Monthly Archives: May 2024

Legendary status is acquired for many different reasons. In MotoGP™, Legends are crowned for world titles, Grand Prix wins and bravery. Perhaps that Legend title is too easily awarded these days in all walks of life and especially sport. That is definitely not the case with Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia Racing).

The 34-year-old Spaniard has won three Grands Prix and no world titles. He is a true and rightful legend of our sport for very different and rightful reasons. While the likes of Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini, Barry Sheene, Wayne Rainey, Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi, and Marc Marquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP™) tick all the correct legend boxes, Aleix comes from a very different place.

He is the true passionate warrior who never gave up in 20 years of Grand Prix racing. A rider who wore his heart on his sleeve both on and off the track. His passion and belief finally paid off but it was a long and tortuous journey.

No other rider in the 75-year history of the sport had to wait so long for that first GP win. After the 15-year-old made his Grand Prix debut in the 2004 125cc race in Valencia, Aleix competed in World Championship racing for another 17 years, 155 days before that first win finally arrived. On his 284^th appearance he finally did it at an emotional 2022 Argentinian GP.  It was such a special day for everybody. Aleix had waited so much longer than anybody to see the chequered flag. The previous longest wait belonged to Jack Findlay who only had to endure a mere 189 GPs. It was Aprilia’s first victory in the premier class and it really set the ball rolling for the Italian factory.

It was tortuous emotional journey. Aleix always gave maximum love and support to his younger brother. While Pol won the Moto2™ title and 15 Grands Prix, Aleix just soldiered on through every adversity, injury, and disappointment. He never gave up the fight. After winning the FIM CEV he began Grand Prix racing in the 125cc and 250cc classes. He finished fourth in the 2009 250cc Dutch TT and got his first taste of MotoGP™ the same season, as a rider replacement in the Pramac team. He remained in the team the next season but returned to the intermediate class, now Moto2™, in 2011. After taking his first podium he returned to MotoGP™ a year later where he became a CRT frontrunner. In 2014 he joined the Forward Yamaha team and grabbed his first MotoGP™ podium and pole position. The momentum was picking up. In 2016 he was awarded his first contract with Suzuki. Aleix brought the team their first pole since 2007 before moving onto Aprilia. In 2021 they celebrated their first podium together at Silverstone. A year later history was made in Argentina. Two more Grands Prix wins arrived at Silverstone and Barcelona last year where he also won the Tissot Sprint.

There could have been no more appropriate venue for Aleix to make his retirement announcement last week at Circuit de Barcelona–Catalunya with its giant grandstand within sight of his hometown of Granollers. An emotional farewell after 20 years with his beloved family and children, friends and rivals. Of course it was not the final goodbye. Typically, Aleix is determined to go out with a bang. Pole position, the Sprint win and fourth place in the Grand Prix was just a start. He finally calls it a day at Valencia in November and so plenty more racing, hopefully wins and passionate displays of riding in the most competitive motorsport World Championship. By the end of the season, Aleix should have ridden in more premier class Grands Prix than any other rider, apart from Valentino Rossi.

Next year the MotoGP™ grid without Aleix Espargaro will be a strange place, because this one-off passionate warrior is a true MotoGP™ legend.

In the 75-year history of World Championship motorcycle racing, there have been many diverse reasons why such vast crowds flocked to different venues. Whatever those vital reasons, one fact has stood above all others. The sheer excitement and quality of the racing out on the track has, and always will be, the biggest factor attracting the massive following. Circuit facilities, entertainment away from the racing, camping, ticket prices and even parking, all have played their part in recent years. Before then political divide and even history had a massive influence on the sheer size of some record-breaking attendances.

In 1952 an estimated crowd of around 300,000 packed the Solitude circuit for the very first West German Grand Prix. Nobody is sure just how many fans jammed the 11.4km circuit, just seven years after the end of the second World War. It was such a significant occasion for the West German people. At last, some World Championship sport on home soil following the war, and after being split into two with East Germany.

