MotoGP

For 2013, the MotoGP grid that has become dull and insipid to the point of being nearly unbearable will get an infusion of excitement that could only be provided by someone like Marc Marquez, who seemingly has as little regard for his body as he does for his racing leathers.

And thank goodness for that. It would be good enough just to see a new face on a factory team, but that that face belongs to a guy like Marquez makes it even better.

Aside form Marquez replacing Casey Stoner in the Repsol Honda garage and Ben Spies' move to a satellite Ducati, the same riders who held all the factory bikes in 2012 will hold them again in 2013, though some of them will be on different teams.

Valentino Rossi has reclaimed his Yamaha M1, this time—and for the first time in his illustrious career—as the clear No. 2 rider behind reigning champion Jorge Lorenzo.

Andrea Dovizioso moves from the satellite Yamaha Tech 3 team to take Rossi's place on the factory Ducati team.

Ben Spies, after his disastrous season aboard the M1, moves to the satellite Pramac Ducati team. He will be on the Desmosedici that even Rossi could not tame, but with new owners Audi in charge, the fortunes of Desmo pilots may soon change.

All of them are great riders, but Rossi's riding style is the only interesting one of the group. Perhaps it is unfair to want motorcycle racers to be both fast and capricious, but it certainly makes for a more entertaining spectacle if they can pull it off.

Lorenzo, once known as a prolific crasher, is now as precise as a surgeon. For my fellow children of the 80s, he can be accurately likened to "Iceman" from the movie Top Gun. He churns out lap after lap of perfect riding, waiting for any riders fortunate enough to be in front of him to make a mistake so he can fly past, seemingly without breaking a sweat.

He is great but rarely exciting to watch.

In 2012, Repsol Honda's Dani Pedrosa exhibited a newfound willingness to fight back when challenged. If he can maintain and even improve on that tenacity through 2013 he will move himself into Rossi and Marquez's group of exciting riders, but we have not seen it consistently enough to count on it yet. 

Ducati's Dovizioso is a demon on the brakes but seems reluctant to fight back when things are on the verge of getting chippy. Teammate Nicky Hayden is solid but unspectacular in every way.

So, of the six factory riders, only Rossi can be counted on to provide exciting racing.

It wasn't always this way.

As recently as two seasons ago, a guy by the name of Marco Simoncelli brought that necessary element of unpredictability to MotoGP races. That kind of riding makes few friends, and Simoncelli didn't have many in the paddock, but he did have a whole lot of people that looked forward to watching him race on Sundays.

Tragically, Simoncelli died in a crash at Malaysian Grand Prix on October 23, 2011. The cause of the crash was purely bad luck. His bike lost traction while he was going through a right-hand turn, and in an effort to save it he held on instead of letting it slide away from him and off of the track—his body sandwiched between the sliding bike and the pavement. The tires regained traction but Simoncelli could not get back on top of the bike, and his weight hanging off of its right side caused it to veer back across the race track and into the path of the oncoming riders.

His riding style had nothing to do with this wholly inauspicious situation.

Then, roughly a year later, we found out MotoGP would lose another of its prolifically entertaining riders when Casey Stoner announced he would retire at the end of the 2012 season.

To contrast Stoner's and Simoncelli's riding styles is a study in opposite methods to achieve the same end: winning races in an entertaining fashion.

Whereas Simoncelli was high-risk with almost every overtaking maneuver he attempted, Stoner was calculated but aggressive. He would back off if he felt a move was too dangerous, but if it was borderline, he was going through. Casey Stoner was a pitbull who tried to remain fair-minded. Also, his propensity to intentionally break traction with the rear tire and then use it to steer his bike around corners was a thing of beauty every time he did it.

With Simoncelli and Stoner gone, MotoGP was in desperate need of someone to fill that void, to bring some aggressiveness.

Enter Marc Marquez.

Any confrontational rider is going to get criticism from those he has rubbed the wrong way and overly conservative race fans, but what they do is essential to keeping the sport in a healthy state of existence.

Will Marc Marquez pose a danger to other riders? Sure. But so does everyone else on the track. Will the nature of his actions be so egregious as to warrant the kind of backlash he is sure to receive from some race fans and even some of his fellow racers? At times, maybe. But that is the growing process that a young aggressive rider must go through. As he matures, he will learn the difference between acceptable risk and recklessness.

