Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1398574
VOLUME 58 ISSUE 31 AUGUST 3, 2021 P133 been particularly brilliant this year. Most rising Italians are already in the clutches of Rossi's VR46 academy, and thus spoken for. That, or on the books of the Gresini team, where Fabio Di Giannantonio is set to join Enea Bastianini next year. KTM has a stranglehold on top rookies Raul Fernandez and Pedro Acosta, who is too young anyway, and an embarrassment of riches through their class-by-class rid- ers' ladder. Honda is nurturing home-grown talent Ai Ogura and Taka Nakagami, among others. Yamaha has no obvious can- didates, though Andrea Dovizio- so's of resuming MotoGP at Aprilia are likely to be scotched if Vinales joins the Italian squad. He'll be 36 next year, hardly on the radar for the satellite Petro- nas team's target to develop young riders. Another intriguing prospect: Cameron Beaubier, who rode a Yamaha to five increasingly dominant U.S. AMA Champion- ships, missing only one year be- tween 2015 and 2020, including the last three straight. Currently running a maiden Moto2 season with three top-10 finishes, he might be in the right place at the right time. Yamaha does have talent elsewhere, in the factory Super- bike team, where Garrett Gerloff has shown promise, and Toprak Razgatlioglu is a serious title challenger. Rather bafflingly, however, both sealed their Mo- toGP chances, perhaps forever, by signing up to stay with the production-based series. Or was the decisive moment in the Superbike race at Assen, where the mantra stating: "Your teammate's the first person you have to beat," turned into, "He's also the last person you have to knock down." Gerloff obviously hadn't read all the way to the bottom of that page, sending teammate Toprak into the scenery at the first cor- ner on Sunday. A long-lap pen- alty ensued, and an even more painful earful from his teammate and team chiefs back in the pit. Gerloff has form. This year alone he's pranged into not only Ducati's Rinaldi in Estoril but also Jonathan Rea in Aragon, with a significant effect on the championship. So, too, Sunday's crash, handing a hefty lead back to Rea after Toprak had drawn ahead at the previous round. Payback for Jonathan? Er, actually, Garrett, he's on the other team. Well, these things happen. As articulated by Barry Sheene after he'd knocked Agostini off way back in 1974. "Situations like that are all part of racing. If the position was reversed. I wouldn't blame Ago." Razgatlioglu might differ. In the same way, incidentally, as Sheene abandoned the creed, complaining bitterly when Graeme Crosby brought him down at Silverstone in 1981, later writing: "If Croz thinks I overre- acted, then I think he is under- brained." At least they weren't team- mates. Of which perhaps the worst example came in 2006, at the Catalunyan GP. Loris Capirossi arrived tied on points with eventual champion Nicky Hayden. He left on a stretcher, after his Ducati teammate Sete Gibernau had clobbered him while braking into the first corner, triggering a spectacular multi-bike crash and ending 125 and 250 Champion Capirossi's only real chance at a premier- class crown. CN Vinales has been oscillating wildly between hero and zero for race after race for a couple of years now, and last place in Germany (where weirdly he also set the fastest race lap of any Yamaha rider) was the final straw.