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(19/05/2008)
No one likes France. No one that is but Yamaha. Today the bridesmaid of Japanese motorcycle manufacturers found it easy to overlook the smell, the snootiness and the general lack of courage shown by this nation as France provided them with a glorious Yam packed podium.
But to understand Yamaha's feelings of achievement first you have to understand why we all love to win. On the outside we claim some crap that it's because we know we've done our best and we're proud of our achievements. But that's not what winning is really about. The true joy of winning is joyfully contemplating how really bad your rivals must be feeling. The inner smug pleasure of knowing the pain of those who you aim to defeat and inwardly hate. It not about the winning – it's about the defeating.
Enter the world of Sprocket - top designer, top cartoonist and MGPN contributor.
Today's biggest losers were the Evil Empire. Back in the 70's Kenny Roberts' Yamaha team were known as the evil empire. Their domination led people to question ‘will KR Senior ever stop owning a successful team?'
Sadly the evilness of KR's once rated team is nothing like the evilness of HRC. It would be like comparing the kid who jumped into a neighbour's garden to steal an apple to Adolf Hitler invasion of Poland.
HRC like to crush all in their way. They're the biggest and mightiest motorcycle manufacturer on the planet. If something is wrong they throw money at it. If it's still wrong they throw the designer in the Tokyo harbour with a special pair of granite ‘gravity boots'. And you can bet your final yen that that harbour will be seeing some action in the late hours this week.
So, who were the Yamaha podium boys? Let's review their individual efforts:-
Valentino Rossi: 1st Position
What do we think these days of Valentino Rossi? Back in '04 he was the greatest. He couldn't lose no matter what happened. Slowly but surely however we became a little tired of him and his winning ways. In '06 Nicky Hayden took the MotoGP crown off Rossi in what is generally regarded as the most awkward and insignificant season of GP racing (including the war years).
But last season was the real turning point. Casey rocked the GP world by actually beating Rossi on skill and not by selling his soul to the devil in moonshine-fuelled family orgy. Rossi looked like a whinger and generally we were all sick of his excuses…or at least we thought we were. To credit the odorsome yellow Italian he only wanted the best equipment as we all would want. His sportsmanship has nearly always been impeccable. (Compare him to the sulky-loser Stoner has already become).
Which brings us to now. His win today, to compliment his win last time out in China, has woken our senses to the fact that he really is a good guy and is, unless you ask Foggy, probably the greatest of all time.
The win at Le Mans was the Rossi of old. The kind of race we'd watch in days gone by that would see him take the victory and Sete pile through the gravel shaking his head and looking at his rear tyre like he'd ridden through a turd.
It started with a bad start. Classic Rossi. He worked his way through the pack with some well executed passing manoeuvres. Classic Rossi. He made the break when things got tough and controlled the race. Yup, classic Rossi. The Italian even had a surprise victory celebration in readiness for us all. Brilliant.
Jorge Lorenzo: 2nd position
This season King Midas Lorenzo has achieved more than anyone could have ever expected. That's right, we're actually beginning to like him. Okay so you'd still probably like to punch him in his lolly-sucking gob but now you'd at least refrain from putting the boot in afterwards. And how has he achieved such a seemingly impossible turnaround? By determination – as shown today.
Jorge, once again, got away really badly. He has a problem on the opening laps due to many of the poorer riders try to ram him – not because they hate him (they probably do) but to try to scrape off some of that precious gold from his nuggets to sell back to Paul Denning after the race for his ‘ultimate sacrifice' experiment.
Once the gold dust has settled poor Jorge usually finds himself so far back that Anthony West can almost see him – and today was no exception.
But Jorge has determination. Determination means different things to different people. Take Neil Hodgson – for him determination means going that extra mile and finding the cash to pay his rent. Or what about Gobert? For him determination is washing powder. But in Jorge's case determination means ignoring the pain and setting about winning the championship…or failing that having a ram at Pedrosa (both outstanding options).
After the race at China Lord Loony Lorenzo thought he'd broken his ankle. He was wrong. He'd broken both his ankles. What a foolish mistake. Here at Le Mans the Spaniard looked weaker on his feet that McWilliam's drinking partner on a Friday night. A normal person wouldn't have gone to work. A Spaniard wouldn't go to work anyway. But this is no normal Spaniard and despite being in more pain than Foggy bio proof reader Lorenzo battled his way through the pack like the hero he's rapidly becoming.
The golden crown on his golden head came when he barged past his tiny rival Pedrosa to reduce his championship lead and his already reduced stature.
Second place was, in short, a truly spectacular result for a man who couldn't even stand up on the podium.
