With all due respect - there are a lot of things here that I agree with. That said - Colin Edwards never accomplished .... on the factory Yamaha and neither much did Spies (albeit his crew were - or so it appears way out of their depth) so Lorenzo who has had multiple championships while competing against Rossi (on "His" bike") as well as Stoner and Marquez - would have to be included in the "aliens" club; otherwise - according to some - nobody in the last ten years was an alien - except for Stoner. Yes - we all agree that the M1 is a great bike. That said, by implying it's all down to the bike - we risk going into the it's-all-the-bike mindset that fueled so much of the wrong-headed critiques of Stoner. I don't fault Lorenzo for not being as brilliant as Stoner; never thought he was. He was just stupid (given the wealth he's accrued over the years) for thinking with his wallet. As others have said - if he had to leave Yamaha - and still see the podium - he should have gone to Suzuki.
Vinales isn't Stoner, Doohan, Rainey et al.. - but then again - neither were they
- after only one race in the premiere class. I'm not saying he's the chosen one
- but the same kind of doubt I hear echoed repeatedly about Vinales - sounds
very much like what people were expressing about Marquez when he was riding
Moto 2. Not trying to be all kumbaya - just willing to keep an open mind.
I never thought much of Colin Edwards, and never thought he should have had the factory Yamaha seat period. Spies didn't help himself, but he did win on the M1 and finished 5th that season (2011) but 2012 was a .... show for a lot of reasons as we know. Either way once Rossi wanted out of Ducati, Spies had no chance at all in the team.
Lorenzo left Yamaha because he got tired of dealing with Rossi and all the ........ that comes with it. 3 world championships and scores of races won, and what does Yamaha do in 2015? Cancel the party for Lorenzo so as to not offend Rossi. Imagine that...you just won one of the most closely contested championships in history against your own teammate, and your team thanks you by canceling the championship party. Given the way Yamaha bent over backwards to accommodate Rossi and to try and soothe his feelings in favor of the person who had been doing the heavy lifting for them from 2010 on, I don't fault him for wanting to leave. Sure the money no doubt factored in as well since Yamaha had the gall to offer him and Rossi identical contracts in spite of Lorenzo winning more grands prix and championships since 2010. That's insane. So in his haste to get away from the toxic environment at Yamaha, he at the bare minimum cut his throat for 2017 by choosing to go to the one team that has fielded a bike for over a decade that is decidedly not conducive to riders who rely on perfectly balanced machines to achieve success. I guess it's easy to second-guess him, but I wonder even if he never wins a single race for Ducati, if it will have been worth it just for the fact that he doesn't have to deal with Yamaha's toxic ........ environment. He made the decision he thought was best at the expense of winning races and titles just to get away from Rossi/Yamaha. That says a ton about what Yamaha really stands for. Some posters here of course think Yamaha is the perfect team environment even though nothing really indicates this. I do agree with you that he should have entertained Suzuki as another option. He still probably would have had issues, but not the seemingly insurmountable mountain he currently faces at Ducati. The only one who is going to win out here is Dovizioso strangely. But it's actually had the effect of making me a bit more appreciative of what he has done the past few years at Ducati, and his overall commitment to the team.
Maybe part of my issue with Vinales isn't so much the man himself but a couple of external factors that are being lost in the shuffle.
1) The media went racing to anoint him the second coming of, well whatever as soon as the signing was made official as did the glory-hunting contingent of Rossi's fanbase. The fans know they are on limited time with Rossi, and their need to live vicariously through a rider is leading them to hedge their bets as is seen with Vudu and the like. Marquez didn't pan out for them, so Vinales represents the next best thing since he's on a Yamaha and they won't need to switch manufacturer allegiances, thus rendering all of their merchandise obsolete. Plus Vinales is not Lorenzo in temperament and disposition. I never had any issue with Lorenzo's personality as is the case with the majority of posters here, but there is a much larger contingent out there that has judged Lorenzo solely on his personality. Lorenzo didn't know his place and I suspect those who felt so adamantly opposed to Lorenzo's personality --not so coincidentally, many of these complainers are the same people who whine to this day about Stoner's personality-- think he was the problem at Yamaha because we can't have people giving their honest opinion unless it conforms with their asinine worldviews.
2) The media went all-in on Vinales because after Sepang 2015, Marquez was an impossible sell to the general GP watching public. After committing the egregious act of racing a competitor (who just happened to be the 9-times god) during a championship battle, the media hit the sell-all button on Marquez. He was no longer the heir apparent to VR as seemed to be the case just 2 years earlier at that point. They feed the VR46 fanbase the ........ they want to hear and selling MM as the best thing in the wake of Sepang was never going to go down with the readership, and losing readership means losing money. So that was off the table instantly. Vinales represents a great opportunity for the media and fans, they have a "clean slate" with which to attach their horse to and to spin whatever pleasing tale needs to be spun in order to get Vinales in the hearts and minds of the majority of GP fans.
3) In this haste to christen Vinales as the next best thing, Marquez has simply turned into an afterthought. Here's a guy who is one of the truly greatest talents to ever grace the grid, and after winning 3 titles in 4 seasons, and making it 5 overall titles at an age younger than Rossi, he's been relegated to just kind of being there. Just say you swapped out Marquez's name for Rossi, and that was what Rossi's achievements since 2013 are...you wouldn't be able to turn on the TV during a grand prix weekend without hearing the commentators jerking off over it...and forget the media contingent. They would be sitting in the room during press conferences with tents in their pants. Again that goes back to Sepang 2015 and the media jumping ship on Marquez. You'd actually be hard-pressed to remember he just won a title in 2016, doing so on a very unfavorable bike. Yet...according to one enterprising poster here, the RCV was a great bike even though every report and rider assessment was the complete opposite. It's sad that his achievements, much like Lorenzo's are either disparaged, downplayed, or ignored in favor of someone with zero titles and 2 race wins.
Vinales is going to win plenty of races, and who knows how many titles now that Lorenzo took himself out of contention. I just want to see more of a body of work from him before anything is anointed, and really, given how Lorenzo dropped back on the Ducati, it should be more than apparent about how important it is to be on the M1. Sure you need the talent to get the results, and yes Vinales is more talented than Edwards or Spies ever were. You're assured of less issues on that bike than any other because Yamaha's overall philosophy never changes, and they stay focused on the balance of that bike. HRC and Ducati .... around too much with trying to build powerful engines that come at the expense of everything else with the bike.
