2025 Silly Season

michaelm · Jul 16, 2024

synn said:
Not denying that, but there are no saints in this sport; the ones that have a personality usually come with baggage as well.

Yes Batman, if only he had used his powers for good instead of evil.

To be fair as I and others who didn't admire his off track antics/tactics during his racing career have acknowledged he has mainly done good things post career. I absolutely couldn't see MM, Stoner or Lorenzo running a race team, and probably not running rider development schools either.

Stoner is still an awkward interviewee post career, while Mick Doohan is rather mellow these days, perhaps surprisingly, and quite insightful. He apparently is involved in selling business jets, I guess he has connections from his days in Monaco, and if I were buying such a jet I would definitely choose to buy one from Mick over anyone else. Barry Sheene is the one who might have had something of Valentino's people skills/charisma, he was much loved and absolutely fantastic as a TV personality/motorsports commentator in his retirement in Australia.

synn · Jul 16, 2024

michaelm said:
Stoner or Lorenzo running a race team, and probably not running rider development schools either.

On that note, is Lorenzo’s father still training riders? Last I heard, Toni Arbolino was working with the Lorenzos, but that was a while ago.

Gaz · Jul 17, 2024

#22 said:
No one can deny that Rossi has given a lot back to the sport in terms of the academy and also the VR46 team. You're right, in that he is unique amongst the aliens with regards to having an outgoing personality. He also seems to also be excellent in picking talent for the most part, a lot like Puig back in the day.

The problem is, it is precisely because of that persona, that he has marks on his legacy.

Absolutely no fan of VR here (as many here would well know from me) but I will never disparage the work done by the VR46 academy and I also suggest that we acknowledge (and I have to vomit a little with this) the like of Uccio who also plays a role with the academy and VR teams. Through the years we all have our opinions of 'team VR' and remember the BS (that is bullsh*t not Ben Spies) that has surrounded them during the career of VR.

I would ask though, and this is genuine, as to how much of the personality is natural versus manufactured for the sake of business, and that is not intended to disparage.

I have long believed that VR is absolutely one of, if not the smartest racer we have seen in terms of business acumen (again, this is a full entourage team thing) as he developed an aura and then was able to use the emerging social media and digital age to build what we all saw and what has become. This aura aligned with the needs of the media who still today reference his riding career in articles, despite him not really being around as much, the same media often forgetting his emerging good career in 4 wheel racing.

I do wonder though, and I ask rhetorically, just how big a Barry Sheene may have become in a social media age. A guy with his fun, vibrant personality before his time in a way.

Separate and because I can, I actually see VR as aligned to Tiger Woods in so many ways. Both dominant in their chosen sports, fully revered at their time and since, both who seemingly received favours based on personality and their 'worth to the sport', but each with aspects that throw shade on their legacy for reasons outside of results.

michaelm · Jul 17, 2024

Gaz said:
Absolutely no fan of VR here (as many here would well know from me) but I will never disparage the work done by the VR46 academy and I also suggest that we acknowledge (and I have to vomit a little with this) the like of Uccio who also plays a role with the academy and VR teams. Through the years we all have our opinions of 'team VR' and remember the BS (that is bullsh*t not Ben Spies) that has surrounded them during the career of VR.

I would ask though, and this is genuine, as to how much of the personality is natural versus manufactured for the sake of business, and that is not intended to disparage.

I have long believed that VR is absolutely one of, if not the smartest racer we have seen in terms of business acumen (again, this is a full entourage team thing) as he developed an aura and then was able to use the emerging social media and digital age to build what we all saw and what has become. This aura aligned with the needs of the media who still today reference his riding career in articles, despite him not really being around as much, the same media often forgetting his emerging good career in 4 wheel racing.

I do wonder though, and I ask rhetorically, just how big a Barry Sheene may have become in a social media age. A guy with his fun, vibrant personality before his time in a way.
I don’t see
Separate and because I can, I actually see VR as aligned to Tiger Woods in so many ways. Both dominant in their chosen sports, fully revered at their time and since, both who seemingly received favours based on personality and their 'worth to the sport', but each with aspects that throw shade on their legacy for reasons outside of results.

While I nearly always agree with you, I don’t see many parallels between Valentino and Tiger, other than stature in their respective sports and being ruthless competitors, not the aspect of Rossi with which I had a problem, particularly given I was and am a big time Doohan fan.

