It is last act, last scene and the curtain fallin’ down on the 2005 MotoGP season. This weekend marks the final race of the year and it takes place in the fireworks capital of Spain. Its the Comunitat Valenciana Moto GP at the now traditional season finale at the historic Ricardo Tormo Circuit of Comunitat Valenciana. Expect the racing to be explosive as every rider tries to close out the season with a strong result. This is particularly true for Nicky Hayden and Marco Melandri who are both still trying to settle the issue of who will be runner up in the championship this year. The Italian holds an 8 point advantage but the door is still narrowly open for the Yank to pull this one out of the bag. Additionally, Gibernau and Rossi still have some things to resolve, particularly with Gibernau leaving Honda for Ducati next year. Given that the season started with the last lap, last turn bang-up at Jerez I wouldn’t be surprised to see the year book-ended with some more sparks flying between the two riders in Valencia. Rumor also has it that Biaggi may not be with Honda next year after he voiced strong questions about the quality bike he is getting. (This is particularly ironic since Honda dragged their feet earlier about offering Vermeulen a MotoGP ride under the assumption Biaggi and Checa would be riding for Sito Pons next year). This may have once again breathed life into the twitching corpse that has been Barros’ MotoGP career over the past three seasons…the guy is like a mummy always coming back from the brink. Likewise, Colin Edwards really needs to show Yamaha he deserves to be Rossi’s teammate next year so he better find that elusive “fast” gear on the M1. Nakano, Elias, Tamada are all locked up for next year and will probably resume their regular battle at the back half of the top ten. Nakano is held back by the bike but what about the other two?

Other riders hoping to impress this weekend are Kawasaki’s Alex Hoffman who is back after breaking his ankle at Motegi. He is without a ride in 2006 and will want to convince team bosses that he is worth a look. Checa seems to have locked up a Honda ride so he may return to his lackluster results until silly season of ‘06 cranks up. Capirossi is back from his Phillip Island injury but will probably be struggling with his health this weekend. Since he has a Duc contract signed and delivered for next season he can be forgiven if he turns in an usually bad performance. Hopkins is also signed for ‘06 but with riding the Suzuki he will always have lackluster results even if he turns in extraordinary displays of riding.

Yamaha hasn’t announced its’ plans for the satellite team next year so Xaus needs to show a flash of brilliance in front of the home crowd. Rolfo should be a shoe-in for D’Antin’s rumored two rider Ducati squad next seasaon but can’t afford to slack off less Ducati’s favored son Xaus steal his seat. Naturally the WCM guys are always hoping for a faster ride and Ellison may actually deserve one. If Dorna is still pressuring the MotoGP squads to hire an English rider then Ellison, along with ex-KTM rider Byrne, may actually be a hot commodity for ‘06.

The final group of riders hoping to impress this weekend are the wild card and replacement riders. Suzuki’s Nobuatsu Aoki is standing in for the injured Kenny Roberts, Jr. He has spent the past year as a test rider and would love to be back in the big show. Likewise, Kawasaki’s test rider Olivier Jacque will be a wild card this weekend and will hope for another China result (as opposed to another Sepang-like DNF) if he is going to raise any eyebrows. British Superbike superstar Ryuichi Kiyonari is standing in for the still-injured Bayliss (following the path blazed this season by Ukawa, Byrne and Vermeulen as Camel Honda stand-ins). He needs a top 10 finish to better Vermeulen’s results for Camel Honda and seems to be adapting well to the big MotoGP bikes. Finally, TeamKR are back in the paddock with their old V5 motor and their old 2003 rider Kurtis Roberts. The youngest Roberts is looking for a ride and the oldest Roberts is looking for sponsorship for next year. Both will be fighting an uphill battle for the weekend…

The racing circuit offers its own challenges. In some respects it is a mini-Motegi as it is primarily defined by a stop-and-start flow. The track is relatively short at 2.49 miles in length and is very tight since it crams 14 turns into that small space. The track is reasonably wide and has a very abrasive surface so stable, hard braking may be the trait most needed by the bikes with strong acceleration a close second. This is especially true in the first and final corners. Turn 1 is a 90 degree left taken in the mid-80 mph range but with eye-popping breaking after the riders have hit 180+ on the preceeding straight. Expect lots of late braking here which means bikes the bikes will be set up with super stiff front forks. The final turn is equally tricky since it is a relatively slow, off-camber hairpin left taken after flying through a sweeping left hand kink at 125+. Expect some riders to wash out the front end here and take a tour of the Valencia gravel traps on the outside of the turn. The final turn worth mentioning is the “where men are men” left hand kink at turn seven taken over a buck fifty. Lets see, fast left hand bends in turns 3, 7 and 13…who is it that likes fast left hand turns? Oh yeah, Nicky Hayden. Nicky has been fast in the past at the Spanish circuit but always seems to find the limit of front tire adhesion the bad way. Lets hope he can keep it on two wheels this time.