We don't watch races to see a procession of motorcycles. We watch them to see brilliant racing—the full gamut, from the smoothness of Lorenzo to the audaciousness of riders like Marquez and everything in between. To be lacking any aspect would make for an incomplete racing experience.  

Marc Marquez is just what MotoGP needs.

MotoGP's proposed rule changes for 2014 have laid the groundwork to fix the most glaring deficiency of the sport—uncompetitive, boring races. Nothing is official yet, but getting to this point was not easy and at one point looked implausible.

The two sides of the issue are represented by Dorna—MotoGP's parent company—and the MSMA, or Motorcycle Sport Manufacturers Association—a consortium of the motorcycle manufacturers competing in MotoGP, charged with looking after their own interests in the sport.

Dorna, led by Carmelo Ezpeleta, wanted to accomplish two things with the rule changes. Ezpeleta's first and foremost desire was to make the races more competitive. During the 2012 season there were never any more than four bikes that had a realistic chance of winning, and, because of injuries and plain old bad luck, the number more often than not was lower than that.

Secondly, he wanted to corral the ever-upward spiraling costs for teams to compete, which directly plays into the lack of competitiveness seen on the track. Two of the Big Five manufacturers—first Kawasaki, then Suzuki—have dropped out in the last four years because of financial concerns.

His proposals were drastic and consisted of two key elements: instituting a rev limit of 15,500 RPM on the engines to increase their longevity and thereby reduce costs and the mandated use of a spec ECU, or electronic control unit.

Neither of these proposals ever had a chance of being ratified by the MSMA.

When the heads of HRC—Honda's racing arm—Ducati Corse and Yamaha Racing go before their respective company's board and have to justify the tens of millions of dollars they are using to compete in MotoGP, they have two supporting points.

One is brand recognition. If people see their bikes winning races they will be more likely to buy them.

The second, and most important, is the research and development opportunities presented by competing in a prototype racing series. The company's best and brightest engineers work with the racing team in the kind of fast-paced, pressure-packed environment that often breeds engineering brilliance that will eventually trickle down to their production bikes and increase sales.

As of late, R&D has been focused largely on electronics. Technology like traction control, which was conceived as a means to go faster on a racetrack, also has a valuable, safety-enhancing, real world application. Not to mention electronic steering dampening, launch control, wheelie control, power delivery modes, etc.

The MSMA was not going to approve any rule changes that would restrict their ability to develop their own electronics and consequently make it more likely that their bosses would pull the plug on the whole racing experiment. Why spend all of these millions of dollars to race in MotoGP when they would have to do their electronics research on their own test tracks or in another racing series anyway?

Ezpeleta threatened to impose his will no matter what the MSMA said or did. Honda countered with a threat of their own to pull out of MotoGP altogether, which would have been a devastating blow from which the series may never have recovered.

A compromise was needed.

As so often proves to be the case when pre-negotiation posturing devolves into increasingly dramatic threats, rationality prevailed, and an acceptable compromise was reached.

Ezpeleta got his mandatory ECU and datalogger, but the MSMA retained their ability to use their own software within the compulsory hardware, meaning non-factory teams will not have to spend the asinine amount of money required to develop their own units or buy them from the factories, and the MSMA gets to continue its R&D in electronics.

This, in effect, will be the new class division in MotoGP. In an effort to level the playing field, both sides agreed that because MSMA teams are using their own (vastly superior) software in the ECUs they will have their fuel limit reduced from 21 to 20 liters, while non-MSMA teams that use the spec software will get 24 liters. The MSMA requested this lowering of the fuel allowance to give themselves an engineering challenge.

Also, MSMA teams will see engine allowance reduced from six to five, while non-MSMA teams will be allowed 12 engines, and new or returning MSMA members will be allowed nine engines in their first year.

Lastly, all engines to be used in a season will be frozen (figuratively). This will prevent the MSMA teams from gaining an advantage by implementing any developmental changes their experiences from the season's events to date may have inspired. 

All of these changes are contingent upon the ongoing negotiations between Dorna and the MSMA to work out the details of an agreement to have the MSMA provide engines, technical support and even complete machines to non-MSMA teams.

If the negotiations are successful, this last bit will be the best part of the whole deal. Gone will be the woefully overmatched production derived CRT machines, replaced by genuine prototype powerplants from the major manufacturers or even full machines. The deadline for the agreement is the first race of the 2013 season. Fingers crossed in the meantime. 

This agreement will create the levelest playing field MotoGP has seen in a long time. The MSMA get to continue developing their electronics but with handicaps for doing so while at the same time filling out the grid with machines worthy of the series.

