personal, via the book's Top 10.
A chance to display my own
prejudice, boost riders I admire,
and let the others slip down the
order. Which, in most cases, is
rather hard because it's impos-
sible not to respect anyone who
can achieve
success in grand
prix racing, whether they have
an attractive personality or not.
So here goes. It's not written
in stone. But it is inscribed in
a massive tome described by
some as the bible of motorcycle
racing.
1 – PECCO BAGNAIA
Analytical and stylish, he came
in looking strong and com-
posed. Hardly ever out of the
top
three, seven poles were the
most of anybody. Occasional
race crashes—including getting
run over in Catalunya—were
scotched by his brave return a
week later to two Misano podi-
ums. Says it all: Deserved his
second
title.
2 – JORGE MARTIN
The compact, intense Spaniard
had a point to prove to Ducati,
who passed him over in favor of
Bastianini. On an equal factory
bike, anyway, he was explosively
fast. Nine Sprints and four race
wins. He hunted Bagnaia down
to the bitter end.
F
or the last column of the
year, I was going to write
about MotoGP's 75th birth-
day and how it passed almost
uncelebrated.
Then I thought,
heck, it wasn't celebrated be-
cause nobody cares. Racing's
here and
now is enough for the
Insta-post age, with its goldfish-
shaming attention span.
So please let me look back
just once, no further than the
past 12 months, before it's all
about 2024's (yet again) lon-
gest-ever calendar.
My
yearly task as editor of the
annual Motocourse is to express
some opinion, possibly com-
pletely shallow and certainly
P180
CN II IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
OF THE BEST
10
