Talk about bringing your baggage with you. Ben Spies arrived one race early in MotoGP, and as a result will start next season with an enormous burden. Nor is it the one he had in a bundle on a stick over his shoulder when he left America, after three AMA Superbike championships. He long since shrugged that off. It was all put together over the course of a few days at Valencia in Spain.
Ben himself arrived in full humble mode. No big talk or crazy promises. He’d won World Superbikes at the first try, okay. But that was a different level. He was quite clear about that. Repetitively so: unused to all the attention of the Press he tried his hardest to please, and became the rider who took the “brief” out of “debrief”.
But he’d already redeemed himself in advance during the race, as the rider who took the “can’t” out “these 800s can’t overtake one another”. He’d qualified ninth but dropped to 11th in the early laps as he became accustomed to Bridgestone tyres he was using for the first time, on a bike he’d never ridden before. Once that was settled, he set about moving forward again. The list of people he overtook is mighty impressive, previous GP winners all of them: star class rookie Mika Kallio, Alex de Angelis, Randy de Puniet and finally the factory Honda of Andrea Dovizioso.
He’d been slightly apprehensive about the last one “in case I held him up”. He needn’t have worried.
The baggage? He’s loaded himself to the gills with expectations now. Could he be the next big thing? Could he be that big that he’ll do in MotoGP what he did in SBK? A first-shot championship is a feat achieved in the past only by his compatriot Kenny Roberts (senior).
Ben’s Pies (as he’s already known in some quarters of the paddock) has given himself a lot to live up to, before he’s even started.
Are MotoGP riders really “a different level” from those in World Superbike? Spies’s first-year progress will answer that question. Again. If he finishes fifth or lower, that will be proof enough. As has been shown already by SBK champs of the past, from Bayliss and Edwards to the hapless James Toseland.
But I fear another tsunami of misguided British passion – a repeat of Superbike mania, is on the way. As well as the return to Superbikes of Toseland after his MotoGP misadventure (not to mention English-speaking Chris Vermeulen, disillusioned by his Suzuki Grand Prix years), there’s a big crop of Poms on the SBK grids next year. And by jingo, it’s union-jack shorts and air-horns all round, if the Foggy years are anything to go by.
At the last count there were seven Britons on the grid, including some old-timers like Shakey Byrne, still-interesting nearly-men like Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea, and a couple of exciting prospects in 600 Supersport champ Cal Crutchlow and dominant BSB champ Leon Camier.
Pit Bull wishes them all well, of course. But what we need is not the next Carl Fogarty, nor yet the next Barry Sheene. How about the next Ben Spies?
Home-country GP fans will have to look elsewhere. And there are some bright boys in GPs, although languishing among the lower orders.
Both Bradley Smith and more especially the gangling Scott Redding (both GP winners) have outgrown 125s, but Smith will have to stay there another year anyway, for a crack at improving on second in the championship this year.
Redding, a talent to be fostered, is instead in the wilderness, after a duff year on a bike so dodgy that it once even broke in half while he was riding it (the swing-arm snapped). He’s one among many job-hunting on the Moto2 trail, and he deserves better.
Danny Webb, who remains pint-size and always will, is just right for 125s, and has another crack with potentially a better team next year.
Why are these good riders left on the outskirts? Because unlike Spanish and Italian riders, they can’t find any sponsorship. Apparently there’s no-one in Britain sufficiently interested.
And if you can’t bring money to a team nowadays, you have to be gigantically talented to get ahead.
Have you designed and built your Moto2 chassis yet? You must be about the only one who hasn’t. At the last count there were no less than 13 different bikes in the Moto2’R’Us shop window. Probably more by now.
And with a rack of standard engines by the door, being handed out one apiece by charity workers, it’s no wonder the listing is heavily over-subscribed.
