the end of the day it's also about, you know, having purpose - faust is living a life that no longer has any meaning to him, all of his knowledge and studies now no longer fill the void inside himself. his nihilism opens the door for mephistopheles, and is what makes him willing to accept the devil's terms. now, and I am so very sorry to goethe here, I think we have some material we can use here to explore the valentino/sete rivalry. obviously, you can't do a one-to-one, you need to get rid of some of like, the depression and all that - there were times when valentino was feeling 'a bit low' in 2003, but not 'faust thinking everything he'd done in his entire life was pointless' low, yeah? also, unless you want to do a real long view here and even then it can't really be justified, there obviously isn't really a 'tragedy' here from valentino's perspective. like, he wins! this isn't valentino's tragedy, it's sete's! I was being a bit facetious when I said he was 'selling his soul to the devil', and you can kinda parse mephistopheles' motivations in different ways depending on what flavour and what interpretation of him you're dealing with here. you don't 'damn' valentino, you essentially just turn him into a tool of the devil!

so, this is how this works out in my head: the devil works more broadly as the manifestation of competitive impulses, the kind of 'how far would you go to win' question as a bloke who shows up and literally talks to the characters about it (magic of cinema). he's also engaging with valentino feeling like his victories no longer having meaning, with being disconnected from honda and from the entire culture there and just feeling like he's going through the motions. there's this element of like... opening the door to what is essentially a journey of self-actualisation, bringing him closer to being a 'god' but also allowing him to fully come into his own and become himself. to win on his own terms. I reckon ibiza is my preferred narrative device where the devil talks both to sete and valentino there (separately), first literally as a mysterious stranger and then... maybe not? he's talking to them at times of their lives when they're not at ibiza and it's not happening there in the physical world and they both end up kinda having to confront they're dealing with some potentially malevolent supernatural entity. but the important elements of the devil is that a) he's not going to do anything the humans don't actually ask for themselves, and b) everyone knows he's following his own agenda and you should be careful of the requests you make of him. so it's kinda like... essentially, the backdrop of this rivalry unfolding is they're constantly being challenged to decide what lines they're willing to cross. which culminates at qatar... and maybe you do have sete making like. a teensy mistake. a teensy error in judgement, one that is both real and deliberate but he could not have known would get that reaction and instantly regrets. and valentino, who is I think inherently sceptical of the devil coming to offer to help him and maybe does crank out the pentagrams (remember, the whole point of faust is that he was too arrogant to be scared of the devil, or one of the points anyway), in a moment of fury does decide - no, actually. I will take that step. I will curse sete. now the thing is, dramatically this is a teensy bit tricky because when you're talking about being damned by the devil, usually the consequences are a bit more severe than 'not winning a motorcycle race again' (yes, you can get into how sete did also seem genuinely cursed after that, cf his ambulance/bus crash situation, but again we are flirting with being in poor taste in this tumblr post). but the thing is, right, you have to lean into the silliness here! qatar 2004 is inherently silly, a CURSE is inherently silly, like real life is already silly here! you have to engage with the people where they are, and for these athletes all this shit is so heightened that the emotions are full on. like, valentino would've sold that guy to the devil! and to him not winning another race is basically the worst thing that can happen

so, obviously, you get to do the actual curse stuff. curses are inherently campy fun, the devil doing curses is campy fun, getting valentino rossi to crank out the pentagrams is inherently campy fun. you get to play around with this, right, like you know that bit in the brno 2005 race commentary where the commentators are talking about how valentino might as well have a little radio to talk into sete's helmet to remind him of how sete had fucked up at the sachsenring. OBVIOUSLY obviously obviously it is just so... idk scrunchy and fun to have this idea of valentino becoming a malevolent enough force to literally do that.... like damn the commentators did kinda eat with that?? ughhhhhh do you ever think about sete leading the qatar 2005 race for most of the way???? like that's SO fucked up because you literally have articles from about the race going 'hey maybe sete can break his curse' and then the commentators are talking about curses having one year expiration dates but obviously they!! do not!!!!! there's one race where sete goes off track and the commentators are talking about how valentino will surely have smiled into his helmet like that's so fucked!! it's so fucked!! but idk I think basically you have all this creeping curse-y stuff and devil stuff and then you get this twist and then it just becomes misery zone for sete until you sort of. compress the timeline and have him retire without getting into what happened at the end of 2006. and valentino just relishing in all his very worst emotions. and you've got sete who was the better man after jerez 2005, who took the high ground again and again and again and it did NOTHING for him.... and then he's cursed and his career is finished and the devil has had his fun getting mixed in with mid noughties motogp. and now obviously this is inherently kinda dumb and corny and silly but it's the devil!! mephistopheles to me is allowed to get up to dumb shit sometimes, let him have some fun!! idk I like curses being literal idc

I think the obvious critique here is 'this doesn't really feel like it gets the message of faust'. which, yes, is true - and obviously the way narratives are structured, a satisfying resolution isn't 'well selling your soul kinda slaps, actually'. and my statement to respond to this argument is as follows:

this is essentially canonically what happened. valentino DID do something kinda evil and it DID work out 100% for him and it DID kinda slap. at least when you add in the devil, you're making explicit the bit where it is a little bit bad. also, is sports not inherently about selling your soul for success... the story of valentino and sete is essentially about how we are twisted by competition, how pretending that we don't wish ill to our opponents is inherently dishonest. it is about lifting a facade for something that is already inherently there in the souls of men. this is obviously inherently a deeply cynical stance, but this is also a deeply cynical story beyond all the fun battles and camp dramatics. the devil is a cynic and he is basically the point of view character of goethe's faust - he's the one who is positioned closest to the audience. sports is all about living out some of humanity's worst instincts in a relatively low stakes setting, which means we get a free pass to have fun with a deeply cynical story that goes 'maybe selling your soul to the devil is fine, actually'

do I stand by this stance? not really, but the whole fun of storytelling is that sometimes you can just be kinda mean. I think goethe would get it... you can tell which character he enjoyed writing the most

the OTHER way you can do this is centre everything around qatar 2004 as like,,, the mystery box element...... okay look I have now made two posts that go WAY too deep on the 'what really happened' element but I do loveeeeee the whole thing like I would just make a film about that very end of the season and we show it from all these different angles as different characters narrate what happened... like fuck all the riders I want to hear from whichever mechanic used the scooter... the gresini mechanic who gave evidence to race direction.... various honda higher ups the crew chiefs like this is jb vs juan martinez it's war!!! obviously you still have the same emotional/thematic hooks as the general rivalry does but idk I would have a LOT of fun figuring out how to structure that, I loveeee mysteries... maybe I'd write it as a mockumentary yeah..... this one's just fun

anyway. a lot of stuff going on in this post, huh! you can probably tell I didn't edit this much. my classic tell when I edit my tumblr posts is I remember how 'paragraphs' work. unfortunately all I have energy for are like. a bunch of rants about things in my brain. I think when tumblr tells you that you've reached the maximum number of characters per paragraph and you need to figure out where to put a break, it's probably a bad thing? on the whole, my stance is I don't have anything AGAINST mildly fictionalised versions, but for me I'm always more of a.... well I want to take advantage of the full specificity of the events as they happened or just come up with a completely original story. kind of person. I know this ask probably wasn't looking for my 'what if you bled out valentino as he's strung up above a red motorcycle' vision but yeah. with a lot of biopics I'm always a bit 'well you could just read about this couldn't you' like I need stuff to take some kind of a stance on the material it's using... all my stuff takes a stance. that's all I've got. obviously all these stances mean that basically none of these things could ever be made. and I know what I said above but if they called me up to write the casey stoner biopic script treatment, I would also do that. if you've actually read to this point, give me a shout - you're a real one and I love you

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Dani Pedrosa becomes a MotoGP™ Legend

Three-time World Champion Dani Pedrosa has been named a MotoGP™ Legend ahead of hanging up his leathers at the end of 2018, with the Spaniard inducted into the MotoGP™ Legends Hall of Fame at the season finale at Valencia. Pedrosa won the 125 Championship in 2003, the 250 title in 2004 and 2005, and is one of the most successful riders of all time in the premier class.

Pedrosa’s international career began in 2001 in the 125 World Championship. As a rookie, he took two podiums and finished his first season within the top ten overall in eighth. The following year he took his first wins – three of them – to finish the season third overall, before he went two better in 2003 and won his first title with five wins.

Despite breaking both his ankles in a crash at the end of 2003, the ‘Little Samurai’ then moved up to the 250 World Championship for 2004 – and won on his debut. At 18 years and 202 days old Pedrosa became the youngest rider to win in the class, and it was on his way to becoming the youngest ever intermediate class World Champion at 19 years and 18 days old. In 2005, he defended the crown.

2006 marked Pedrosa’s debut in the premier class. On the podium first time out in Jerez and then needing only four races to take his first win when he took to the top step in Shanghai, one of the most successful premier class riders ever had arrived on the scene. He took another win in his rookie year, at Donington Park, and ended the year in the top five.

In 2007 Pedrosa was second overall to only Casey Stoner and added more wins and podiums to his tally, and he was in the top three in the Championship in 2008 – despite breaking his right hand in pre-season testing and sitting out the US GP after injuring his left hand at the German GP. In 2009 he managed the same top three despite more struggles with injury, and in 2010 was runner-up once again. 2011 was another battle through the pain barrier, before an incredible assault on the title in 2012 that saw the Spaniard only narrowly miss out on the crown – and win the most races that year.

