#season 2019 2020 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batsplat · 3 months

Note

motogp scholar professor batsplat, a quastion from the audience please!

regarding vale's retirement, i heard that him getting covid made the desicion easier for him, but i was wondering whether marc being out of contention due to the whole arm situation also helped with vale's retirement?

as in, perhaps having marc in front of him the whole time at the end of his career helped vale (at least partially) to have the motivation to continue even if he might not be as competitive as before, because there was that hope that he might still be able to beat marc one year?

i would love to get your opinion on that!! <3

(also thanks for everything you do for motogpblr, i learned so much about the history of the sport just through your posts; one day i WILL make the excel sheet to organize all your posts thematically!!)

ahh that's so sweet!! and okay, this is a tough but interesting one. the short and simple answer is 'almost certainly unrelated, given the timing of valentino's competitive decline and marc's injury'. but that's the boring answer, and it only relates to the decision to retire itself... there's a broader conversation to be had here about how valentino motivated himself and how that interacted with the marc feud during his last few years in the premier class. so it does make sense to zoom out a bit here, and look at how valentino was motivating himself throughout his time in the premier class tour. which is obviously a big topic, going to keep things relatively brief... the main point here is that, yes, valentino does absolutely have form in needing new challenges and rivals to motivate himself - but given what the competitive picture looked like post-2015, marc probably wasn't his primary motivation

so let's get into it: challenges and rivals. it's a bit of a cliche to say valentino needed enemies - and while I do think it's a little more complicated than that, valentino did obviously use obstacles as a source of motivation throughout his time in the sport. look at the switch to yamaha, which... his life would've been a lot easier if he hadn't done that, but he did it anyway. in a way, he does have a bit of a tendency to set up an obstacle course for himself. which isn't to say this is all self-sabotage... he needs a bit more than 'pure' winning to get himself going, which is just about who he is as a competitor! there's a bunch of reasons why he made the switch to yamaha, but part of it was about finding the culture of winning at honda stifling and oppressive... to the point where he was no longer finding joy in racing. it was about no longer being able to find meaning in his victories. going to yamaha was a massive, crazy risk - one that in all likelihood should have cost him at least the 2004 title... but he did it anyway, because he wanted to write his own narrative and win on his own terms and was hungry for a proper fight. not gonna rehash this topic any further here, there's more somewhere in the sete post including links to the relevant bits of the autobiography

etc etc. so it's partly about finding a new challenge, and partly about spiting your rivals who'd been talking up your bike advantage these past few years. it's worth pointing out that the f1 rumours (and testing) properly get going when he's winning with the yamaha... obviously it's far too simplistic to say he decided against f1 because he started losing in motogp, but I don't think it's a complete coincidence the rumours really gather momentum in 2005 (his most dominant season) and then he decides against the move in late 2006-ish, eventually fully recommitting to motogp in 2007. there's a late 2008 piece on why he stayed put that talks about the differences between car and bike racing:

that's the excitement, right? that's what he's all doing it for, figuring out a way to go faster, how to make the difference himself (rather than letting his machinery do work for him)... like when (as oxley points out in the piece) he's suddenly turning the tables on casey and inflicting a brutal defeat on his great rival at laguna 2008. it's "something undiscovered"... until valentino manages to discover it anyway, to find that little bit extra to win that race. it's that kind of fight that keeps him going, more than anything else - and it's all the more satisfying because casey made his life so bloody hard. so he flirts with f1 when he's winning five premier class titles in a row, and then turns his back when he's actually losing in motogp. sure, you can say he would've rejected f1 eventually anyway, but the initial temptation of f1 was undoubtedly about finding a new challenge at a time where he'd already conquered motogp. what does that tell you about him and his source of motivation, do you think?

(this isn't really relevant, but as I said in the tags under this post I do think there's a bit of a contrast with marc here and how comfortable they both are in their own dominance. valentino's not a four year deal type of guy, just too restless and hungry for new sources of motivation)