Alright, lots of hard braking. Lots of hard acceleration. A few fast left hand sweepers. An abrasive track surface. Sounds like tires may again be a factor. The Michelins have traditionally ruled at Valencia but Bridgestone made up some serious ground this season as evidenced by Capirossi and Checa’s podiums over the last five races. Keep a close eye on the tire war, especially because a strong Bridgestone performance could move perennial mid-pack guys like the Suzukis and Kawasakis up into the top five while a strong Michelin showing will increase the excitement of the Hayden-Melandri and Rossi-Gibernau issues.

The fuse gets lit this Sunday and should make for a grand finale for the MotoGP series.

[image from the Ricardo Tormo Circuit web site.]

So some interesting news filtered out onto the ‘net back in early October but I’ve been so busy with other things that I haven’t had time to give it any attention for a blog write-up. Now that race season is nearly over I am finding more time to go through my backlog of things that I’ve wanted to write about this summer.

So the big October news was that the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia has decided to host a road race in 2006. By “road race” I don’t mean an event on a race track but instead a good old fashioned race on real roads just like the Isle of Man TT, the North West 200, the Ulster GP and the Macau GP. The press release, done by Vibe Marketing (a Nova Scotia based marketing firm that sounds more like it should be selling “adult” products than promoting motorcycle races), announces an event called the Cape Breton Festival of Speed.

This event is being done in partnership with the body which has managed the Isle of Man TT for the past few years and should feature some of the big names of the TT like Ian Lougher who was involved in the press conference which announced the event. The track is still being laid out but is expected to take place on a 32 mile long loop near Sydney, Nova Scotia. This is near the Cabot Trail which is a famous scenic drive around Cape Breton and should thus be a beautiful area in which to race motorcycles. All in all, this sounds like a pretty good thing, right?

Well, yes but I do have a few concerns:

First is the safety issue. The Isle of Man TT is on very shaky ground after several high profile deaths in the past few years. With the 100th anniversary of the historic race just around the corner (in 2007) there is a ever increasing buzz that the TT will soon come to an end. Likewise, the Macau GP has a reputation that is not better than the TT, even if the safety record is slightly better. Classic road circuit races in Europe have been shutting down for the past decade and this trend looks to continue until only Ireland and the Isle of Man actually host the events. One thing this Cape Breton Festival of Speed has going for it will be its newness. With no prior history and thus no longstanding tradition to adhere to they may be able to lay out a route which is challenging to ride while still being safer than the existing loops like the Isle of Man circuit or the Macau layout.

My next concern is the weather. While Nova Scotia is warmed by the Gulf Stream and thus has different weather than may be initially pictured when considering its northern location I still think that the conditions could be unpredictable during the late September dates for which the event is scheduled. It will be hard enough to get sufficient crowds of people to make the trek to remote Canada for a motorcycle race without throwing in the risk of an ice storm cancelling the whole shebang.

Third is the condition of the roads. I’ve been going through a bunch of my old VCR tapes lately and in particular have found episodes of the Canadian Superbike series from over the past four years. One thing that seems to be a recurring theme is that the track surfaces at their purpose built race tracks is pretty bad. One race I watched at Mosport in Ontario showed the rear wheel of the bikes hammer up and down so bad I thought there was a bike problem but it turned out to just be bad pavement. As I can attest from our roads here in Colorado, extreme variation in seasonal temperature is just the thing for turning nice, new asphalt into a crumbling mass of gravel and dust. Frost heaves stretch the pavement in the winter, a boiling sun shrinks it in the summer. Road circuit racing is dangerous enough without having a surface more appropriate to adventure touring bikes than to race machines. They will have to pave this coming summer to be ready for a race in 2006 and then re-pave regularly to keep the roads in good condition. Does Nova Scotia really have that kind of tax money sitting around? Maybe they should turn it into a 32 mile long supermoto race!