In 2013 Pedrosa was leading the standings before a collarbone break and was third overall, and in 2014 he suffered with arm problems throughout the season and despite that, took another win. 2015 began with career-saving surgery to fix the problem, and Pedrosa was back on the top step towards the end of the year at Motegi and at Sepang. In 2016 he won at Misano as he destroyed the field, and 2017 saw him make another piece of history as he took to the top step in the 3000th race counting towards the World Championship, in Jerez. He also won the season finale in style, underlining an incredible achievement: he’s the first rider in history to win at least one Grand Prix per season for 16 consecutive years.

After taking the third most podiums of all time behind only Valentino Rossi and Giacomo Agostini, Pedrosa retires at the end of 2018 – and now joins the ranks of MotoGP™ Legends.

“I’m very happy to be here with Dani,” began Vito Ippolito, President of the FIM. “You made the list of the big success of his racing career, in the different classes in MotoGP and I can’t add anything around that but I want to say that Dani is an example in my opinion to all the other riders, especially the youngest. Dani really is an example. The way he raced, the way he won, he had great results but the clean way he raced. We in the FIM I can say that sometimes we talked to Dani to share ideas about how he sees things, the penalties to the riders, what his opinion was. We have a lot of trust in Dani.”

“It’s a controversial situation for me, on one side I’m happy for him to be a Legend, from the first moment he said he would retire we talked about it and he’s been a big legend of MotoGP and a big asset,” adds Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO of Dorna Sports. “But on the other side all the memories of the generation are coming to me, Dani is one of the people who has worked through our system and now he has retired. I remember very well the first time I saw Dani in Jarama at the selection for the Activa Movistar Cup. Alberto Puig was talking to all the riders explaining everything, and from the beginning I saw Dani’s eyes and they were saying, ‘don’t talk to me and let me have the bike!’. And I remember he needed help to get on the bike but immediately we saw the skills and the possibilities of Dani. We decided the rules to be part of the Cup, the maximum and minimum age. And Dani wasn’t able to enter by a couple of months but then we talked about it and we decided to adjust it to allow him to participate, and it started a very good relationship. During a very long career we’ve discussed a lot of things many times. We are friends, but he’s also always trying to tell me what he thinks is correct! I’m extremely proud, together with the FIM, to make Dani a real MotoGP Legend, and thank him for all his contribution to MotoGP.”

“First of all thank you to Carmelo and thank you for the nice words,” smiled Pedrosa. Obviously it’s a very emotional moment you never expect it to arrive when you’re a kid, and now to be here is a bit strange but I’ happy because I felt a lot of support from all the fans, a lot from all the paddock. I’m really, really happy about this moment to see my rivals of a lifetime here. I feel that MotoGP gave me a lot of things in my life because basically I’ve always been here and I learned a lot in life thanks to MotoGP. In the same way I’m very happy that I could give something else to the sport like Carmelo was explaining. When I started it was a new generation winning races and Championships, not only me but everyone here on the front row. This is good for me because it’s a nice feeling that we opened a door for a new generation. Luckily I don’t know all my numbers which is a good thing!”

Asked about a standout moment, the Spaniard added: “Obviously the moment that stands out for me is the first Championship because you achieve something you dreamed of. You know you can get a podium or win a race but to get a championship it’s something that, as a kid, you see these guys going so fast and you don’t believe it. So when you achieve it all the emotions come out, and not only that year but for life because you’re been dreaming of it since you were born; watching races on TV and wanting to be that guy. So that day is unique and that’s what makes you, it’s the drive that makes you want more and want to keep going and get through the tough times – and the reaction from the people and the love you get is something I could never imagine so for me that’s the most beautiful.”

Pedrosa joins a long list of greats that have been made MotoGP™ Legends that includes Giacomo Agostini, Mick Doohan, Geoff Duke, Wayne Gardner, Mike Hailwood, Daijiro Kato, Eddie Lawson, Anton Mang, Angel Nieto, Wayne Rainey, Phil Read, Jim Redman, Kenny Roberts, Jarno Saarinen, Kevin Schwantz, Barry Sheene, Marco Simoncelli, Freddie Spencer, Casey Stoner, John Surtees, Carlo Ubbiali, Alex Crivillé, Franco Uncini, Marco Lucchinelli, Randy Mamola, Kork Ballington and the late Nicky Hayden.

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The Legend of Valentino Rossi is Still Going Strong at 39

Who is the greatest racer of all time? It’s an unwinnable argument that inevitably includes superstars such as Mario Andretti, Tazio Nuvolari, A.J. Foyt, Juan Manuel Fangio, Richard Petty, Ayrton Senna, Sébastien Loeb, and Michael Schumacher, to name just a few. But perhaps the real king is a man known best for his exploits on two wheels rather than four, a motorcycle racer named Valentino Rossi.

At 39, the Italian maestro is still fighting for the MotoGP World Championship, rubbing elbows with rivals at 220 mph. He has also won car rallies, competed in the World Rally Championship, and, perhaps most staggering of all, turned down a Ferrari Formula 1 drive.

It’s a fact lost often to the passage of time, but a dozen years ago Maranello courted Rossi to join Schumacher, who was nearing the end of his reign in the world’s most glamorous racing team. Rossi was approaching his 30th birthday and had been competing on motorcycles since he was 16, so it seemed only natural he might be ready for a new challenge. Both Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone wanted him in F1 because his rock ‘n’ roll swagger would be a huge boost for the series.

Rossi duly agreed to test for Ferrari, committing himself to a serious program expected to take him full-time into F1 in 2007 or 2008. From 2004 to 2006, he completed more than half a dozen tests with the Scuderia in between his MotoGP duties.

F1 cars are not easy machines to master. They are hugely complicated, a bit like a four-wheeled NASA rocket. At Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in April 2004, Rossi switched from a 240-horsepower Yamaha MotoGP bike, which rode around corners using only mechanical grip via two tiny tire contact patches, to a 950-hp Ferrari F2003 that rocketed around corners via four mammoth slicks and mind-boggling downforce. The change didn’t seem to bother him. To Rossi the game was just the same: an engine, some rubber, a racetrack, and a timing board.

Schumacher was present during that first test, when the Italian was so unprepared that he had to borrow the German’s F1 helmet. When Rossi returned to the pits after his first few runs, the most successful driver in F1 history could hardly believe what he saw when he checked the telemetry. He was stunned, even incredulous.

Rossi’s pace in that debut outing should have been impossible for a rookie who spent his life racing motorbikes, but the man has an almost supernatural affinity for anything involving petroleum explosions, burning rubber, and dancing on the giddy limit. Or as Rossi’s own hero Steve McQueen put it, “twisting the tiger’s tale.”

F1 car, rally car, MotoGP bike—Rossi can make them all sing. And no one else has ever done that, apart from the late John Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two wheels and four. But who else has turned down the chance to drive for racing’s most hallowed name? Rossi recalls the moment he made the decision to spurn Ferrari and four wheels.

“It was on the plane going home from a test at Valencia [in Spain],” he says. “I went there to understand my potential against the other guys. I understood that with a lot of work I had the potential to go fast. But on the plane, I decided: bikes. The main reason was that I was not ready to stop racing bikes. This was the biggest problem.”

Rossi has won seven MotoGP world championships, the most recent in 2009—a long time ago, but he finished second in the championship in three of the past four seasons. This year he sits third in the standings with four races remaining on the schedule. He holds the series’ all-time record for race wins, with 89. He took his first grand prix victory in the junior 125cc category in August 1996, and his most recent success came in the 1000cc MotoGP category in June 2017.

That’s a winning career that spans almost 21 years, a long way beyond Schumacher’s F1 record of 14 years between his first and last victories, especially considering the enhanced risks of MotoGP racing. Bikes have a habit of chewing up and spitting out even the greatest of exponents; riders have no carbon-fiber safety cell, just a leather suit and a helmet.

Rossi is a busy man during the season, contesting 19 MotoGP rounds, from Texas to Argentina to Malaysia to Australia and throughout Europe, as well as testing commitments and public relations duties. His opportunity to race cars is therefore limited to a month or two each winter. His has a soft spot for Italy’s Monza rally, which he has won a record six times. Last December he beat two professional car racers into second and third: factory Hyundai rally driver Andreas Mikkelsen and Audi LMP1 driver Marco Bonanomi. It sounds like an unlikely outcome, but it’s there in the record book, a plain fact as opposed to a myth. In the more distant past, Rossi managed to squeeze a few WRC outings into his motorcycling schedule, finishing just outside the top 10 in the 2006 New Zealand round.

Perhaps we shouldn’t consider such performances unlikely; Rossi has spent his entire life playing with engines and wheels. His father, Graziano, also a motorcycle racer of some repute, scored three grand prix wins in 1979, the year Valentino was born. He was forced to retire three years later due to a head injury, and in retirement he built a racing machine for his son. But it wasn’t a motorcycle.

“When Valentino was 6, I built him a kart,” Rossi senior recalls. “It was an evil thing—the chassis was for a 60cc engine, but I fitted a 100cc engine.”

Thus his son learned to do what he does best—battling on the brink of disaster—by thrashing this homemade device around the local gravel pits. He started racing a few years later, finishing fifth in the 1991 Italian junior karting championship, with the plan to graduate to the European championship the following year.