With Mark Marquez in the Repsol Honda garage, Valentino Rossi returning to a competitive bike with Yamaha, Ben Spies having absolutely no pressure on his shoulders, Dani Pedrosa's improved performance and Stefan Bradl and Cal Crutchlow's continued development, 2013 already holds promise to be a much better spectacle than 2012.

Take all of those aspects and then add in the rule changes for 2014, and it will be the dawning of a new, glorious era in Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

Jorge Lorenzo is once again the world champion of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

Dani Pedrosa came to Australia for the penultimate round of the 2012 MotoGP season only 23 points—less than the 25 points awarded to a race winner—behind Lorenzo in the championship standings.

For the championship to come down to the final round would take a mistake from Lorenzo.

Instead, it was Pedrosa who faltered.

After Australian Casey Stoner announced he would retire at the end of the season and then again when he broke his ankle in a horrific high-side crash at Indianapolis, everyone circled the Phillip Island round on their calendars.

Stoner had won his home GP for the last five years in succession, and there would be no better swan song for him than if he were able to do it for a sixth and final time.

Dani Pedrosa knew this and knew that Stoner would be charging hard from behind him after he took the lead from Lorenzo on the first lap of the race.

Phillip Island is a predominantly left-hand circuit with only four right-handers throughout its sinuous length.

As such, the bikes spend so little time on the right sides of the tires that when they do go into a right-hander, especially early in the race, the right side of the tires can be so cold that they can break free and send a rider down.

That is exactly what happened to Dani Pedrosa—exacerbated by the intense pursuit of Casey Stoner, which caused him to carry too much speed into the fateful hairpin corner. The front end tucked away from him mid-corner, sending him and his bike spinning down to the pavement and with them his championship hopes for 2012.

In the end, Stoner thrilled the Aussie fans by taking the checkered flag, putting an exclamation point on a weekend he dominated from the start of the first practice session through to the end of the race.

Cal Crutchlow rounded out the podium with his second third-place finish this year. He rode brilliantly, finishing 10 seconds ahead of teammate and fourth-place finisher Andrea Dovizioso.

But Jorge Lorenzo was the man of the hour. For the second time in three years, he is the world champion.

Jorge Lorenzo was scared.

The rain had been pouring down all day, and it didn't stop when the red lights went out and 19 of the fastest motorcycles in the world headed down the saturated track, some of them nearly losing control before they ever really got going.

It is kind of funny to watch these guys ride in the monsoon-like conditions they faced in Malaysia.

We are used to seeing them riding on the limits of their bikes' and their bodies' performance potential, with knee pucks scraping across the pavement at over 100 miles-per-hour.

In a torrential downpour like the one that hit Sepang, they still stick their knees out but only from habit, as they rarely get close to the ground. These are the best motorcycle racers in the world, and to see them look like a bunch of 'noobs'—even if it is in conditions that would take the rest of us down before we ever got the clutch out—reminds us that they are in fact human.

Even in rainy conditions, tire choices are critical.

All of the prototype riders chose to go with the harder option tire on both the front and the rear, except for Jorge Lorenzo, who chose the softer rear option.

As a result, Lorenzo got off to a great start and assumed the lead, but the tropical temperatures of Malaysia soon wore down the center of his rear tire, leaving him at a distinct disadvantage against the rapidly closing Repsol Honda of Dani Pedrosa.

Pedrosa made his move with nine laps to go in the twenty-lap race and made it past Lorenzo on the inside of a left-hander.

The courageousness Pedrosa showed by executing an overtaking maneuver in those incredibly treacherous conditions can not be overstated.

Dani Pedrosa earned some new fans this weekend. 

Lorenzo would have been perfectly happy, as he has been for the last three rounds, to accept second place and minimize the damage to his championship aspirations.

But then calamity threatened.

Casey Stoner, who was riding in third, began shaving full seconds off of Lorenzo's lead. In only one lap—the 13th of the race—Lorenzo's lead over Stoner shrank from 3.3 seconds to 1.9.

It was this lap—the one in which Lorenzo was aware of Stoner coming up behind him—that Jorge Lorenzo decided to hold up his hand, not once but twice, in an attempt to signal to Race Direction that the conditions were becoming too dangerous to continue.

It was only after he held up his hand for the second time that he had the near-crash you see in the video.

Was it concern for everyone's safety that prompted the hand to come up?

