T
he first person to beat is
your teammate. It's a cli-
ché, but (like most clichés)
deeply true.
Rivals will have machines with
different characteristics. Nothing
you can do about that. But your
teammate's on exactly the same
bike. No excuses.
Wriggle room, to use another
cliché, comes in the way you in-
terpret the word "beat." At World
Championship-level, for the most
successful, there's no room for
kindness.
"Beating" means a great deal
more than just reaching the
checkered flag first.
In some cases, there is no
doubt as to which of the pit-shar-
ers is the senior. In such cases,
if each accepts his role, it might
even be possible to be friends.
Usually, given the competitive
nature of anyone who gets to
this level of racing, it's not like
that. Towering self-belief goes
hand in hand with a pathological
drive to prove it. And then the
rules are simple.
Your teammate must be
mentally pulverized. Humiliated,
ignored, embarrassed, belittled,
sidelined—and exposed as hav-
ing feet of clay.
It can be done in a variety of
ways. False friendship followed
by betrayal is one favored route.
Backstabbing another. Anything
that works.
Properly accomplished,
he'll be beaten before the race
begins.
And a true master of the art
has by then made sure that his
bike, while nominally the same,
is several steps better.
Only when your teammate is
no longer a threat can peace
and harmony break out. On the
surface, anyway.
Racing history is rich in riders
justifiably nicknamed "the team-
mate from hell."
Few more pungently than
those bastions of British fair play,
Phil Read and Barry Sheene.
Seven-times champion Read
tricked his factory Yamaha team-
mate Bill Ivy out of the 1968 125
Championship so cynically that
many blamed Ivy's fatal crash in
P118
CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
Now it is Pol
Espargaro's turn
to find himself
subtly elbowed in
the gut at every
opportunity by
Marquez.
THE
TEAMMATES
FROM HELL