so you go from someone who has been flirting with retirement from motogp since the mid-noughties to someone who sticks around until 2021. of course, playing with the idea of retirement is one thing, maybe he never would've gone through with it... still, you do have to wonder whether the emergence of the aliens ended up significantly extending his career. after a 2007 season where he was dealing with all manner of off-track distraction, he's completely focused again in 2008, determined to take back his throne from casey. and then it's beating his hungry young teammate, and then coming back from the leg injury... the ducati project at the end of the day is part of the same pattern. yes, there was his irritation at yamaha increasingly putting their faith in jorge, yes, there was the italian romance of it all, how much fans and the press wanted him to make that switch... but it was also another challenge, right? he's a restless guy, he needs something new, something exciting to keep him going. when you read how he talks about his 2003 choice between yamaha and ducati, you can't help but think he should've listened to his own advice and remember precisely why he had rejected ducati back then. that they were too similar to honda, too disinterested in listening to their riders, that it was going to be harder to make a massive difference as an individual rider there - and of course, the general trend in motogp over the past twenty years has gradually moved away from riders making the difference both in terms of performance and bike development. it's always important to remember that valentino's failure at ducati wasn't so much a failure in riding as it was one in bike development. could casey have done more with that bike in 2011-12? yeah, sure - but if you're using teammate hayden as a rough baseline then you're probably looking at a bike that's even worse than casey's was, which casey wasn't getting anywhere close to title contention in 2010. the issue was that valentino had thought that he could fix that bike - and while obviously he did influence that project, it was still several years away from being particularly close to being fixed. those two years are all about frustration, of trying to make changes to the bike and nothing working... which was enough to make valentino willing to accept yamaha's terms as long as he could get back to a point where he was competitive again. because he had begun to doubt himself, because after two miserable years of injury, a bike that oscillated between throwing him off and just being slow, the tragedy he and the sport suffered at sepang 2011... well, more than anything else, he just wanted to enjoy himself again

which brings us to marc. for the series as a whole, marc brought some much needed life and energy back into proceedings. as is always important to remember, valentino in early 2013 had no idea if he'd be able to compete for a title again. in the very first race, he got some tentative confirmation that he'd be able to fight with his successor. which, you know, that will have been genuinely exciting for valentino in and of itself... it's not like he's just pretending every time he says he enjoys the racing in 2013-14 or is stewing in bitterness or whatever. of course he loves winning, but what he needs more than anything else is the fight. of course he will have gotten frustrated at just how much marc was beating him - but it's not quite so simple, is it? in late 2013, perpetually stuck in fourth place, he's openly acknowledging that if his results don't get better he will be retiring. then, in early 2014, marc is winning every single race and valentino is more than happy to announce he'll continue on in the series. why is he suddenly far cheerier in 2014, given he still wasn't winning races until relatively late in the season? just because he's beating jorge and dani more often now? because he loves podiums so much? because he believes marc might eventually slip up and give him another real shot at a title? well, I doubt any of those things will have hurt his mood, but at the end of the day the main thing for him was that he's able to fight with these guys again! even when he's losing those marc duels, he's enjoying them! at this stage, he's entirely willing to let marc play heir to the throne. it happens to everyone, right, and could it happen in a more flattering way than against someone who hero worships you and has built himself in your image? besides, he did like marc. as ever, it would've all been a lot easier if he hadn't

and then you get 2015, which. let's just skip over that, I talked here about the effect of valentino realising he could become a title contender again, etc etc. the point is that marc will have helped valentino's motivation upon entry to the premier class, but not in a particularly malicious way. obviously, post-2015, valentino is no longer so kindly inclined towards marc, and we have already established that he does use his rivals to fire himself up... but before we get into that, it's worth just quickly establishing for how long valentino would reasonably have expected to still be competitive against marc. if beating marc was his motivation, then how long could he really have clung onto that to keep himself going?

in 2016, valentino was a title contender and could realistically dream of getting immediate revenge for the previous year. the general narrative in the paddock was that he was actually faster than he had been the year before, with his dominant victory from pole at jerez not remotely resembling any victory he'd had since, like, assen 2009 (his 100th win, exceedingly dull). his qualifying was considerably more competitive than it had been the year before and initially it looked like the switch to michelins actually rather suited both the yamaha and his own riding style. (this became progressively less true over the subsequent years, but let's not get into that.) his title challenge took a serious blow when his engine went kaput at mugello, a race in which he could have well scored 25 points (plus deprived his rivals of some points) and at worst would've scored 16. despite the dramatic catalunya victory, he did increasingly have to concede this title bid was a long shot - and then it did kinda fall apart for various reasons during the middle stretch of the season. in 2017, again he's a title contender and is unexpectedly leading the standings early in the year going back to europe. he bangs himself up in two separate motocross accidents that year (both right before the italian races for whatever reason) and in the second one breaks his leg again, which means it's kinda game over. (he said the yamaha wouldn't have had the performance in it to fight with the other two bikes late in the season and he's probably correct, but, y'know, would've still been more fun to see!! valentino!!) in 2018... well, he's the closest thing marc has to a challenger, and there's plenty of individually really impressive performances in there without much to show for it... crucially, I think there's enough there that he would've felt that if he had a better bike than the yamaha that year, then he could at least have a shot at beating marc? until late 2018, on pure performance alone it felt like he was at least still 'in the mix' as one of the top riders, and then you just have to sort of bet on what version of marc + honda shows up in any given year

