Deadly rivals on the track, of
course, but best of friends off it.
Really?
Risking their necks to beat
each other in a high-stakes life-
or-death sport?
Sorry, but the warm, fuzzy
atmosphere is as bogus as the
tears of the crocodile. Some
-
thing needs to be done to put the
champing
back in championship.
I don't blame Bagnaia, cur
-
rently vying to join the greats
with
a third straight title. He's a
wonderful rider and deserves ev-
erything he gets. He comes over,
both
on screen and in person, as
a genuinely nice guy. But is not
overly endowed with charisma.
He must have the killer in-
stinct, to do what he does. But it
doesn't
show.
He needs some tips from his
mentor, Valentino Rossi.
Vale was (is) the very personi-
fication of the smiling assassin.
Blessed with a
powerful level of
charm, everybody liked him so
much that when he turned his
withering scorn on any impu-
dent rivals, pretty much every-
one automatically took his side.
His
treatment of Max Biaggi
for one, looked at dispassion
-
ately, was a form of bullying.
W
hat's wrong with Mo-
toGP? Well, quite a few
things actually (and, to
be fair, quite a few things are
also right, in a minor golden
age). But the salient point is
personal.
Everyone is much too nice to
one another.
I'm talking about the riders
here. Those larger-than-life
figures that Dorna's PR machine
presents to us on various elec
-
tronic media and wheel around
on
trailers early on race morn-
ings, where they wave dutifully
at mainly empty
grandstands
and grateful early-start corner
workers. All while giving agree
-
able, vanilla interviews.
Lovely
bunch of chaps.
P136
CN II IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
The greatest grudge
matches in the
past have come
between teammates.
MOTOGP NEEDS
ANOTHER SMILING
ASSASSIN