“Going fast is always what I wanted to do in my life; I think I inherited that from my father,” Rossi says. “I started to understand quite early that I have a special talent to do this. When I raced go-karts, I understood that I have a good feeling to understand what’s happening. But I was not the only one. There were other kids who were faster than me, so I said, ‘This is the way for me, but, f***, I have to improve.’”

There was one problem: Rossi’s father didn’t have the budget necessary to contest the European championship, so Valentino suggested he should race something cheaper: a popular type of racing minibike called Minimoto.

“My passions for cars and bikes were growing up together,” he adds. “But when Minimoto arrived, I began to think that I had a better taste from riding the bike. For sure, the money for racing karts was a problem, and because [my father] knew a lot of people in the bike world, it was more possible for him to find bikes and sponsors.”

Rossi switched full time to motorcycles in 1992, winning the local Minimoto championship at his first attempt. Three years later he was Italian 125cc champion, and in spring 1996 he made his Grand Prix debut. He won the 125cc world title the next year, then the 250cc world title in 1999. He graduated to the so-called class of kings in 2000, when the premier class featured evil 500cc two-strokes, with precipitous powerbands that had a nasty habit of overpowering the rear tire and flicking their rider into orbit.

“Racing 125s was like a game, 250s were serious, but 500s are very serious!” Rossi said during his rookie 500 season. “They’re dangerous: You open the throttle, and you’ve got almost 200 horsepower, so you have to be careful.”

Rossi conquered the 500cc class in 2001, the year before the category switched to 990cc four-stroke machines. He has won world titles on every kind of bike he has ridden, a unique achievement. Every motorcycle racer has his own technique, his own way of taming a motorcycle via throttle control, body weight, and maximizing traction. But different types of motorcycles require very different techniques to extract maximum performance from their engines and chassis. Rossi can swap seamlessly from one bike to another—the 500cc two-strokes he raced back in the day were very different machines to the MotoGP bikes he rides now.

Rossi’s style on any kind of motorcycle seems effortless—finding a tenth of a second here and a hundredth there—but it’s when he has to fight to win a race that he becomes truly spectacular. And this happens both and off the racetrack. He has always been a genius for taking apart his rivals, whether it’s with an apparently offhand remark in a press conference or an ultra-aggressive move on the final lap.

Texan Colin Edwards was Rossi’s MotoGP teammate at Yamaha for several years. “Valentino is very clever, how would you say it … he’s sly,” says Edwards, a two-time winner of the World Superbike title. “He’s very undercover, foxy, sly. He’s not real blatant about some of the mind games, but on the track he’s pretty vicious.”

For certain Rossi has won plenty of races by getting physical—barging into rivals at the last corner or suckering them into crashing out—and he is still as unforgiving as he ever was. But how long can he continue racing motorcycles at the limit? Maybe another year or two, then it will be cars even though he would probably prefer to stick to bikes forever; they hold an endless fascination for him.

“Even now in bike racing, it seems like there is something undiscovered,” he says. “When you drive a car, you are always in the same position, you are stuck in the seat, all you have to do is drive. On a motorcycle you use a lot of body movement, so the rider is more important than the driver in a car. I like driving cars, but for me riding bikes is more exciting and you can express yourself more.

“In car racing, the setup is very important. It is important for the driver to understand everything in order to modify the car to go faster. The setup is also important in bikes, but with the bike you can also modify your style to go faster; maybe you can change the way you move your body into a corner.”

Despite turning down Ferrari, he loved driving the company’s F1 cars.

“The car is f****** incredible, the acceleration is unbelievable!” he grins. “Maybe it’s about the same as a MotoGP bike, but the feeling is more exciting in the car. You feel the acceleration more because you sit lower and because the bike is light and very powerful, but the car is heavier and even more powerful, so you feel the push a lot more.

“With the Formula 1 car the driving becomes a bit unnatural, a bit different from a normal car—it is very important to understand how the aerodynamics work. A MotoGP bike is like a normal bike but lighter, more power, more everything. A Formula 1 car is not like a normal car. You have to understand all about the wings. The braking is very different. Everything is different. It is true that in MotoGP we already have a lot of technical meetings, a lot of thinking. I speak a lot about electronics with my guys, but in cars it is different. With cars, everything is already fixed, so if you do this, you make this lap time, if you add that fuel, you make that lap time. So it is like the driver doesn’t have anything to invent. It’s more like a job. Also, I don’t feel that the F1 atmosphere is close to my lifestyle. It’s a lot, lot more serious. I’m more comfortable in the bike world.”

It makes sense, then, that when Rossi does finally switch to cars, he will most likely swap asphalt for dirt, because he loves rallying so much.

“Driving rally cars is a lot of fun, a lot of sliding,” he says. “In circuit racing the most important thing is precision and perfection. In rally it is control which is most important, so it’s fun. I think it is more wild than motorcycle racing. It’s so different. You’re driving out in the country, with the mechanics working on the cars in the dirt.”

The switch is still at least a few years away: Rossi has already signed to stay with Yamaha’s MotoGP team for 2019 and 2020, so perhaps he will commence his full-time car racing career in 2021, when he will be 42. Catch his motorcycle exploits before he scrapes his elbow through one final apex, because there might never be another racer quite like him.

Photos: Rossi family archive, Ferrari S.p.A, Whit Bazemore

[jesusvasser]

The Legend of Valentino Rossi is Still Going Strong at 39

Who is the greatest racer of all time? It’s an unwinnable argument that inevitably includes superstars such as Mario Andretti, Tazio Nuvolari, A.J. Foyt, Juan Manuel Fangio, Richard Petty, Ayrton Senna, Sébastien Loeb, and Michael Schumacher, to name just a few. But perhaps the real king is a man known best for his exploits on two wheels rather than four, a motorcycle racer named Valentino Rossi.

At 39, the Italian maestro is still fighting for the MotoGP World Championship, rubbing elbows with rivals at 220 mph. He has also won car rallies, competed in the World Rally Championship, and, perhaps most staggering of all, turned down a Ferrari Formula 1 drive.

It’s a fact lost often to the passage of time, but a dozen years ago Maranello courted Rossi to join Schumacher, who was nearing the end of his reign in the world’s most glamorous racing team. Rossi was approaching his 30th birthday and had been competing on motorcycles since he was 16, so it seemed only natural he might be ready for a new challenge. Both Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone wanted him in F1 because his rock ‘n’ roll swagger would be a huge boost for the series.

Rossi duly agreed to test for Ferrari, committing himself to a serious program expected to take him full-time into F1 in 2007 or 2008. From 2004 to 2006, he completed more than half a dozen tests with the Scuderia in between his MotoGP duties.

F1 cars are not easy machines to master. They are hugely complicated, a bit like a four-wheeled NASA rocket. At Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in April 2004, Rossi switched from a 240-horsepower Yamaha MotoGP bike, which rode around corners using only mechanical grip via two tiny tire contact patches, to a 950-hp Ferrari F2003 that rocketed around corners via four mammoth slicks and mind-boggling downforce. The change didn’t seem to bother him. To Rossi the game was just the same: an engine, some rubber, a racetrack, and a timing board.

Schumacher was present during that first test, when the Italian was so unprepared that he had to borrow the German’s F1 helmet. When Rossi returned to the pits after his first few runs, the most successful driver in F1 history could hardly believe what he saw when he checked the telemetry. He was stunned, even incredulous.

Rossi’s pace in that debut outing should have been impossible for a rookie who spent his life racing motorbikes, but the man has an almost supernatural affinity for anything involving petroleum explosions, burning rubber, and dancing on the giddy limit. Or as Rossi’s own hero Steve McQueen put it, “twisting the tiger’s tale.”

F1 car, rally car, MotoGP bike—Rossi can make them all sing. And no one else has ever done that, apart from the late John Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two wheels and four. But who else has turned down the chance to drive for racing’s most hallowed name? Rossi recalls the moment he made the decision to spurn Ferrari and four wheels.

“It was on the plane going home from a test at Valencia [in Spain],” he says. “I went there to understand my potential against the other guys. I understood that with a lot of work I had the potential to go fast. But on the plane, I decided: bikes. The main reason was that I was not ready to stop racing bikes. This was the biggest problem.”

Rossi has won seven MotoGP world championships, the most recent in 2009—a long time ago, but he finished second in the championship in three of the past four seasons. This year he sits third in the standings with four races remaining on the schedule. He holds the series’ all-time record for race wins, with 89. He took his first grand prix victory in the junior 125cc category in August 1996, and his most recent success came in the 1000cc MotoGP category in June 2017.

That’s a winning career that spans almost 21 years, a long way beyond Schumacher’s F1 record of 14 years between his first and last victories, especially considering the enhanced risks of MotoGP racing. Bikes have a habit of chewing up and spitting out even the greatest of exponents; riders have no carbon-fiber safety cell, just a leather suit and a helmet.

Rossi is a busy man during the season, contesting 19 MotoGP rounds, from Texas to Argentina to Malaysia to Australia and throughout Europe, as well as testing commitments and public relations duties. His opportunity to race cars is therefore limited to a month or two each winter. His has a soft spot for Italy’s Monza rally, which he has won a record six times. Last December he beat two professional car racers into second and third: factory Hyundai rally driver Andreas Mikkelsen and Audi LMP1 driver Marco Bonanomi. It sounds like an unlikely outcome, but it’s there in the record book, a plain fact as opposed to a myth. In the more distant past, Rossi managed to squeeze a few WRC outings into his motorcycling schedule, finishing just outside the top 10 in the 2006 New Zealand round.