Gaz · Jul 17, 2024

michaelm said:
While I nearly always agree with you, I don’t see many parallels between Valentino and Tiger, other than stature in their respective sports and being ruthless competitors, not the aspect of Rossi with which I had a problem, particularly given I was and am a big time Doohan fan.

Both have baggage that follows them for one reason or other from their sporting lives, with Tiger having additional well known baggage away from the course to add to the on course activity.

I would actually say that away from the main sport aspect, VR is more heavily involved in development of future riders, although no doubt Tiger as with many top golfers does a lot of activity that is not as publicised (by comparison to VR).

synn · Jul 17, 2024

Also, both are rich enough to buy their own planets, and another planet for the first planet to colonize.

Gaz · Jul 17, 2024

synn said:
Also, both are rich enough to buy their own planets, and another planet for the first planet to colonize.

Have to have somewhere for the in-laws

Faz · Jul 17, 2024

michaelm said:
While I nearly always agree with you, I don’t see many parallels between Valentino and Tiger, other than stature in their respective sports and being ruthless competitors, not the aspect of Rossi with which I had a problem, particularly given I was and am a big time Doohan fan.

Neither of them knew when to bow out gracefully?

#22 · Jul 17, 2024

synn said:
Not denying that, but there are no saints in this sport; the ones that have a personality usually come with baggage as well.

Let's be honest. They all come with baggage. Lorenzo has his dad baggage, Pedrosa had the Puig baggage and Stoner had the "I hate you all" baggage.

Gaz said:
I would ask though, and this is genuine, as to how much of the personality is natural versus manufactured for the sake of business, and that is not intended to disparage.

This is the key to it to me. 90% of Rossi's career we saw the manufactured personality, but at times we saw the real one. Like late 2015 for example.

The main issue with Rossi imo, as was noted in the Trunkman articles. Is that MotoGP themselves helped create the monster. In many, many other professional sports, they always have a successor lined up like in basketball but MotoGP put virtually all their eggs in one basket. He became bigger than the series which was always going to be a problem when he left, but it became a problem a lot earlier than they expected. I suppose that is one good thing about liberty taking over after the Rossi period.

Faz said:
Neither of them knew when to bow out gracefully?

Good point. It's an addiction.

Faz · Jul 17, 2024

No pressure then, good luck with this!

#22 · Jul 17, 2024

Who's gonna tell them?

Keshav · Jul 17, 2024

#22 said:
Let's be honest. They all come with baggage. Lorenzo has his dad baggage, Pedrosa had the Puig baggage and Stoner had the "I hate you all" baggage.

Not to get too deep into the weeds, but from reading Stoner's bio, one gets a picture of a very very solitary kid, whose obsessive practicing and anxiety over the phenomenal amount of sacrifice on the part of his parents really fueled his competitive nature, would just naturally, on some level, make him subconsciously angry and resentful at the pressure laid on him to repay his family for all their years of forgoing domestic stability and so many basic comforts and ease of life so that he could fulfill his dream. No kid that young wants to be responsible for his parent's well-being, financial or otherwise. Kids want to feel parents are there to protect them and have it all under control. Ozzies have that cultural can-do, no worries DNA - but underneath it all, they're just human beings like everywhere else. Stoner's life on the road from such a young age, never really settled down in any one place for very long, can't have given him much in the way of social skills, and even the most "normal" well-adjusted person can easily get bent out-of-shape by constant media attention and being regularly tasked by a PR machine with shilling as a brand-representitive under bright lights for some giant corporate entity. Stoner was a low-key Gary Cooper type, the exact opposite of ultra-narcissist, approval junkie Rossi, who only felt fully alive when there was a camera and mic in his face.

michaelm · Jul 17, 2024

Faz said:
Neither of them knew when to bow out gracefully?

I am not much of a Tiger fan either, but he actually managed a miraculous late career title he had no business winning. Not sure why he is persisting now though.

PRS717 · Jul 17, 2024

Gaz said:
I would ask though, and this is genuine, as to how much of the personality is natural versus manufactured for the sake of business, and that is not intended to disparage.

While public personas/images can be manufactured to some degree, I think the underlying personality cannot. IMO personality or charisma is like common sense and/or a sense of humor…..you either have it or you don’t.

