Re: how close the racing is; I occurs to me that how exciting one finds the racing - is a matter of how one perceives the challenge of racing at the premiere level, and what one values as entertainment. Years ago I read an interview with Kenny Roberts who was talking about what makes a great racer, and he said in so many words, that what defines the top riders is not courage, or big balls or psychotic fearlessness. He said it’s all about the kind of dispassionate focus, mental acuity and discipline that makes a great chess player, which he said, was why playing golf had such a great appeal. In the current era, with increasing technical parity, the light shines even brighter on the rider when we think of what makes the team more competitive, which is IMHO, as it should be. I know a some folks find the racing less exciting because there’s less drama with less passing and less fairing bashing. As an All American boy, raised in an era where jocks ruled (although I was a four-eyed nerd who hated jocks) and going on weekends to watch the Demolition Derbies and as an unabashed Mad Max fan I have to say I prefer that over the 800 era chess game GPs. For me - I think presently MotoGp makes for a pretty good symmetry between the two dynamics. It’s a hard balance to maintain. As to MM - he’s starting to seem like a wounded badger. He has to be feeling the pressure of “advancing years.” His seeming inability to consistently ride in a more measured and pragmatic way, may end up being the quality that separates his legacy from Rossi’s. Rossi simply didn’t crash as much, and miraculously over all those years, only ever sustained one serious injury. And given how far Marquez has fallen at a relatively young age, I’m thinking retrospectively that Rossi’s continued successes into his mid-thirties look much more impressive, all the Dorna mollycoddling and turning a blind eye aside. Tho - I will say that I value Marquez’s championships over Rossi’s because the two he “won”: the one with the Gibernau pass and the one with the ........ off-track excursion at Laguna are as far as I’m concerned, illegitimate.