the issue is that 2019 is the first year where you can definitively say this is no longer the case - and that's the reason why I don't think marc's injury could have influenced valentino's eventual decision too strongly. this is when valentino's time was finally running out, he was at last being clearly outperformed by the other yamaha riders, and valentino did understand all this... thing is, he'd made all these comebacks before, so why not back yourself to eventually get to grips with this new version of the sport once again? plus, he was also just determined to get anything he had left out of himself. he switched crew chiefs in 2020, he accepted a demotion to petronas, he was determined to give it one more shot... and while covid partly prompted his retirement, by the same token it also made the 2020 season so weird it became a lot harder to retire at the end of that year. but at this point, his realistic aims were far more modest than another title: all he wanted was to compete somewhere close to the front of the field, to be fighting it out with the top riders. and because he realised he loved it so much... even when he could no longer do that, he still struggled to step away. from the timing, marc's injury can't really have played too big a role in that - because by the time marc got injured, it would've been basically impossible for valentino to compete with him in any case

that's the simple answer: given the way the latter stages of valentino's career played out, the two things were unconnected and valentino's career would've ended at the same time even if marc had been there. of course, there's a little more to it than that. first of all, of course it's all well and good to point to what valentino actually said at the time and argue he knew that realistically he wasn't going to compete for another title, but deep down surely there was always going to be just that sliver of hope. a lot of valentino's career had been about defying the odds - within individual races, of course, but also the switch to yamaha, coming back after two duds in 2008, and then being a title contender in 2015. his longevity defied the odds... he'd bounced back from rough periods, even when he didn't entirely believe himself he'd be able to. that sole 2020 podium came at a time where he admitted to doubting himself - but once again he'd been able to find something more within himself (in a truly gruelling race). if you've done all that, doesn't a part of you believe that maybe you can still steal a little more time from your career? that maybe you can even still take on marc? well, yes, sure... but not by 2021. whatever marc does during this time period, by this point it is basically over for valentino. he maybe could have prolonged his time in the premier clas... but not to fight for marc. he would've known it was impossible

so, that's the precise timing of the retirement dealt with. let's flip the question and ask if marc made valentino continue for so long in the sport in the first place. on the whole, I do reckon it was the dream of a tenth title that kept him motivated more than it was marc specifically. the first reason is about how big a motivation that tenth title was in and of itself, given what it represented. there is nothing meaningful in and of itself about the number 'ten' beyond 'it sounds nice' - but he wasn't supposed to be able to fight for it. this was about unexpectedly being competitive again, surprising both the world and himself, about proving everyone else wrong (including marc)... in the literal sense, in 2015 he had proven that he was theoretically capable of beating marc, both on-track and over the course of a season - it's just that he fell short in winning the actual title. the tenth is so painful because of how close it was, and what it would have represented. the second reason for why the 10th title trumps marc is that post-2015, he does mostly shy away from using marc as a direct source of motivation. obviously, part of this was just adjusting his public rhetoric to how radioactive the whole controversy had become, with valentino spending the better part of two years mostly steering clear of the whole drama. but it's not just about public perception! it does also reflect how he had to set all this stuff aside to be able to properly compete (more on this here). he kinda had to try and tell himself that it wasn't just about beating marc. there's really only so much stewing in bitterness anyone can do when they're attempting to secure a title... of course he would've loved to beat marc over the course of a season again, he would've love to win in a direct title fight - but in terms of what was more influential in spurring him on on a macro level, I reckon it's the tenth

also, in blunt terms, if valentino had built his entire motivation as a racer around beating marc, he would've gone insane in the few years post-2015. his most interesting season in that regard is 2018, because that one is in the in-between zone where (unlike the years before) he knows he's not able to fight the title but (unlike the years that follow it) you can completely plausibly argue that he as a rider would still be capable of doing so, with the right machinery. which means it's like... buddy, how are you still doing this..? yamaha is in the wilderness! the guy who you reopened a feud with earlier on this year is dominating the sport! you're putting in some really strong performances that are bagging you pee five! you have won nine titles, you have all these records, yamaha doesn't give the vibe of an organisation that's really got its shit together and even if it did, you'd still have to deal with the prime version of a bloke you're perfectly aware is ridiculously good. why are you still here? how do you still CARE this much to show up every weekend to put your heart and soul into riding this bike and providing feedback for it and attempting to get yamaha out of this hole? after all you've done, how are you still fighting this hard with so, so little to show for it?