Perhaps we shouldn’t consider such performances unlikely; Rossi has spent his entire life playing with engines and wheels. His father, Graziano, also a motorcycle racer of some repute, scored three grand prix wins in 1979, the year Valentino was born. He was forced to retire three years later due to a head injury, and in retirement he built a racing machine for his son. But it wasn’t a motorcycle.

“When Valentino was 6, I built him a kart,” Rossi senior recalls. “It was an evil thing—the chassis was for a 60cc engine, but I fitted a 100cc engine.”

Thus his son learned to do what he does best—battling on the brink of disaster—by thrashing this homemade device around the local gravel pits. He started racing a few years later, finishing fifth in the 1991 Italian junior karting championship, with the plan to graduate to the European championship the following year.

“Going fast is always what I wanted to do in my life; I think I inherited that from my father,” Rossi says. “I started to understand quite early that I have a special talent to do this. When I raced go-karts, I understood that I have a good feeling to understand what’s happening. But I was not the only one. There were other kids who were faster than me, so I said, ‘This is the way for me, but, f***, I have to improve.’”

There was one problem: Rossi’s father didn’t have the budget necessary to contest the European championship, so Valentino suggested he should race something cheaper: a popular type of racing minibike called Minimoto.

“My passions for cars and bikes were growing up together,” he adds. “But when Minimoto arrived, I began to think that I had a better taste from riding the bike. For sure, the money for racing karts was a problem, and because [my father] knew a lot of people in the bike world, it was more possible for him to find bikes and sponsors.”

Rossi switched full time to motorcycles in 1992, winning the local Minimoto championship at his first attempt. Three years later he was Italian 125cc champion, and in spring 1996 he made his Grand Prix debut. He won the 125cc world title the next year, then the 250cc world title in 1999. He graduated to the so-called class of kings in 2000, when the premier class featured evil 500cc two-strokes, with precipitous powerbands that had a nasty habit of overpowering the rear tire and flicking their rider into orbit.

“Racing 125s was like a game, 250s were serious, but 500s are very serious!” Rossi said during his rookie 500 season. “They’re dangerous: You open the throttle, and you’ve got almost 200 horsepower, so you have to be careful.”

Rossi conquered the 500cc class in 2001, the year before the category switched to 990cc four-stroke machines. He has won world titles on every kind of bike he has ridden, a unique achievement. Every motorcycle racer has his own technique, his own way of taming a motorcycle via throttle control, body weight, and maximizing traction. But different types of motorcycles require very different techniques to extract maximum performance from their engines and chassis. Rossi can swap seamlessly from one bike to another—the 500cc two-strokes he raced back in the day were very different machines to the MotoGP bikes he rides now.

Rossi’s style on any kind of motorcycle seems effortless—finding a tenth of a second here and a hundredth there—but it’s when he has to fight to win a race that he becomes truly spectacular. And this happens both and off the racetrack. He has always been a genius for taking apart his rivals, whether it’s with an apparently offhand remark in a press conference or an ultra-aggressive move on the final lap.

Texan Colin Edwards was Rossi’s MotoGP teammate at Yamaha for several years. “Valentino is very clever, how would you say it … he’s sly,” says Edwards, a two-time winner of the World Superbike title. “He’s very undercover, foxy, sly. He’s not real blatant about some of the mind games, but on the track he’s pretty vicious.”

For certain Rossi has won plenty of races by getting physical—barging into rivals at the last corner or suckering them into crashing out—and he is still as unforgiving as he ever was. But how long can he continue racing motorcycles at the limit? Maybe another year or two, then it will be cars even though he would probably prefer to stick to bikes forever; they hold an endless fascination for him.

“Even now in bike racing, it seems like there is something undiscovered,” he says. “When you drive a car, you are always in the same position, you are stuck in the seat, all you have to do is drive. On a motorcycle you use a lot of body movement, so the rider is more important than the driver in a car. I like driving cars, but for me riding bikes is more exciting and you can express yourself more.

“In car racing, the setup is very important. It is important for the driver to understand everything in order to modify the car to go faster. The setup is also important in bikes, but with the bike you can also modify your style to go faster; maybe you can change the way you move your body into a corner.”

Despite turning down Ferrari, he loved driving the company’s F1 cars.

“The car is f****** incredible, the acceleration is unbelievable!” he grins. “Maybe it’s about the same as a MotoGP bike, but the feeling is more exciting in the car. You feel the acceleration more because you sit lower and because the bike is light and very powerful, but the car is heavier and even more powerful, so you feel the push a lot more.

“With the Formula 1 car the driving becomes a bit unnatural, a bit different from a normal car—it is very important to understand how the aerodynamics work. A MotoGP bike is like a normal bike but lighter, more power, more everything. A Formula 1 car is not like a normal car. You have to understand all about the wings. The braking is very different. Everything is different. It is true that in MotoGP we already have a lot of technical meetings, a lot of thinking. I speak a lot about electronics with my guys, but in cars it is different. With cars, everything is already fixed, so if you do this, you make this lap time, if you add that fuel, you make that lap time. So it is like the driver doesn’t have anything to invent. It’s more like a job. Also, I don’t feel that the F1 atmosphere is close to my lifestyle. It’s a lot, lot more serious. I’m more comfortable in the bike world.”

It makes sense, then, that when Rossi does finally switch to cars, he will most likely swap asphalt for dirt, because he loves rallying so much.

“Driving rally cars is a lot of fun, a lot of sliding,” he says. “In circuit racing the most important thing is precision and perfection. In rally it is control which is most important, so it’s fun. I think it is more wild than motorcycle racing. It’s so different. You’re driving out in the country, with the mechanics working on the cars in the dirt.”

The switch is still at least a few years away: Rossi has already signed to stay with Yamaha’s MotoGP team for 2019 and 2020, so perhaps he will commence his full-time car racing career in 2021, when he will be 42. Catch his motorcycle exploits before he scrapes his elbow through one final apex, because there might never be another racer quite like him.

Photos: Rossi family archive, Ferrari S.p.A, Whit Bazemore

[jonathanbelloblog]

The Legend of Valentino Rossi is Still Going Strong at 39

Who is the greatest racer of all time? It’s an unwinnable argument that inevitably includes superstars such as Mario Andretti, Tazio Nuvolari, A.J. Foyt, Juan Manuel Fangio, Richard Petty, Ayrton Senna, Sébastien Loeb, and Michael Schumacher, to name just a few. But perhaps the real king is a man known best for his exploits on two wheels rather than four, a motorcycle racer named Valentino Rossi.

At 39, the Italian maestro is still fighting for the MotoGP World Championship, rubbing elbows with rivals at 220 mph. He has also won car rallies, competed in the World Rally Championship, and, perhaps most staggering of all, turned down a Ferrari Formula 1 drive.

It’s a fact lost often to the passage of time, but a dozen years ago Maranello courted Rossi to join Schumacher, who was nearing the end of his reign in the world’s most glamorous racing team. Rossi was approaching his 30th birthday and had been competing on motorcycles since he was 16, so it seemed only natural he might be ready for a new challenge. Both Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone wanted him in F1 because his rock ‘n’ roll swagger would be a huge boost for the series.

Rossi duly agreed to test for Ferrari, committing himself to a serious program expected to take him full-time into F1 in 2007 or 2008. From 2004 to 2006, he completed more than half a dozen tests with the Scuderia in between his MotoGP duties.

F1 cars are not easy machines to master. They are hugely complicated, a bit like a four-wheeled NASA rocket. At Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in April 2004, Rossi switched from a 240-horsepower Yamaha MotoGP bike, which rode around corners using only mechanical grip via two tiny tire contact patches, to a 950-hp Ferrari F2003 that rocketed around corners via four mammoth slicks and mind-boggling downforce. The change didn’t seem to bother him. To Rossi the game was just the same: an engine, some rubber, a racetrack, and a timing board.

Schumacher was present during that first test, when the Italian was so unprepared that he had to borrow the German’s F1 helmet. When Rossi returned to the pits after his first few runs, the most successful driver in F1 history could hardly believe what he saw when he checked the telemetry. He was stunned, even incredulous.

Rossi’s pace in that debut outing should have been impossible for a rookie who spent his life racing motorbikes, but the man has an almost supernatural affinity for anything involving petroleum explosions, burning rubber, and dancing on the giddy limit. Or as Rossi’s own hero Steve McQueen put it, “twisting the tiger’s tale.”

F1 car, rally car, MotoGP bike—Rossi can make them all sing. And no one else has ever done that, apart from the late John Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two wheels and four. But who else has turned down the chance to drive for racing’s most hallowed name? Rossi recalls the moment he made the decision to spurn Ferrari and four wheels.

“It was on the plane going home from a test at Valencia [in Spain],” he says. “I went there to understand my potential against the other guys. I understood that with a lot of work I had the potential to go fast. But on the plane, I decided: bikes. The main reason was that I was not ready to stop racing bikes. This was the biggest problem.”

