Has Rossi’s departure brought the season to a premature end?
Added on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Has Rossi’s departure brought the season to a premature end?
After Valentino Rossi was stretchered away from Mugello a week and a half ago, Insidebikes can’t help but think that the MotoGP paddock feels considerably more deflated as the championship resumes at Silverstone.
It is nearly two weeks since the Italian Grand Prix and yet still, the MotoGP paddock doesn’t yet seem to have picked itself up from what happened in Mugello.
Since Valentino Rossi’s crash in Saturday practice put the sport’s flagship star on the sidelines for six months, the entire MotoGP paddock appears to have become increasingly downbeat. Whilst the week off and events on the Isle of Man have undoubtedly had the motorcycle media’s attention this week, the organisers at Silverstone would have probably preferred more of a buzz as they prepare to host their first motorcycle grand prix for 24 years. Ticket sales, it appears, have held up well and it’s still early in the week, it’s just that everything seems a little more downbeat when compared to the run-up to Donington Park’s last GP a year ago.
Even Yamaha’s pre-race press release, usually full of excitement and anticipation, opened with words like “depleted” and “devastated”. Granted, we didn’t expect Yamaha to be jumping for joy at the prospect of racing without their star man but those aren’t the sort of adjectives that you’d expect to come out of the PR department of a team anticipating the opportunity to extend their lead in the constructor’s championship.
To put things into perspective, it was this week 12 months ago that we saw the maturity of what will be one of the sport’s greatest modern rivalries. Rossi teammate Jorge Lorenzo took centre stage in a thrilling Grand Prix in Barcelona, with the Italian stealing victory on the final corner on the final lap. The rivalry continued in Germany as the Yamaha pair jostled for position at the Sachsenring. In the end, it was the older head of Rossi that came out on top but the young upstart Lorenzo had certainly made his mark.
And that raises an interesting point: When Valentino Rossi was stretched away from Mugello with that fractured shin, was what should have been an enthralling and captivating season carried out with him?
The bookies certainly seem to think so. After the extend of Rossi’s injury became known, official MotoGP bookmaker bwin slashed odds on championship leader Jorge Lorenzo from even money on Saturday afternoon to just 2/9 odds-on by the time that he had lined up on the grid on Sunday morning. Even after Dani Pedrosa’s win in Mugello, Lorenzo still stood at 1/4, compared with Pedrosa at 4/1, Casey Stoner 16/1 and Rossi at 40/1.
Four rounds in, Casey Stoner’s championship challenge has still to get going, with the Australian finishing just two of four races and yet to make the podium. With Rossi unlikely to feature at all for the rest of the season, that leaves the inconsistent Dani Pedrosa as Lorenzo’s sole challenger.
The Spaniard, no lover of his compatriot, has shown glimpses of what he is capable of but things are far from ideal for him. He was critical of the bike in Jerez, the past two years have been blighted by injury and inconsistency and he has been clearly agitated by speculation surrounding his future at Honda; hardly an ideal situation to be challenging for a championship.
Pedrosa certainly can pick up the race victories, and Silverstone’s long straights should suit him this weekend, but the Repsol Honda rider needs more riders to join the party if he Lorenzo is to be toppled. Lorenzo currently enjoys a 25 point lead in the championship and his form thus far in 2010 suggests that he can be relied upon to achieve a podium spot more often than not, meaning that whilst he would never admit it, his hand is already edging towards the prize. It’s his to lose and, barring a Rossi-esque disaster, he’s going to be hard to overhaul.
It’s a shame that the season looks set to come to such a huge anti-climax. This was a season from which we were expecting so much from so many. Stoner’s form after he returned from illness suggested that he could challenge, Repsol Honda believed that they had their problems cracked, the new engine rules added a new dimension to the championship and few could say that they weren’t anticipating another year of Rossi versus Lorenzo. As it is, the season will miss far more than its leading star. A season that had all of the ingredients for a classic year or racing is at risk of becoming little more than a procession.