here's an excerpt from a post-assen 2017 write up;

this is obviously more poignant in retrospect, knowing it was to be his final race victory. even at a time when a tenth title was looking more and more unlikely, he was still being spurred on by just the hope of winning, even if it's 'only' races... and in the end, he had realised that feeling of winning meant more to him in this sport than it ever could in any other. failing that, podiums are something special. failing that, just the fight with other riders in itself keeps him going. that's something that goes beyond marc, though of course he is part of the picture here. best of all is beating marc... but he didn't not love the battles he lost to marc. something like phillip island 2017 - of course he enjoyed it, you can tell it so clearly from everything about him after the race. he still relished fighting marc, even when marc won. and at the end of the day, it's always important to remember everyone expected marc to catch that valentino title count. valentino expected it and openly acknowledged it - and, again, if you're going out there and competing in a sport that's dominated by a guy you hate, you do just kinda have to make your peace with it! valentino always understood how good marc was, that marc was the great of that era, that marc was entirely deserving of this status as a rider. and he had to gradually relinquish that quest for a tenth title... but even while he hadn't, I reckon he had to make sure to separate that out in his head from the radioactive mess that was the marc relationship. he did all he could to ignore marc's importance as a rival, and instead stressed only what marc had done to him personally. obviously, in reality 'valentino winning titles' and 'marc's title count creeping up' by definition aren't separate conversations, but valentino had to do his best to focus on himself. no focusing on getting one over marc marquez specifically

in the end, in terms of motivation I suspect marc did more to help out valentino at the start of their time together than towards the end (setting aside who would've won the titles in marc's absence). that's the period right after the ducati low point, where valentino wasn't really enjoying racing any more. marc joining the premier class coincides with valentino's return to yamaha and the resulting competitive bump that would've helped valentino's motivation anyway, but it's pretty obvious that marc was the rival who vale most enjoyed fighting. part of that's about wanting to test yourself against the new guy, part of that's down to a shared racing philosophy that separated them from the other aliens. of course, marc is also a source of motivation in 2015 - and in several ways, I imagine valentino would've preferred marc to remain his primary title rival that year. after that, sure, especially at the start valentino did very much want to get revenge over marc (and it's reflected in his early 2016 rhetoric), but he would have had to exert a certain amount of mental discipline to avoid the marc feud from becoming his primary motivation. if the marc injury had come a bit earlier, it would've provided valentino an opportunity that wouldn't have negatively affected his motivation... instead, he would've fought even harder to take advantage of it, and you'd imagine the 2017-18 version of him would've had a pretty decent shot at the title in 2020 with marc gone. (disclaimer: this is not how sports works, you can't just go around transposing performance levels from previous years, it's only a hypothetical.) but the competitive decline very much already predated marc's injury. of course, it could have been exacerbated by marc's absence, but there's no evidence for it

did the possibility he might be able to beat marc again give him something to fire himself up after 2015? maybe, though after 2016 I imagine he tucked it away. this is the kind of thing he would've been happy to use if it had come down to it, just like he did in 2015, but failing that... much of 2016-17 is about putting his bitterness over what happened to one side for his own sake, which is part of the reason why you get the rapprochement with marc. even after the relationship goes kaput again in 2018, I don't personally believe it changes much in how valentino went about motivating himself in those days. on a week-to-week level, resentment would've just hurt valentino. and by the time marc was out of the picture, he was simply too uncompetitive for it to matter. of course the mere possibility of one day beating marc again will never have quite left him... but in a way, there was already something to treasure in being able to fight a rider like marc at all. valentino lost that ability and then marc got his injury and that was that

#and yeah that's so lovely... icl i did make a note of the posts i feel like i'm linking back to most often for convenience sake #astirian #//#brr brr #batsplat responds #I do LIKE the idea similarly to how I like the idea that casey's emergence was what ensured valentino wouldn't retire #basically i think if he'd had his 2019 season in 2020 you could sell me on the causal link. but the decline was already too clear imo #idol tag

3 notes · View notes