Money…this leads me to my final concern. It is tough to generate a big enough crowd anywhere on this continent to support a motorcycle race. The MotoGP race at Laguna Seca this past summer was a massive success but the difference between the GP’s attendance and that of an AMA superbike race (or, worse yet, a Canadian Superbike race) is dramatic. For Cape Breton to support a huge event like they one they have planned will require a large influx of visitors in order to generate the necessary injection of money into the local economy. No local or provincial government will want to continually fund road improvements, staff costs and other budgetary items for a big motorcycle festival. I just don’t think motorcycle racing is popular enough in the Americas to support this event. There might be a critical mass around a major city like Toronto or Calgary but I don’t see it happening on a remote northern coast of a remote peninsula of Nova Scotia. I hope the people that are putting this thing together are made up of more business people than marketing people…

Alright, so I’m a cynic and a skeptic and a downer. Its not that I dislike races on public roads, or that I think Canadian race organizers are idiots or that I have some great insight into the economics of Nova Scotia. In fact, I love the idea of a 32 mile long street circuit, so long as they have safety has a primary concern when figuring out the track layout. I’m all about travel and would love to visit Nova Scotia, with or without a motorcycle race. For me, this sounds like a great thing. But then again, I am willing to do all kinds of silly things to watch a race since I’m obsessed. Its just that other people aren’t obsessed like me and the folks putting on the Cape Breton Festival of Speed can’t rely on a small population of moto-addicts to bouy their event. The Isle of Man TT has nearly 100 years of heritage, not to mention the entire population of Europe to draw from. This will be an uphill battle from the beginning. I hope to hear more over the next twelve months that will allay my fears.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to go join those crazy Cannucks next September to watch some road racing!

[image from the Nova Scotia’s Tourism web site.]

One thing I’ve generally avoided on this blog are posts which basically just bitch and moan about things I don’t like. There is enough negativity in the world without another self righteous blogger spewing bile on his web site. Nonetheless, there have been rare occasions when I use the blog to complain about something and I’m sorry to say that I’ll be doing that again today…

This past Tuesday SpeedTV televised shows which chronicled the two rounds of the FIM World Endurance Championship’s Master of Endurance mini-series. This series highlights the two most famous motorcycle endurance races in the world with the Bol D’Or at the Magny Cours Circuit and the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the Bugatti Le Mans Circuit.

So SpeedTV shows motorcycle racing and I find something to whine about, I can hear you thinking…what kind of ungrateful sourpuss am I? Well, its not the that they showed the endurance races that is the problem but instead the format of their footage. SpeedTV chose half hour episodes with which to cover the two races. These are 24 hour endurance races so that is a huge amount of content to be cutting down to a 30 minute show. Throw in 10 commercials and you only have 20 minutes of race coverage.

Now let me take a moment here to talk a bit about motorcycle endurance racing. Unlike the MotoGP, World Superbike and AMA races that I traditionally cover here on the blog endurance racing is a very different form of two wheeled competition. Sprint races are usually a little over 1/2 hour in length with a single racer on the bike and usually involves riding as fast as the person can go for the duration of the event. There are factors like tire life and race strategy when running with other racers but these are usually secondary to just squeezing every last bit of speed out of the bike.

Endurance racing, on the other hand, is as much a mathematical game as a contest of speed. It is a team sport rather than an individual effort so it is important to find racers who work well together, can all use roughly the same ergonomic configuration and can use the same chassis settings. When it comes to race strategy there is a long list of variables to be considered. How long should the rider’s stint be? A pit stop can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds depending on the equipment available and the components being changed. Longer stints mean fewer pit stops but that means tire life, gas loads and rider endurance must all be adjusted to compensate. Tires have to chosen…softer tires mean faster lap times but more time killing tire changes. Likewise, less fuel means faster laps but more frequent gas tops. Running hard means faster laps but puts more stress on engine and brake components have to last 24 hours or be changed during the race. It is also challenging to pick rider order: putting the fastest rider on first may mean jumping out to an early lead but then means you have to wait a few hours before you can put that rider back on the bike if you need to make up time against the competition. Even during the race there are hard decisions. Do you do longer pit stops and change tires, brakes, oil, filters each time or just splash in gas and run parts as long as possible. What do you do if you crash? Some duct tape and bailing wire can quickly fix up a bike but may mean slower lap times than taking longer to install new parts. If other teams crash then the race may be red flagged which gives everyone free time to make repairs and change tires. Do you risk running longer stints knowing that the time you save could be pointless if a red flag brings all the riders back to the pits. Decisions, decisions.

What I’m really trying to get at here is the fact that while a 22 lap road race may be cut down to a 40 minute TV show (with 20 minutes lost to commercials) without losing the gist of the event, trying to turn 24 hours of endurance racing into a 20 minute show is ridiculous and pointless. The guys at SpeedTV are predominantly car guys…specifically, they are NASCAR guys. These folks spend their days putting together shows about races that last two or three hours. Most of the NASCAR coverage on SpeedTV show the races full length but some of their enthusiast shows cover a race in a single one hour segment. These NASCAR guys wouldn’t dare think they could cover a NASCAR race, with all its pit strategy and race tactics, in just half an hour. Then how could they think they could cover a motorcycle race that is twelve times that long in such a short program?

