The thrill remains evident in motorcycle racing

Motorcycle racing has been brought to a wider audience in recent years, thanks in no small part to Valentino Rossi’s exploits in the MotoGP series. But it remains essentially a minority interest, especially when you compare it to the global saturation coverage given to Formula One.

Of course there is no consensus on the issue, but plenty of people will tell you that F1 racing has fallen behind in providing the excitement and competition that its fans expect, whereas motorcycle races provide exactly those qualities, and more besides. Superior skill is more evident, overtaking is more prevalent, and big name racers have more personality. What follows is a personal examination of what has gone wrong in F1, and how motorbike racing has arrived to fill that gap. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, or skip ahead four paragraphs to get to the good bit.

Valentino Rossi, 2004 - photo by Elliot L Doering
Valentino Rossi in 2004 © Elliot L Doering

I first got caught up in F1 racing just over twenty years ago, and a lot has changed in the sport since those days. All the drivers have moved on, of course, even those who, like Alain Prost and Gerhard Berger, had become involved with running teams. But plenty of the names and places have stayed constant. Names such as Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, Renault, Minardi, Michelin, Honda, BMW and Cosworth were all there in the early-mid 1980s, and several circuits remain, some not too drastically modified in the intervening years. Think of Monte Carlo and Spa-Francorchamps.

But the Formula One grid has become a much more exclusive club, and even great names such as Lotus, Brabham, Tyrrell and Benetton are long gone, as are most of the smaller teams that aspired to the odd glory day - teams such as Ligier, Arrows, March and Dallara. Similarly, gone are the days when a team might regularly get into the top six with a customer Cosworth V8 engine, as opposed to with the financial weight of a huge manufacturer behind them. Domination by one make was not unheard of back then, and neither were team orders, or pushing the limits of the rule book; but somehow the range of technical innovation was greater, and drivers didn’t feel duty bound to the bland corporate line when interviewed.

For terrestrial television viewers, gone are the days of BBC coverage, with a fabulous theme tune, and no advertising breaks; and also the days of lively commentary by Murray Walker and James Hunt. Instead we have an excess of irrelevant and somewhat inane build up and ‘analysis’, we have commentators and presenters who don’t know the meaning of the word observant, and who can’t even pronounce half of the words they need to say (apply to me for a list...) amongst other faults. We have an irritating blast of retrogressive theme tune, and if you can think of fictional DJs trapped in the past you’ll know what I’m talking about. Add to that drivers who constantly give the same obvious non-insightful answers to the same obvious and uninteresting questions, and who talk of this entity ‘formaller one’, and you get the idea.

My interest in motorcycle racing started relatively recently, with the BBC’s coverage of the revitalised British Superbike championship, in 1996. At the time I had a vague recollection of some ’80s Grand Prix coverage, with Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer, Barry Sheene and Randy Mamola, but was almost entirely ignorant of the sport. Of course, BSB continued to grow stronger and more engaging, and then 2000 brought the first comprehensive terrestrial coverage of world championship competition - with both the 500cc Grand Prix and World Superbike series providing some fabulously competitive entertainment that season.

My interested was sparked, was held, and grew into full appreciation and enjoyment. These things fuelled my appetite to learn more about the sport, with some knowledge coming direct from the television coverage, but specialist books and magazines making up the larger part of a self-educating process that continues to this day. Much of the technical side eludes me, but this education as described still delights when it comes to understanding more about that vital combination of man and machine working together in the heat of competition.

The top motorcycle pilots race on the edge of adhesion, with a minimal contact patch of tyre on tarmac, and that patch - or a pair of them - moving around with the continual shift of the bike’s inclination. Riders constantly have to balance the angle of lean that allows their ideal cornering approach against the forces that would send the machine sliding or tumbling out from the direction of travel. Although the best competitors can slide the bike’s rear to aid their passage around the turn, not to mention the front, the margin for error is much smaller. Where a driver’s mistake might cause his car to spin, the forces acting on a motorcycle could just as easily result in the rider cartwheeling to serious injury.

Rapid changes of direction and lean, especially back and forth through a chicane, serve to throw these cornering forces in sharp opposition to the momentum of the machine and rider, as well as making for a thrilling spectacle of skill. Now think about doing that around a real road course such as that on the Isle of Man, where the hazards are un-sanitised, and comprise walls, hedges, trees, pavements and houses. Certainly it is dangerous, but so is motorsport in general, and the competitors understand the risks. Viewers appreciate the way they approach the limits in an effort to gain advantage over lesser rivals, whilst still remaining in control. The skill is in defying the odds.

So there you have it. Grand Prix cars are certainly impressive, but it strikes me that electronic and aerodynamic systems mean that there are now only subtle clues as to drivers’ different styles. The stopwatch is the most telling measure. More than that, the spark has gone out of the actual racing for me. Motorcycle racing is the thing for the modern era, and that is where I will divert the majority of my attention for a good time to come. Are you with me?