Rossi has won seven MotoGP world championships, the most recent in 2009—a long time ago, but he finished second in the championship in three of the past four seasons. This year he sits third in the standings with four races remaining on the schedule. He holds the series’ all-time record for race wins, with 89. He took his first grand prix victory in the junior 125cc category in August 1996, and his most recent success came in the 1000cc MotoGP category in June 2017.

That’s a winning career that spans almost 21 years, a long way beyond Schumacher’s F1 record of 14 years between his first and last victories, especially considering the enhanced risks of MotoGP racing. Bikes have a habit of chewing up and spitting out even the greatest of exponents; riders have no carbon-fiber safety cell, just a leather suit and a helmet.

Rossi is a busy man during the season, contesting 19 MotoGP rounds, from Texas to Argentina to Malaysia to Australia and throughout Europe, as well as testing commitments and public relations duties. His opportunity to race cars is therefore limited to a month or two each winter. His has a soft spot for Italy’s Monza rally, which he has won a record six times. Last December he beat two professional car racers into second and third: factory Hyundai rally driver Andreas Mikkelsen and Audi LMP1 driver Marco Bonanomi. It sounds like an unlikely outcome, but it’s there in the record book, a plain fact as opposed to a myth. In the more distant past, Rossi managed to squeeze a few WRC outings into his motorcycling schedule, finishing just outside the top 10 in the 2006 New Zealand round.

Perhaps we shouldn’t consider such performances unlikely; Rossi has spent his entire life playing with engines and wheels. His father, Graziano, also a motorcycle racer of some repute, scored three grand prix wins in 1979, the year Valentino was born. He was forced to retire three years later due to a head injury, and in retirement he built a racing machine for his son. But it wasn’t a motorcycle.

“When Valentino was 6, I built him a kart,” Rossi senior recalls. “It was an evil thing—the chassis was for a 60cc engine, but I fitted a 100cc engine.”

Thus his son learned to do what he does best—battling on the brink of disaster—by thrashing this homemade device around the local gravel pits. He started racing a few years later, finishing fifth in the 1991 Italian junior karting championship, with the plan to graduate to the European championship the following year.

“Going fast is always what I wanted to do in my life; I think I inherited that from my father,” Rossi says. “I started to understand quite early that I have a special talent to do this. When I raced go-karts, I understood that I have a good feeling to understand what’s happening. But I was not the only one. There were other kids who were faster than me, so I said, ‘This is the way for me, but, f***, I have to improve.’”

There was one problem: Rossi’s father didn’t have the budget necessary to contest the European championship, so Valentino suggested he should race something cheaper: a popular type of racing minibike called Minimoto.

“My passions for cars and bikes were growing up together,” he adds. “But when Minimoto arrived, I began to think that I had a better taste from riding the bike. For sure, the money for racing karts was a problem, and because [my father] knew a lot of people in the bike world, it was more possible for him to find bikes and sponsors.”

Rossi switched full time to motorcycles in 1992, winning the local Minimoto championship at his first attempt. Three years later he was Italian 125cc champion, and in spring 1996 he made his Grand Prix debut. He won the 125cc world title the next year, then the 250cc world title in 1999. He graduated to the so-called class of kings in 2000, when the premier class featured evil 500cc two-strokes, with precipitous powerbands that had a nasty habit of overpowering the rear tire and flicking their rider into orbit.

“Racing 125s was like a game, 250s were serious, but 500s are very serious!” Rossi said during his rookie 500 season. “They’re dangerous: You open the throttle, and you’ve got almost 200 horsepower, so you have to be careful.”

Rossi conquered the 500cc class in 2001, the year before the category switched to 990cc four-stroke machines. He has won world titles on every kind of bike he has ridden, a unique achievement. Every motorcycle racer has his own technique, his own way of taming a motorcycle via throttle control, body weight, and maximizing traction. But different types of motorcycles require very different techniques to extract maximum performance from their engines and chassis. Rossi can swap seamlessly from one bike to another—the 500cc two-strokes he raced back in the day were very different machines to the MotoGP bikes he rides now.

Rossi’s style on any kind of motorcycle seems effortless—finding a tenth of a second here and a hundredth there—but it’s when he has to fight to win a race that he becomes truly spectacular. And this happens both and off the racetrack. He has always been a genius for taking apart his rivals, whether it’s with an apparently offhand remark in a press conference or an ultra-aggressive move on the final lap.

Texan Colin Edwards was Rossi’s MotoGP teammate at Yamaha for several years. “Valentino is very clever, how would you say it … he’s sly,” says Edwards, a two-time winner of the World Superbike title. “He’s very undercover, foxy, sly. He’s not real blatant about some of the mind games, but on the track he’s pretty vicious.”

For certain Rossi has won plenty of races by getting physical—barging into rivals at the last corner or suckering them into crashing out—and he is still as unforgiving as he ever was. But how long can he continue racing motorcycles at the limit? Maybe another year or two, then it will be cars even though he would probably prefer to stick to bikes forever; they hold an endless fascination for him.

“Even now in bike racing, it seems like there is something undiscovered,” he says. “When you drive a car, you are always in the same position, you are stuck in the seat, all you have to do is drive. On a motorcycle you use a lot of body movement, so the rider is more important than the driver in a car. I like driving cars, but for me riding bikes is more exciting and you can express yourself more.

“In car racing, the setup is very important. It is important for the driver to understand everything in order to modify the car to go faster. The setup is also important in bikes, but with the bike you can also modify your style to go faster; maybe you can change the way you move your body into a corner.”

Despite turning down Ferrari, he loved driving the company’s F1 cars.

“The car is f****** incredible, the acceleration is unbelievable!” he grins. “Maybe it’s about the same as a MotoGP bike, but the feeling is more exciting in the car. You feel the acceleration more because you sit lower and because the bike is light and very powerful, but the car is heavier and even more powerful, so you feel the push a lot more.

“With the Formula 1 car the driving becomes a bit unnatural, a bit different from a normal car—it is very important to understand how the aerodynamics work. A MotoGP bike is like a normal bike but lighter, more power, more everything. A Formula 1 car is not like a normal car. You have to understand all about the wings. The braking is very different. Everything is different. It is true that in MotoGP we already have a lot of technical meetings, a lot of thinking. I speak a lot about electronics with my guys, but in cars it is different. With cars, everything is already fixed, so if you do this, you make this lap time, if you add that fuel, you make that lap time. So it is like the driver doesn’t have anything to invent. It’s more like a job. Also, I don’t feel that the F1 atmosphere is close to my lifestyle. It’s a lot, lot more serious. I’m more comfortable in the bike world.”

It makes sense, then, that when Rossi does finally switch to cars, he will most likely swap asphalt for dirt, because he loves rallying so much.

“Driving rally cars is a lot of fun, a lot of sliding,” he says. “In circuit racing the most important thing is precision and perfection. In rally it is control which is most important, so it’s fun. I think it is more wild than motorcycle racing. It’s so different. You’re driving out in the country, with the mechanics working on the cars in the dirt.”

The switch is still at least a few years away: Rossi has already signed to stay with Yamaha’s MotoGP team for 2019 and 2020, so perhaps he will commence his full-time car racing career in 2021, when he will be 42. Catch his motorcycle exploits before he scrapes his elbow through one final apex, because there might never be another racer quite like him.