Basically, the race coverage for both the Bol D’Or and the LeMans races was horrible. There was barely enough time to to show the start, a few laps of the race, some crashes, a few highlights and then a quick shot of the winners on the podium. No coverage of the various team’s race strategies, no play-by-play of the team’s pit stops and certainly no narrative of how the race progressed as crashes, mechanical problems, pit tractics and lap times separated the field.

I want to see more, not less, motorcycle racing coverage on SpeedTV but I have to say that the hour they devoted to the Master of Endurance series was wasted time. If they can fill hour after hour of their broadcast day with crap like “Texas Hardtails”, “Build or Bust”, “Kyle Petty Charity Ride” and “Corbin’s Ride On” then they can find the time to give better treatment to their coverage of endurance racing.

[image from the GMT 94 web site.]

The 1996 movie Jerry Maguire brought the job of sports management straight into the limelight. In the movie, Maguire strikes out on his own and banks his entire career on a single up-and-coming athlete. The movie fulfills its’ Hollywood script destiny when his client emerges as a superstar and catapults both of them into fame and fortune.

Well, I think that Norm Viano, aka the Lawdog, has achieved something this year that is as deserving of a movie screenplay as anything that Leigh Steinberg (the real life inspiration for the Jerry Maguire character) ever pulled off. Lawdog got both of the Bostrom brothers signed to rare factory contracts despite performances over the past two years that would have most riders begging for a privateer ride. Clearly Viano is a miracle worker when it comes to sports management.

Now let me say for a moment that I’m sorry to be so harsh when talking about the brothers Boz. I think both guys are talented racers and both bring excitement to the grid whenever they line up. I’m glad to see they will be in the AMA paddock in ‘06 and wish them both the best next year but I think a critical analysis of their 2005 seasons highlights just how amazing these recent signings really are:

First, there is the second return of Ben Bostrom to AMA Superbike. Bennie was off to Europe this past summer with dreams of redeeming himself after a disappointing season aboard a Ducati in 2002 followed by two unremarkable seasons in the AMA on a Honda. He signed on with the Renegade Honda team but was behind the eight ball from the beginning due to a lack of testing and a shortage of bike parts. I think everyone involved will admit that the season sucked for everyone involved. BBoz’s best finish was a sixth in race two at Valencia but he was only inside the top ten on four occasions (the 6th and three 10th place finishes). These tepid results were amplified by ten rounds in which which zero points were scored, including four DNFs, and also by two crashes resulting in significant injuries. The worst of these accidents occurred at Silverstone where Ben had a vicious highside which resulted in broken vertebra. This was a tough year to be in the Renegade pits. I don’t think anyone would point the finger at Ben and say the team’s struggles were his fault but nonetheless his record for the past few seasons had to make his manager’s job pretty difficult when finding him a new gig. This last week it was announced that Ben would be teaming with Neil Hodgson in the AMA Superbike series on the Ducati Austin bike. Clearly Viano has pulled the rabbit out of the hat with this signing!

The person leaving Ducati to free up that coveted factory ride is Ben’s brother Eric Bostrom. EBoz’s issue for the past couple of seasons as primarily been one of consistency rather than outright poor results. 2005 was a bipolar year for Eric. On one hand, he was the second winningest rider in the AMA Superbike class, behind champ Mat Mladin, with three victories. Bostrom won his traditional race at PPIR but then backed that up with convincing victories at both Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio. There were glimpses there of the Eric of old when he was an animal aboard the Kawasaki ZX-7R. However, the other side of the story has been one of Eric struggling to come to grips with the handling of the Ducati. At nearly half the AMA Superbike races in 2005 Eric finished outside the top five. This in a year when only seven full factory riders were on the grid. Eric’s third place finish in the championship, along with his race wins, certainly looked good on paper but anyone who watched the season unfold knows just what a disappointing the year was for the younger Bostrom. Earlier this week Yamaha put out a press release confirming that Eric Bostrom would be riding their bikes in Superstock and Formula Xtreme in 2006. I’m sure Eric would rather be racing in Superbike but that fact that he has another factory ride is another minor miracle for the Lawdog.

I do hope that the two Bostrom brothers get their mojo back in 2006 as I think both provide a critical combination of talent and personality to the paddock. Both are past AMA champs (Ben with AMA Superbike, Supermoto and 600cc Dirt Track titles, Eric with AMA Supersport, Formula Xtreme, Supertwins and 883cc Dirt Track titles) and both riders have won AMA races in the past two years. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to admit that I’m a huge fan of Eric Bostrom and that I’m excited at the prospect of watching him back aboard a four cylinder machine. But until the two riders have an opportunity to step up their on-bike performance the real star of their team is the Lawdog who got his rider’s signed to contracts which I would have previously thought only possible in a cheesy Hollywood movie.

Good job Mr. Viano and good luck to your riders.

[image from the Eric Bostrom web site