#22 · Jul 17, 2024

Keshav said:
Not to get too deep into the weeds, but from reading Stoner's bio, one gets a picture of a very very solitary kid, whose obsessive practicing and anxiety over the phenomenal amount of sacrifice on the part of his parents really fueled his competitive nature, would just naturally, on some level, make him subconsciously angry and resentful at the pressure laid on him to repay his family for all their years of forgoing domestic stability and so many basic comforts and ease of life so that he could fulfill his dream. No kid that young wants to be responsible for his parent's well-being, financial or otherwise. Kids want to feel parents are there to protect them and have it all under control. Ozzies have that cultural can-do, no worries DNA - but underneath it all, they're just human beings like everywhere else. Stoner's life on the road from such a young age, never really settled down in any one place for very long, can't have given him much in the way of social skills, and even the most "normal" well-adjusted person can easily get bent out-of-shape by constant media attention and being regularly tasked by a PR machine with shilling as a brand-representitive under bright lights for some giant corporate entity. Stoner was a low-key Gary Cooper type, the exact opposite of ultra-narcissist, approval junkie Rossi, who only felt fully alive when there was a camera and mic in his face.

Totally agree. I was reading an article recently where there was a family from the UK who decided to buy a relatively small sailboat and 'sail the world'. It was the parents dream, not their 3 children. Sure enough, the moment the 3 kids were adults they scrammed because they were ...... up by their upbringing and the pressure their parents put on them, that frankly stole them of their childhood.

#22 · Jul 17, 2024

PRS717 said:
While public personas/images can be manufactured to some degree, I think the underlying personality cannot. IMO personality or charisma is like common sense and/or a sense of humor…..you either have it or you don’t.

"Gift of the Gab' as we call it in the UK.

I remember as a youth, entering a a TV show called 'So you wanna be a racing driver?' which was along the lines of all those manufactured entertainment industry shows of that era.

The guy who won it was a friend of mine, on the same course as me in university, who actually failed the fitness round because he was out drinking the night before. He should never have progressed beyond that but because he had a personality, he sweet talked his way into the next stages and the rest is history. I'm not bitter about it (but was at the time), because I realised that they wanted a personality, not the best driver.

I'm somewhat introverted, and sometimes wish I wasn't based on how far it gets some people.

Faz · Jul 17, 2024

michaelm said:
I am not much of a Tiger fan either, but he actually managed a miraculous late career title he had no business winning. Not sure why he is persisting now though.

His class of ho’s don’t come cheap!

AnnoyingTwit · Jul 17, 2024

Faz said:
Neither of them knew when to bow out gracefully?

I think there's no need for an athlete to bow out gracefully, providing that they're still enjoying themselves and not embarrassingly slow. I mean embarrassingly slow compared to the full grid - not compared to their previous highs.

I'm not sure of the decision-making process that led to VR going to a satellite team, from the factory team. If he had any say in it (which I suspect he did), then that's perhaps a little bit graceful.

synn · Jul 17, 2024

AnnoyingTwit said:
I'm not sure of the decision-making process that led to VR going to a satellite team, from the factory team. If he had any say in it (which I suspect he did), then that's perhaps a little bit graceful.

From what I remember, they told him he always had a place at Yamaha for as long as he wants, but they had to move in on Quartararo now or lose him, and he agreed.

Now Razalan Razali was not happy about it, but that is a different story.

Also, to address an earlier post, I don’t think anything about Rossi’s personality is manufactured. If you go back to mid 90s videos, he had his goofy celebrations (Robin Hood, Couch surfing etc) and he had his explosive temper as well when he literally punched Biaggi backstage over a disagreement. He was also an interviewer’s favorite, even when he spoke like 5 English words. All of this before the advent of social media and any sort of mainstream attention on the sport. I consider it very much like the late great Sheene, referenced earlier.

Now his business savvy and polish for the camera, that was built over time. One could say manufactured, albeit from the raw materials that is his authentic persona.

But I digress from the topic at hand.

michaelm · Jul 17, 2024

AnnoyingTwit said:
I think there's no need for an athlete to bow out gracefully, providing that they're still enjoying themselves and not embarrassingly slow. I mean embarrassingly slow compared to the full grid - not compared to their previous highs.

I'm not sure of the decision-making process that led to VR going to a satellite team, from the factory team. If he had any say in it (which I suspect he did), then that's perhaps a little bit graceful.

My gripe was with Jorge Lorenzo being screwed, I am sure Yamaha and Dorna wanted Valentino to keep going for a start. He seems to be enjoying sports car racing currently, possibly more than he enjoyed his last years of his GP bike racing.

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