Photos: Rossi family archive, Ferrari S.p.A, Whit Bazemore

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2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R Review – First Ride 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R Editor Score: 88.0% Engine 19.0/20 Suspension/Handling 14.0/15 Transmission/Clutch 9.5/10 Brakes 9.0/10 Instruments/Controls 4.5/5 Ergonomics/Comfort 8.0/10 Appearance/Quality 8.0/10 Desirability 8.0/10 Value 8.0/10 Overall Score 88/100 Ah, the legendary Phillip Island circuit, the scene of many epic battles among two-wheel gladiators like Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Corser, Stoner, Rossi and Iannone, which has long been on my bucket list of racetracks to ride before I die. With significant elevation changes along 2.76 miles of twisting tarmac on the shores of the Indian Ocean and an average GP speed of more than 110 mph, it would be a challenge to learn on any bike, let alone on Suzuki’s most powerful literbike ever. Oh, and don’t forget to dodge the seagulls and geese strolling around trackside, nor the goose that flew in front of me while I railed through Hay Shed corner at a buck-10 and missed me by just inches! The new Gixxer Thou – the sixth generation known internally as the L7 – has some big shoes to fill. A multi-time champion racebike since its 2001 introduction, it’s been the better part of a decade since it was last updated in 2009 (the K9). But based on my ride in Australia, Suzuki engineers have obviously been sweating the details to create what is surely the fastest and most capable GSX-R ever. 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000 And GSX-R1000R Previews This test is of the GSX-R1000R, not the standard GSX-R1000 we’ll be riding in a couple of months. With an MSRP of $16,999, this Gixxer is now playing in the big leagues of superbikes, packed full of technology that previously had been mostly the purview of high-dollar European machines. Its 999.8cc powerplant shrieks to 14,500 rpm and catapults the Gixxer Thou to 180-plus-mph by the end of Phillip Island’s front straight. Colorway choices for the GSX-R1000R are limited to the blue MotoGP replica seen here or a stealthy black version. The standard GSX-R1000 adds red to the color selections. LED position lights above the ram-air ducting is the giveaway you’re looking at the 1000R. The sleek LED turnsignals seen in these pictures unfortunately won’t make it to the USA, as DOT regulations force us to suffer with larger amber-lensed indicators. Five Fun Facts About The 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000 The standard GSX-R1000 is new from the ground up and includes a raft of high-tech features like ride-by-wire throttle, variable valve timing, a finger-follower valvetrain, Brembo monoblock brakes and a six-axis IMU (Intertial Measurement Unit). It’s price starts at $14,599 and rises to $14,999 with ABS. To that the 1000R adds Showa Balance Free suspension, quickshifter with auto-blipping downshifts, cornering ABS and launch control. A few clever tricks in the engine compartment bring hand-of-god power to the masses. Most interesting is an inventive variable-valve-timing system that has roots back to the late 1990s when the GSX-R’s project leader, Shinichi Sahara, developed it with his colleague and then implemented it during Suzuki’s original MotoGP program. Sahara-san was the MotoGP technical manager from 2004 to 2010, and this ingenious VVT system, patented by Suzuki, was later adapted in 2012 for use on World Superbike and World Endurance GSX-R1000 racing machines, and then recently to MotoAmerica superbikes. It’s a remarkably simple mechanical system using an intake-cam-drive gear filled with a dozen steel balls that are spun outward at high revs by centrifugal force along slanted channels. The cam timing at lower engine speeds is in an advanced state for optimum grunt, but once past 10,000 rpm, the system retards cam timing to increase high-rpm power. Fully featured LCD instrumentation is part of the L7 GSX-R1000 experience. It includes displays for ride modes, TC, fuel remaining and mileage, ambient temperature and a gear-position indicator, among other readouts. The tachometer hump plateaus at the 6000-rpm mark, while a white shift light at the top center of the gauge illuminates as redline approaches. Another simple but clever solution is found in the mill’s intake. The Suzuki Dual-Stage Intake (S-DSI) system is said to offer the advantages of variable-length intake funnels without the added complexity and weight of a movable system. Suzuki’s dual-stage layout in two of the four intake funnels use a longer funnel positioned above a short funnel, with a gap between the two sections. At lower engine speeds, most of the air flows through the upper funnel, using the longer length to increase low and midrange power. Then at higher revs, additional air flows around the base of the longer upper funnel and into the short lower funnel, increasing top-end thrust. Further aiding breathing is a set of of 2mm-bigger throttle bodies (to 46mm) incorporating one set of injectors in the body, and another set of injectors spraying at their upper ends, directed by the ECU controlling throttle butterflies via a ride-by-wire system. Also new is the use of a finger-follower valvetrain as developed in F1 auto racing and popularized on motorcycles by BMW with its class-topping S10000RR. It’s a lighter system than a typical bucket-tappet arrangement (said to be 10 grams vs. 16 grams), and its moving mass is further reduced to a claimed 3 grams because each follower pivots on a fixed shaft rather than a bucket placed directly on top of the valve stem. Intake valve sizes go up by 1.5mm to 31.5mm, while exhaust valves transition from steel to titanium and shrink 1mm to 24mm, for a reduction of 8 grams each. Trainspotter types will notice the gold cylinders behind the fork tubes as confirmation of the GSX-R1000R. The standard Gixxer Thou uses a Showa Big Piston fork instead of the Balance Free fork seen here. The lighter valvetrain and its precise control, combined with a more oversquare bore/stroke ratio and the abandonment of a balance shaft has allowed the engine’s rev limit to be raised 1000 revs to a lofty 14,500 rpm. Engineers considered using a crossplane-style crankshaft arrangement popularized by Yamaha in its M1 and R1, and like Suzuki uses in its MotoGP bike, but that configuration forces a heavier engine block to contain the additional vibration and also saps some power relative to a traditional inline-Four crank layout. And with advancements in IMUs that supply excellent traction-control systems, any extra traction delivered from a crossplane layout becomes negligible. All told, Suzuki claims 199 horsepower at 13,200 rpm when tested at its crankshaft, a number that should translate to about 180 horses at its rear wheel. Torque remains similar to the previous edition at 86 lb-ft at 10,800 rpm. The GSX-R1000R includes a launch-control function, which we got to test at the track. It’s basically a rev limiter that holds the engine at 10,000 rpm, allowing a rider to concentrate only on how quickly the clutch is released, but It also works with Motion Track TCS to control throttle-valve opening and ignition timing while monitoring front and rear wheel speeds. It disengages when a rider upshifts into third gear or closes the throttle. Somewhat disappointingly, Sahara-san told me that noise restrictions in the USA will somewhat clip peak horsepower output compared to the European tuning of the bikes we rode, just like it does with Yamaha’s R1 and Kawi’s ZX-10R in America. Sahara says USA bikes have the same power as Euro bikes up to 13,000 rpm, at which point the intake butterflies close slightly to reduce noise output. Now, before the internet pundits chastise Suzuki (and America) for nipping maximum power, please consider how often you’re likely to be using full throttle above 13,000 rpm when riding on the street. This noise-abatement strategy is only really an issue if you’re a racer, and if you’re a racer, you’ll be retuning the engine anyway. Interestingly, I was given a brief look at a dyno chart by one of Suzuki’s German test riders, Jurgen Plaschka, Assistant Manager, Test And Technique. His chart showed the old Gixxer spat out 178 PS (slightly higher than our hp), while the L7 GSX-R churned out 203 PS, one pferdestarke more than the nearly omnipotent S1000RR BMW did on the same dyno. More is more, of course, but the chart’s important distinction is the Gixxer’s significant surfeit of power over the BMW from 9,500 to 13,000 rpm, demonstrating the advantages of Suzuki’s VVT and other power-broadening technology. Yes, that is an obnoxiously large silencer. On the plus side, it’s wrapped in a lightweight titanium skin and is just a slip-on muffler away from prettiness while maintaining the two butterfly valves in the header pipes, plus another valve in the collector area ahead of the muffler, to help optimize power production over a broad rev range. Jeez, I just burned a short novel’s worth of words describing the engine before getting to any riding impressions, but I did so because it’s the Gixxer’s motor and the technology inside that is the most impressive part of this all-new bike. It pulls like a rocket powered by crystal meth, and its sonic profile at full song will raise the hairs on your neck as it wails to a previously unheard of 14-and-a-half-freaking-thousand rpm. I saw the speedometer on the nicely readable LCD instrumentation sail past 180 mph lap after lap during my sessions, and that was even without shifting up to sixth gear! The motor’s not quite flawless, though. Throttle pickup in the S-DMS A mode can be slightly abrupt in slow corners, although it’s completely smoothed out in B mode. Credit Suzuki for allowing the same peak power in all three of its ride modes, making neither of the softer settings just throwaway gimmicks. I preferred the sharper A mode on the racetrack, but I’d lean toward B mode if I was on a switchback-y canyon road. This latest Gixxer carries over the GSX-R line’s willingness to be mobbed around a racetrack. The other aspect of the engine that wasn’t entirely pleasurable was the vibration transferred to my hands. Remember, this is the first GSX-R1000 without a balance shaft – taking another cue from the S1000RR – so additional vibes are going to be part of the package. I could feel the buzz via the handlebars and most prominently through the edges of the fuel tank when tucked in and leaned over. Four journalists I polled said the vibes didn’t bother them, so this minor annoyance for me wasn’t a problem for some others. Still, it’s clearly felt relative to the former engine’s relatively smooth character. Less noticeable is the the 1000R’s suspension, and I mean that in the best possible way. The fully adjustable Showa Balance Free suspension does a phenomenal job of controlling wheel movement while still remaining supple enough to suck up bumps while leaned over. Suzuki started us out on street settings, which were perfectly acceptable to me while I was getting up to speed on the fast and flowing Phillip Island circuit. Track settings were dialed in for our second session, which firmed up responses and kept the chassis composed while I knocked seconds off my lap times. Switchgear on the left handlebar toggles through ride modes and traction-control settings. This latest Gixxer steers a bit quicker than the previous edition, although it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why. One reason is that a 190/55 replaces the flatter, old-style 50 series rubber. The L7 GSX-R has moderately sharper steering geometry but a 15mm longer wheelbase, which might balance their effects. New wheels with six thin spokes replace three-spokers, but we weren’t given specs on their relative weights. The swingarm is 40mm longer but is offset by a shorter distance from the front axle to the swingarm pivot, which is said to improve front-end feedback. The frame itself is 10% lighter and 20mm narrower, and it looks far more diminutive than I’d think a literbike frame could be. Fueled up and ready to ride, Suzuki says the Gixxer scales in at 448 lbs – quite a bit more than the recently reviewed 2017 Honda CBR1000RR, which tipped the scales at 425 lbs. Top-shelf components are also found in the brake system, with Brembo supplying one-piece calipers and 320mm rotors that combine traditional floating-pin button carriers with Brembo’s floating T-drive mounts. The brakes prove to have slightly less initial bite than some top-end Euro bikes, but it’s not a problem for me, as I don’t mind using more lever travel when grabbing a handful at 180 mph. Sheer power is plentiful. Showa’s Balance Free Fork is becoming one of our BFFs for its excellent performance. Brembo’s T-drive rotor attachments are lighter yet produce a larger contact area between the disc and the carrier, requiring two less mounts than the dozen conventional mounts formerly employed, minimizing the weight gain from the 10mm-larger discs. The 1000R comes with the new Motion Track Brake System regulated by the IMU. It reduces rear-wheel lift during maximum braking, and it also factors in lean angle. As my speed increased, so did my braking force, and at one point I felt some minor pulsing at the front lever when hammering on the binders into Turn 1. It wasn’t really problematic, but I initially thought I might be experiencing the effects of a slightly warped brake rotor. For the next session, Suzuki gave us the opportunity to ride the bike with the ABS system deactivated. Oddly, Suzuki technicians had to disengage ABS by pulling a fuse rather than using some sort of switch mechanism. Regardless, the pulsing – probably from the rear-lift mitigation – wasn’t felt again. In terms of other electronic rider aids, the Continental IMU and its traction-control system proved to be excellent. I really appreciate the safety aspects to TC systems, but they’re annoying when they intervene too soon or too abruptly. Suzuki offers 10 settings, and they’re able to be adjusted on the fly by the mode button on the left switchgear if the throttle is closed; off is also an option. TC3 was close to optimal for my preferences, as it still allowed the rear tire to slide without unwanted intervention. As the stock Bridgestone RS10s got used up, more sliding ensued. Like all good electronic systems, the Gixxer’s traction/wheelie control can be switched off when desired. My only gripe with the system is that TC is also the method that controls wheelies. TC3 limits lifting the front tire to just a few inches, which is great for pinning the throttle and allowing the electronics to deliver maximum acceleration on a racetrack. TC2 allows larger wheelstands, and TC1 more again. But I’d prefer to be able to choose the wheelie ability independent of traction-control selection. When I brought this up to Sahara-san, he agreed with me that he’d prefer wheelie control separated from TC, leading me to believe we will see such an electronic upgrade in the future if the product-liability lawyers will allow it. No gripes at all with the quickshifter’s performance. Upshifts are perfectly seamless, and the auto-blipping downshifter nicely matched revs during downshifts even when they weren’t ideally timed. The system worked so well that thoughts about it drifted away to nothingness. On a slightly related note, the assist/slip clutch has a light pull. It was great to see 1993 Grand Prix champion Kevin Schwantz at the Gixxer launch. Revvin’ Kevin was even kind enough to share some advice with this slow Kevin, and what a treat it was to have the moto legend point out a few places where I could knock chunks of time out of my laps. Ergonomically, the new GSX-R has an identical rider triangle to the older one, with bars, seat and footrests in the same positions we’ve enjoyed in years past. Bodywork and the fuel tank are slightly narrower, making the bike feel slimmer. Also narrower, by 13mm, is the front fairing, which allows a bit more wind to hit a rider. However, the fuel tank is 21mm lower, which lets a rider crawl into a modestly sheltered cocoon of still air. Bridgestone R10 race rubber was fitted to our bikes after lunch, which dramatically upped the grip levels. Their sharper profiles aided steering quickness, and I noticed their stiffer carcass aided front-end feedback. I figured they might be worth a couple of seconds a lap over the RS10s, and Plaschka reckoned they might net even more time. And the new GSX-R1000R is so capable that I was continuing to find new limits as I extracted new ways to go faster and faster. From what I was able to tell at Phillip Island, going quicker each time out, I see huge potential for this L7 GSX-R platform, both for racy street riders and for pure racers. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Toni Elias or Roger Hayden pull off a MotoAmerica Superbike championship in 2017. And maybe 2018. Engineers are always proud of the motorcycles they create, but Suzuki’s team seemed particularly proud of their accomplishment with its latest GSX-R, especially considering the typical modesty displayed by Japanese. Yet at the end of the Gixxer’s presentation, Sahara-san quipped: “I would say to our competitors, ‘Who’s your daddy?’” Yep, the GSX-R1000R is firmly in the hunt for class supremacy. Stay tuned for an epic superbike shootout! 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R + Highs Remarkably strong powerband Stout electronics package Terrific suspension – Sighs Lots of yen Vibey Stiff class competition 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R Review – First Ride appeared first on Motorcycle.com.