Colin Edwards: 3rd position
Some things in life are vastly underrated. Take bacon. It's never destined to be a premiere cut of meat like say an inch thick rib-eye steak or a rack of lamb. But because of its versatility bacon is an amazing meat product. You can have it for breakfast, lunch and supper. It can perk up almost any dish from pasta to lasagne. It can compliment salads, pizza, stews, chilli, soup, sandwiches or plain leeks – it even smells amazing when being cooked. It short it's cheap, cheerful and amazingly complimentary but totally overlooked.
Colin Edwards is bacon. He's never destined to be a juicy steak that wins races and championships meaning he's often overlooked. But give him a team, duller the better, and he brings it taste.
Qualifying had again been a success for Edwards. Pipped only by Pedrosa in the dying seconds still left him impressively second. But no one knows more that a good grid slot means nothing than Colin ‘straight to the back' Edwards.
Today, however, the Texan Tornado was anything but a bag of hot-air holding a strong position throughout. He was powerless to fend off the yellow and golden charges but did everyone proud by ramming past a thoroughly defeated Pedrosa to take the final podium step.
Everyone else finished elsewhere.
Losers? The faceless white-Honda brigade were again less than impressive. Who's who? Does anyone care? Stacked up mid-to-rear of the pack the highly confusable HRC machines battled with each other and looked every bit as likely to be at the front as Kurtis Roberts would in a TV studio crowd.
Meanwhile Lorenzo's feet weren't the only ones in pain this weekend thanks to the Angro-American John Hopkins' one foot attempt to kick some life back into, or the hell out of, his sickly green bike. Being in a strong (for Kawasaki) seventh place mid race Hopkins suffered a broken chain meaning for once Anthony West wasn't the weakest link in Team Kawasaki.
But the biggest loser of the day, like most days this season, surely had to be the glue-doomed horseface Marco Melandri. A few weeks back on his website Marco claimed "When I think I have reached the bottom yet continue to plummet".. I think someone should pass him a shovel? A new depth was reached this weekend as the Italian scraped around at the back like in indignant vole. But from his lowly grid position, and with very little pressure from behind, Melandri stalled and had to be push started by a passer-by with a sweeping brush.
Indeed Ducati's time in France was extra miserable when, at the other end, Stoner retired from a relatively strong position. Now if my knowledge of Ducati's unexpectedly braking down whilst in the middle of rural France are anything to go by then let me predict it was water in the crappy sidestand switch.
Fact supplied by Gene – who knows stuff.
No one likes France. No one that is but Yamaha. Today the bridesmaid of Japanese motorcycle manufacturers found it easy to overlook the smell, the snootiness and the general lack of courage shown by this nation as France provided them with a glorious Yam packed podium.
But to understand Yamaha's feelings of achievement first you have to understand why we all love to win. On the outside we claim some crap that it's because we know we've done our best and we're proud of our achievements. But that's not what winning is really about. The true joy of winning is joyfully contemplating how really bad your rivals must be feeling. The inner smug pleasure of knowing the pain of those who you aim to defeat and inwardly hate. It not about the winning – it's about the defeating.
Enter the world of Sprocket - top designer, top cartoonist and MGPN contributor.
Today's biggest losers were the Evil Empire. Back in the 70's Kenny Roberts' Yamaha team were known as the evil empire. Their domination led people to question ‘will KR Senior ever stop owning a successful team?'
Sadly the evilness of KR's once rated team is nothing like the evilness of HRC. It would be like comparing the kid who jumped into a neighbour's garden to steal an apple to Adolf Hitler invasion of Poland.
HRC like to crush all in their way. They're the biggest and mightiest motorcycle manufacturer on the planet. If something is wrong they throw money at it. If it's still wrong they throw the designer in the Tokyo harbour with a special pair of granite ‘gravity boots'. And you can bet your final yen that that harbour will be seeing some action in the late hours this week.
So, who were the Yamaha podium boys? Let's review their individual efforts:-
Valentino Rossi: 1st Position
What do we think these days of Valentino Rossi? Back in '04 he was the greatest. He couldn't lose no matter what happened. Slowly but surely however we became a little tired of him and his winning ways. In '06 Nicky Hayden took the MotoGP crown off Rossi in what is generally regarded as the most awkward and insignificant season of GP racing (including the war years).
But last season was the real turning point. Casey rocked the GP world by actually beating Rossi on skill and not by selling his soul to the devil in moonshine-fuelled family orgy. Rossi looked like a whinger and generally we were all sick of his excuses…or at least we thought we were. To credit the odorsome yellow Italian he only wanted the best equipment as we all would want. His sportsmanship has nearly always been impeccable. (Compare him to the sulky-loser Stoner has already become).
Which brings us to now. His win today, to compliment his win last time out in China, has woken our senses to the fact that he really is a good guy and is, unless you ask Foggy, probably the greatest of all time.
