Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOL. 54 ISSUE 42 OCTOBER 24, 2017 P135 have put a premium on thinking power. Clearly, much of that devolves upon the engineers, design- ers and electronics techies, who nowadays have to be much more—not exactly clever, but certainly more elaborately educated than the inspirational designers of the past who might sketch out a new frame design in chalk on the workshop floor (as the respected Dutch designer of the 1970s, Nico Bakker, once explained to me). But there's more, and this has in turn thrown more of the men- tal burden onto the rider. It is the name on the side of the control tires. Back after seven years, Michelin found they had a great deal of relearning to do. And while it might be a cheap shot to refer to their tire performance as "rubber roulette," it's not far from the truth. More kindly, perhaps, it is a work in progress. The tires behave differently not just at every track, but with every change of temperature. Practice and qualifying now need to be devoted much less to tuning the suspension and working on alternative corner lines, and even lap times. The most important quest is to research thoroughly so as to achieve a precise understand- ing of the subtleties of the three tire compounds available, which together add up to nine possible combinations of front and rear. Chosen from a range in which (as a befuddled Vinales recently exclaimed) "the 'soft' tire works better at high temperatures than the 'hard'." Thus it should be no surprise that the man posing the great- est challenge to the sublimely talented Marc Marquez should be the most thoughtful and (yes) overtly intelligent of riders, An- drea Dovizioso. Dovi is and has long been both analytical and articulate. And adept at playing the per- centages—if that's what you call riding carefully, seldom falling because you seldom adventure beyond the limits, and as a con- sequence (at least until this year) winning only twice in eight years and 160 MotoGP starts. Since then, of course, he's added another five wins in just 15 starts. The crash stats tell the story. During the whole of last year, Dovi fell six times. Two of those were when he was knocked down by someone else—Iannone in Argentina, Pedrosa in Texas. So call it four. During the same time pe- riod, Marquez had 17 crashes (Crutchlow 26). This year, much the same. Marquez's total is 23 and counting. Dovi's just four. These numbers are not to be related to a rider's IQ, but to his approach. What Dovi calls "my mentality." Dovi is not the only obviously clever rider. There are quite a few who are both analytical and articulate: Bradley Smith nota- bly so. And obviously Marquez, though clearly his mentality is greatly different from Dovi's. Ducati's analytical software is also clearly a significant factor, but Lorenzo is another analytical and deep-thinking rider, and he hasn't put it together as well as his teammate. But the results, and on the eve of the Australian GP also the rider, reveal a subtle difference. Talking about the black and white horses on each side of his helmet, Dovi explained one represented the irrational (or un- conscious) mind, the other the rational mind. The change this year, he continued, was that he had allowed his irrational mind to have more influence during races. Sports in general require a good unconscious mind, which doesn't necessarily go with a high IQ. Take golf (or so I'm told). The swing needs to be automatic. As soon as you start thinking about it too much, it tends to go wrong. Bike racing's different. "You think about a lot of things all the time you are riding," said Mar- quez after his narrow defeat at Motegi. That day, Dovizioso clearly thought about them better. CN