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2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R Review – First Ride

Ah, the legendary Phillip Island circuit, the scene of many epic battles among two-wheel gladiators like Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Corser, Stoner, Rossi and Iannone, which has long been on my bucket list of racetracks to ride before I die. With significant elevation changes along 2.76 miles of twisting tarmac on the shores of the Indian Ocean and an average GP speed of more than 110 mph, it would be a challenge to learn on any bike, let alone on Suzuki’s most powerful literbike ever. Oh, and don’t forget to dodge the seagulls and geese strolling around trackside, nor the goose that flew in front of me while I railed through Hay Shed corner at a buck-10 and missed me by just inches! The new Gixxer Thou – the sixth generation known internally as the L7 – has some big shoes to fill. A multi-time champion racebike since its 2001 introduction, it’s been the better part of a decade since it was last updated in 2009 (the K9). But based on my ride in Australia, Suzuki engineers have obviously been sweating the details to create what is surely the fastest and most capable GSX-R ever. 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000 And GSX-R1000R Previews This test is of the GSX-R1000R, not the standard GSX-R1000 we’ll be riding in a couple of months. With an MSRP of $16,999, this Gixxer is now playing in the big leagues of superbikes, packed full of technology that previously had been mostly the purview of high-dollar European machines. Its 999.8cc powerplant shrieks to 14,500 rpm and catapults the Gixxer Thou to 180-plus-mph by the end of Phillip Island’s front straight.

Colorway choices for the GSX-R1000R are limited to the blue MotoGP replica seen here or a stealthy black version. The standard GSX-R1000 adds red to the color selections. LED position lights above the ram-air ducting is the giveaway you’re looking at the 1000R. The sleek LED turnsignals seen in these pictures unfortunately won’t make it to the USA, as DOT regulations force us to suffer with larger amber-lensed indicators. Five Fun Facts About The 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000 The standard GSX-R1000 is new from the ground up and includes a raft of high-tech features like ride-by-wire throttle, variable valve timing, a finger-follower valvetrain, Brembo monoblock brakes and a six-axis IMU (Intertial Measurement Unit). It’s price starts at $14,599 and rises to $14,999 with ABS. To that the 1000R adds Showa Balance Free suspension, quickshifter with auto-blipping downshifts, cornering ABS and launch control. A few clever tricks in the engine compartment bring hand-of-god power to the masses. Most interesting is an inventive variable-valve-timing system that has roots back to the late 1990s when the GSX-R’s project leader, Shinichi Sahara, developed it with his colleague and then implemented it during Suzuki’s original MotoGP program. Sahara-san was the MotoGP technical manager from 2004 to 2010, and this ingenious VVT system, patented by Suzuki, was later adapted in 2012 for use on World Superbike and World Endurance GSX-R1000 racing machines, and then recently to MotoAmerica superbikes. It’s a remarkably simple mechanical system using an intake-cam-drive gear filled with a dozen steel balls that are spun outward at high revs by centrifugal force along slanted channels. The cam timing at lower engine speeds is in an advanced state for optimum grunt, but once past 10,000 rpm, the system retards cam timing to increase high-rpm power.

Fully featured LCD instrumentation is part of the L7 GSX-R1000 experience. It includes displays for ride modes, TC, fuel remaining and mileage, ambient temperature and a gear-position indicator, among other readouts. The tachometer hump plateaus at the 6000-rpm mark, while a white shift light at the top center of the gauge illuminates as redline approaches. Another simple but clever solution is found in the mill’s intake. The Suzuki Dual-Stage Intake (S-DSI) system is said to offer the advantages of variable-length intake funnels without the added complexity and weight of a movable system. Suzuki’s dual-stage layout in two of the four intake funnels use a longer funnel positioned above a short funnel, with a gap between the two sections. At lower engine speeds, most of the air flows through the upper funnel, using the longer length to increase low and midrange power. Then at higher revs, additional air flows around the base of the longer upper funnel and into the short lower funnel, increasing top-end thrust. Further aiding breathing is a set of of 2mm-bigger throttle bodies (to 46mm) incorporating one set of injectors in the body, and another set of injectors spraying at their upper ends, directed by the ECU controlling throttle butterflies via a ride-by-wire system. Also new is the use of a finger-follower valvetrain as developed in F1 auto racing and popularized on motorcycles by BMW with its class-topping S10000RR. It’s a lighter system than a typical bucket-tappet arrangement (said to be 10 grams vs. 16 grams), and its moving mass is further reduced to a claimed 3 grams because each follower pivots on a fixed shaft rather than a bucket placed directly on top of the valve stem. Intake valve sizes go up by 1.5mm to 31.5mm, while exhaust valves transition from steel to titanium and shrink 1mm to 24mm, for a reduction of 8 grams each.

Trainspotter types will notice the gold cylinders behind the fork tubes as confirmation of the GSX-R1000R. The standard Gixxer Thou uses a Showa Big Piston fork instead of the Balance Free fork seen here. The lighter valvetrain and its precise control, combined with a more oversquare bore/stroke ratio and the abandonment of a balance shaft has allowed the engine’s rev limit to be raised 1000 revs to a lofty 14,500 rpm. Engineers considered using a crossplane-style crankshaft arrangement popularized by Yamaha in its M1 and R1, and like Suzuki uses in its MotoGP bike, but that configuration forces a heavier engine block to contain the additional vibration and also saps some power relative to a traditional inline-Four crank layout. And with advancements in IMUs that supply excellent traction-control systems, any extra traction delivered from a crossplane layout becomes negligible. All told, Suzuki claims 199 horsepower at 13,200 rpm when tested at its crankshaft, a number that should translate to about 180 horses at its rear wheel. Torque remains similar to the previous edition at 86 lb-ft at 10,800 rpm.