The win at Le Mans was the Rossi of old. The kind of race we'd watch in days gone by that would see him take the victory and Sete pile through the gravel shaking his head and looking at his rear tyre like he'd ridden through a turd.
It started with a bad start. Classic Rossi. He worked his way through the pack with some well executed passing manoeuvres. Classic Rossi. He made the break when things got tough and controlled the race. Yup, classic Rossi. The Italian even had a surprise victory celebration in readiness for us all. Brilliant.
Jorge Lorenzo: 2nd position
This season King Midas Lorenzo has achieved more than anyone could have ever expected. That's right, we're actually beginning to like him. Okay so you'd still probably like to punch him in his lolly-sucking gob but now you'd at least refrain from putting the boot in afterwards. And how has he achieved such a seemingly impossible turnaround? By determination – as shown today.
Jorge, once again, got away really badly. He has a problem on the opening laps due to many of the poorer riders try to ram him – not because they hate him (they probably do) but to try to scrape off some of that precious gold from his nuggets to sell back to Paul Denning after the race for his ‘ultimate sacrifice' experiment.
Once the gold dust has settled poor Jorge usually finds himself so far back that Anthony West can almost see him – and today was no exception.
But Jorge has determination. Determination means different things to different people. Take Neil Hodgson – for him determination means going that extra mile and finding the cash to pay his rent. Or what about Gobert? For him determination is washing powder. But in Jorge's case determination means ignoring the pain and setting about winning the championship…or failing that having a ram at Pedrosa (both outstanding options).
After the race at China Lord Loony Lorenzo thought he'd broken his ankle. He was wrong. He'd broken both his ankles. What a foolish mistake. Here at Le Mans the Spaniard looked weaker on his feet that McWilliam's drinking partner on a Friday night. A normal person wouldn't have gone to work. A Spaniard wouldn't go to work anyway. But this is no normal Spaniard and despite being in more pain than Foggy bio proof reader Lorenzo battled his way through the pack like the hero he's rapidly becoming.
The golden crown on his golden head came when he barged past his tiny rival Pedrosa to reduce his championship lead and his already reduced stature.
Second place was, in short, a truly spectacular result for a man who couldn't even stand up on the podium.
Colin Edwards: 3rd position
Some things in life are vastly underrated. Take bacon. It's never destined to be a premiere cut of meat like say an inch thick rib-eye steak or a rack of lamb. But because of its versatility bacon is an amazing meat product. You can have it for breakfast, lunch and supper. It can perk up almost any dish from pasta to lasagne. It can compliment salads, pizza, stews, chilli, soup, sandwiches or plain leeks – it even smells amazing when being cooked. It short it's cheap, cheerful and amazingly complimentary but totally overlooked.
Colin Edwards is bacon. He's never destined to be a juicy steak that wins races and championships meaning he's often overlooked. But give him a team, duller the better, and he brings it taste.
Qualifying had again been a success for Edwards. Pipped only by Pedrosa in the dying seconds still left him impressively second. But no one knows more that a good grid slot means nothing than Colin ‘straight to the back' Edwards.
Today, however, the Texan Tornado was anything but a bag of hot-air holding a strong position throughout. He was powerless to fend off the yellow and golden charges but did everyone proud by ramming past a thoroughly defeated Pedrosa to take the final podium step.
Everyone else finished elsewhere.
Losers? The faceless white-Honda brigade were again less than impressive. Who's who? Does anyone care? Stacked up mid-to-rear of the pack the highly confusable HRC machines battled with each other and looked every bit as likely to be at the front as Kurtis Roberts would in a TV studio crowd.
Meanwhile Lorenzo's feet weren't the only ones in pain this weekend thanks to the Angro-American John Hopkins' one foot attempt to kick some life back into, or the hell out of, his sickly green bike. Being in a strong (for Kawasaki) seventh place mid race Hopkins suffered a broken chain meaning for once Anthony West wasn't the weakest link in Team Kawasaki.
But the biggest loser of the day, like most days this season, surely had to be the glue-doomed horseface Marco Melandri. A few weeks back on his website Marco claimed "When I think I have reached the bottom yet continue to plummet".. I think someone should pass him a shovel? A new depth was reached this weekend as the Italian scraped around at the back like in indignant vole. But from his lowly grid position, and with very little pressure from behind, Melandri stalled and had to be push started by a passer-by with a sweeping brush.
Indeed Ducati's time in France was extra miserable when, at the other end, Stoner retired from a relatively strong position. Now if my knowledge of Ducati's unexpectedly braking down whilst in the middle of rural France are anything to go by then let me predict it was water in the crappy sidestand switch.
Fact supplied by Gene – who knows stuff.