Nine years later, in 1961, the legendary Sachsenring road circuit staged the first East German Grand Prix. Like Solitude, massive crowds flocked to the tree-lined 8.3km track. Of course, they wanted to witness World Championship sport but it also provided them with a rare glance of freedom. For 12 years, the Grand Prix provided millions of ordinary people caught up in the Cold War and trapped behind the Iron Curtain some joy. In 1971, West German Dieter Braun won the 250cc race. The East German Stasi police were determined to stop the playing of the West German national anthem at the podium ceremony. They knew the 280,000 partisan East German crowd would go wild in protest against segregation. The infamous Stasi switched off the public address system apart from the area where the FIM officials were situated. Many of the vast crowd still celebrated despite the presence of police and dogs. It was such a poignant moment giving those fans the chance to protest at their plight

It was very much the same story at another road circuit, Brno in Czechoslovakia. Enormous crowds witnessed life from the other side of the Iron Curtain for three wonderful days of motorcycle racing.

Those divides have now disappeared, but tradition and history has never been forgotten. Enormous 150,000 plus crowds continued to flock to the Sachsenring and to Brno until it staged its last Grand Prix three years ago.

The record crowds in Portimao, Jerez and Le Mans already this year show just how hard everybody has worked to understand what the fans want. The quality of racing is guaranteed but the modern fan demands so much more. They are fun-loving, energetic and enjoy a weekend of entertainment at a decent price. Nowhere better illustrated all these principles than the rise of Le Mans from mediocrity. Giving the fans what they want, a former French MotoGP™ World Champion to support, plus some welcome sunshine, made those cold, dismal, unfriendly and soulless weekends at this legendary venue a distant memory.

So many reasons for big crowds but thankfully MotoGP™ has never lost its basic principle. First and foremost, you must provide the opportunity for teams and riders to compete at the very highest level of competition. Everything else surrounding the racing is vital to its success, but I do not think that 297,471 fans who flocked to Le Mans last weekend went home disappointed with what they had witnessed out on the track.

For 75 years and before, hundreds of thousands of partisan Grand Prix fanatics have flocked to their shrine in the north of Holland. The Van Drenthe circuit in Assen is rightly called the Cathedral of MotoGP™. Every June since 1949, apart from Covid, it has staged World Championship motorcycle racing. It is easy for the Spanish to travel to Jerez to support the likes of Marquez, Lorenzo and Pedrosa. There was nowhere better to go in the World of Motorsport when Valentino Rossi was competing and winning at Mugello. Every year the fans have supported the Dutch TT with passion and pride despite having so few Dutch riders to cheer. The lack of success by Dutch riders in the World Championship has never kept them away, but at Jerez on Sunday there were signs they could be rewarded for such loyalty.

Nineteen-year-old Collin Veijer won the superb Moto3™ battle with David Muñoz and Ivan Ortola by just 0.045s. The lanky Dutchman lies third in the Moto3™ World Championship behind Daniel Holgado and David Alonso. Last season Veijer set the wheels in motion with the first Dutch Grand Prix win for 33 years, when he was victorious in Malaysia, riding the Liqui Moly Intact Husqvarna. It was such a barren period from the last win by Hans Spaan in 1990 at the 125cc race at Brno in Czechoslovakia

You think that was a long gap. It was an incredible 50 years ago that a Dutch rider was crowned World Champion. The Dutch riders and teams loved the technical complications of preparing and riding multi-geared 50cc machines. Henk van Kessell won the 1974 50cc world title for Kreidler and that was that. Three years earlier Jan de Vries brought Holland and Kreidler their first world title. He won 14 Grands Prix and regained the title in 1973.

With solo classes so devoid of success, the patriotic Dutch fans turned their support to the sidecars. I saw exactly the same thing happen in England when we were going through a similar barren period. In England it was World Champion Steve Webster and in Holland the bearded Egbert Streuer and his passenger Bernie Schneiders became national heroes. They won 22 Grands Prix and three World titles.

Dutch riders have tasted success in the premier 500cc class but only with Grands Prix wins. Wil Hartog was one of the first Grand Prix riders to wear white leathers. You could not miss him with that bright red helmet. He won five 500cc Grands Prix for Suzuki including at Assen in 1977. Three years later Assen was my first assignment as a proper Grand Prix reporter. Jack Middelburg won the 500cc race and the atmosphere and celebrations have only been matched by Jerez and Mugello in recent times. Middelburg’s other win came in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. He was also involved in the horrific Barry Sheene practice crash at Silverstone in 1982. The only other Dutch 500cc winner was the likeable chain-smoking Boet van Dulmen, who won at Imatra in Finland in 1979.

Sidecars and 50cc solos have long disappeared from the World Championship scene. Dutch success went with them but Collin Veijer is on the verge of changing all that. Those Dutch fans have waited so long and he could be the rider to reward their loyalty, support, and patience.

It has been far too long a wait.