The GSX-R1000R includes a launch-control function, which we got to test at the track. It’s basically a rev limiter that holds the engine at 10,000 rpm, allowing a rider to concentrate only on how quickly the clutch is released, but It also works with Motion Track TCS to control throttle-valve opening and ignition timing while monitoring front and rear wheel speeds. It disengages when a rider upshifts into third gear or closes the throttle. Somewhat disappointingly, Sahara-san told me that noise restrictions in the USA will somewhat clip peak horsepower output compared to the European tuning of the bikes we rode, just like it does with Yamaha’s R1 and Kawi’s ZX-10R in America. Sahara says USA bikes have the same power as Euro bikes up to 13,000 rpm, at which point the intake butterflies close slightly to reduce noise output. Now, before the internet pundits chastise Suzuki (and America) for nipping maximum power, please consider how often you’re likely to be using full throttle above 13,000 rpm when riding on the street. This noise-abatement strategy is only really an issue if you’re a racer, and if you’re a racer, you’ll be retuning the engine anyway. Interestingly, I was given a brief look at a dyno chart by one of Suzuki’s German test riders, Jurgen Plaschka, Assistant Manager, Test And Technique. His chart showed the old Gixxer spat out 178 PS (slightly higher than our hp), while the L7 GSX-R churned out 203 PS, one pferdestarke more than the nearly omnipotent S1000RR BMW did on the same dyno. More is more, of course, but the chart’s important distinction is the Gixxer’s significant surfeit of power over the BMW from 9,500 to 13,000 rpm, demonstrating the advantages of Suzuki’s VVT and other power-broadening technology.

Yes, that is an obnoxiously large silencer. On the plus side, it’s wrapped in a lightweight titanium skin and is just a slip-on muffler away from prettiness while maintaining the two butterfly valves in the header pipes, plus another valve in the collector area ahead of the muffler, to help optimize power production over a broad rev range. Jeez, I just burned a short novel’s worth of words describing the engine before getting to any riding impressions, but I did so because it’s the Gixxer’s motor and the technology inside that is the most impressive part of this all-new bike. It pulls like a rocket powered by crystal meth, and its sonic profile at full song will raise the hairs on your neck as it wails to a previously unheard of 14-and-a-half-freaking-thousand rpm. I saw the speedometer on the nicely readable LCD instrumentation sail past 180 mph lap after lap during my sessions, and that was even without shifting up to sixth gear! The motor’s not quite flawless, though. Throttle pickup in the S-DMS A mode can be slightly abrupt in slow corners, although it’s completely smoothed out in B mode. Credit Suzuki for allowing the same peak power in all three of its ride modes, making neither of the softer settings just throwaway gimmicks. I preferred the sharper A mode on the racetrack, but I’d lean toward B mode if I was on a switchback-y canyon road.

This latest Gixxer carries over the GSX-R line’s willingness to be mobbed around a racetrack. The other aspect of the engine that wasn’t entirely pleasurable was the vibration transferred to my hands. Remember, this is the first GSX-R1000 without a balance shaft – taking another cue from the S1000RR – so additional vibes are going to be part of the package. I could feel the buzz via the handlebars and most prominently through the edges of the fuel tank when tucked in and leaned over. Four journalists I polled said the vibes didn’t bother them, so this minor annoyance for me wasn’t a problem for some others. Still, it’s clearly felt relative to the former engine’s relatively smooth character. Less noticeable is the the 1000R’s suspension, and I mean that in the best possible way. The fully adjustable Showa Balance Free suspension does a phenomenal job of controlling wheel movement while still remaining supple enough to suck up bumps while leaned over. Suzuki started us out on street settings, which were perfectly acceptable to me while I was getting up to speed on the fast and flowing Phillip Island circuit. Track settings were dialed in for our second session, which firmed up responses and kept the chassis composed while I knocked seconds off my lap times.

Switchgear on the left handlebar toggles through ride modes and traction-control settings. This latest Gixxer steers a bit quicker than the previous edition, although it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why. One reason is that a 190/55 replaces the flatter, old-style 50 series rubber. The L7 GSX-R has moderately sharper steering geometry but a 15mm longer wheelbase, which might balance their effects. New wheels with six thin spokes replace three-spokers, but we weren’t given specs on their relative weights. The swingarm is 40mm longer but is offset by a shorter distance from the front axle to the swingarm pivot, which is said to improve front-end feedback. The frame itself is 10% lighter and 20mm narrower, and it looks far more diminutive than I’d think a literbike frame could be. Fueled up and ready to ride, Suzuki says the Gixxer scales in at 448 lbs – quite a bit more than the recently reviewed 2017 Honda CBR1000RR, which tipped the scales at 425 lbs. Top-shelf components are also found in the brake system, with Brembo supplying one-piece calipers and 320mm rotors that combine traditional floating-pin button carriers with Brembo’s floating T-drive mounts. The brakes prove to have slightly less initial bite than some top-end Euro bikes, but it’s not a problem for me, as I don’t mind using more lever travel when grabbing a handful at 180 mph. Sheer power is plentiful.

Showa’s Balance Free Fork is becoming one of our BFFs for its excellent performance. Brembo’s T-drive rotor attachments are lighter yet produce a larger contact area between the disc and the carrier, requiring two less mounts than the dozen conventional mounts formerly employed, minimizing the weight gain from the 10mm-larger discs. The 1000R comes with the new Motion Track Brake System regulated by the IMU. It reduces rear-wheel lift during maximum braking, and it also factors in lean angle. As my speed increased, so did my braking force, and at one point I felt some minor pulsing at the front lever when hammering on the binders into Turn 1. It wasn’t really problematic, but I initially thought I might be experiencing the effects of a slightly warped brake rotor. For the next session, Suzuki gave us the opportunity to ride the bike with the ABS system deactivated. Oddly, Suzuki technicians had to disengage ABS by pulling a fuse rather than using some sort of switch mechanism. Regardless, the pulsing – probably from the rear-lift mitigation – wasn’t felt again. In terms of other electronic rider aids, the Continental IMU and its traction-control system proved to be excellent. I really appreciate the safety aspects to TC systems, but they’re annoying when they intervene too soon or too abruptly. Suzuki offers 10 settings, and they’re able to be adjusted on the fly by the mode button on the left switchgear if the throttle is closed; off is also an option. TC3 was close to optimal for my preferences, as it still allowed the rear tire to slide without unwanted intervention. As the stock Bridgestone RS10s got used up, more sliding ensued.

Like all good electronic systems, the Gixxer’s traction/wheelie control can be switched off when desired. My only gripe with the system is that TC is also the method that controls wheelies. TC3 limits lifting the front tire to just a few inches, which is great for pinning the throttle and allowing the electronics to deliver maximum acceleration on a racetrack. TC2 allows larger wheelstands, and TC1 more again. But I’d prefer to be able to choose the wheelie ability independent of traction-control selection. When I brought this up to Sahara-san, he agreed with me that he’d prefer wheelie control separated from TC, leading me to believe we will see such an electronic upgrade in the future if the product-liability lawyers will allow it. No gripes at all with the quickshifter’s performance. Upshifts are perfectly seamless, and the auto-blipping downshifter nicely matched revs during downshifts even when they weren’t ideally timed. The system worked so well that thoughts about it drifted away to nothingness. On a slightly related note, the assist/slip clutch has a light pull.

It was great to see 1993 Grand Prix champion Kevin Schwantz at the Gixxer launch. Revvin’ Kevin was even kind enough to share some advice with this slow Kevin, and what a treat it was to have the moto legend point out a few places where I could knock chunks of time out of my laps. Ergonomically, the new GSX-R has an identical rider triangle to the older one, with bars, seat and footrests in the same positions we’ve enjoyed in years past. Bodywork and the fuel tank are slightly narrower, making the bike feel slimmer. Also narrower, by 13mm, is the front fairing, which allows a bit more wind to hit a rider. However, the fuel tank is 21mm lower, which lets a rider crawl into a modestly sheltered cocoon of still air. Bridgestone R10 race rubber was fitted to our bikes after lunch, which dramatically upped the grip levels. Their sharper profiles aided steering quickness, and I noticed their stiffer carcass aided front-end feedback. I figured they might be worth a couple of seconds a lap over the RS10s, and Plaschka reckoned they might net even more time. And the new GSX-R1000R is so capable that I was continuing to find new limits as I extracted new ways to go faster and faster. From what I was able to tell at Phillip Island, going quicker each time out, I see huge potential for this L7 GSX-R platform, both for racy street riders and for pure racers. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Toni Elias or Roger Hayden pull off a MotoAmerica Superbike championship in 2017. And maybe 2018. Engineers are always proud of the motorcycles they create, but Suzuki’s team seemed particularly proud of their accomplishment with its latest GSX-R, especially considering the typical modesty displayed by Japanese. Yet at the end of the Gixxer’s presentation, Sahara-san quipped: “I would say to our competitors, ‘Who’s your daddy?’”

Yep, the GSX-R1000R is firmly in the hunt for class supremacy. Stay tuned for an epic superbike shootout! 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R + Highs Remarkably strong powerband Stout electronics package Terrific suspension – Sighs Lots of yen Vibey Stiff class competition Click to Post