Or was it rather a concern for his own championship aspirations?

Call me cynical, but with the way he has been riding more to not lose the championship than to win it, I have to think the latter.

He was the only one on the track trying to signal Race Direction. In fact, Repsol Honda teammates Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner said they thought the race could have gone another lap or two.

Lorenzo got his wish as the red flags came out a few turns after he held up his hand for the final time.

He secured his second-place finish after Race Direction determined that the race could not be restarted due to the relentless rain.

Afterwards, Lorenzo all but admitted it:

I was riding and trying to push the hand up to say to the marshals and Race Direction that the track was very difficult. But the race doesn't stop for two laps so I was very worried because Casey was coming very fast. In only one lap he recovers three or four seconds so I knew if the race wasn't over he will overtake me because I didn't have rear tire, no? I used the soft one. I just dropped my middle point of the tire so they have the advantage and I couldn't fight with them.

The gap between Lorenzo and Pedrosa in the overall championship standings is down to 23 points, which means if Lorenzo crashes out of the next race and Pedrosa wins it, Pedrosa will be the championship leader with only one round remaining.

A less-than enthralling season could come down to the final race after all.

Before the season started, all of us who follow MotoGP knew that either Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo or Dani Pedrosa would probably win every race and whichever two didn't win would likely occupy the other spots on the podium.

Sure, there were those of us who held out hope that Ducati would fix their notoriously temperamental Desmosedici, giving Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden a legitimate chance to consistently fight for the podium. But alas, that was not to be, at least not yet.

Likewise, many of us hoped to see Ben Spies take the next step in his Grand Prix career and start stringing together victories but, due in large part to an incredibly cruel run of bad luck, he has yet to stand on a podium this year.

Still, even if Spies, Rossi and Hayden spend the majority of the season mired in the middle (or back) of the pack, Stoner, Lorenzo and Pedrosa should provide entertaining racing at the front of it, right?

Not really.

Only two of the 14 races so far have seen the winner be in doubt until the last couple of corners: Sachsenring in Germany and Brno in the Czech Republic. The other 12 races have provided little in the way of drama, at least as it pertains to the winner.

Holding little hope of competing with the factory Yamaha and Honda teams, Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso of the satellite Yamaha Tech 3 team have been battling each other to be the next one in line. One of them is seemingly always right behind the other. In fact, they have finished one behind the other in half of the races, separated by three-tenths of a second or less in three of them and providing some of the best racing of the season along the way.

Andrea Dovizioso came into the season with something to prove after being let go by the factory Repsol Honda team which already had Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa under contract. The competitive fire Honda's rejection ignited has helped him achieve six podium finishes so far this year, a result not many would have been bold enough to predict before the season started. His impressive performance has earned him Valentino Rossi's factory Ducati when Rossi departs for Yamaha next year.

Now in his second season in MotoGP, Cal Crutchlow looks comfortable on his prototype machine and is showing everyone just what he is capable of. In Brno he became the first British rider to take a podium position in the premier-class of MotoGP in 12 years. He crashed out of the race in the next round at Misano but then just missed out on another podium by a single tenth-of-a-second to (guess who?) Dovizioso in Aragon.

With Valentino Rossi going back to a competitive machine, Stefan Bradl having a year's premier-class experience under his belt and Moto2 phenom Mark Marquez taking Casey Stoner's spot on the Repsol Honda team, next season holds a lot of promise to be more competitive. Until then, If you get bored watching Jorge Lorenzo doing everything he can to avoid crashing as opposed to winning races just look down the track a bit until you see the black and green of a Tech 3 bike. It's sure to get engaged in some fun stuff sooner or later.

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Everyone involved in the world of racing needs to do some serious thinking.

After the tragic death of 24-year-old Marco Simoncelli in a MotoGP crash in Malaysia, changes need to be made.

I know the danger of racing MotoGP or Indy is part of the appeal, but this is getting out of hand.

The IndyCar world is still in shock over the death of Dan Wheldon, and last year, Japanese teenager Shoya Tomizawa died after crashing in a Moto2 race at San Marino. That was the first death since the circuit opened in 1999.

With two in one year, clearly something needs to be altered. Yet Sepang circuit chairman Mokhzani Mahathir claims this was just another fluke occurrence:

"We had our standard operating procedure...this is one-of-a-kind freak incident where the helmet came off and I am sure (motorcycling body) FIM and MotoGP will be looking into this."

The reason of Simoncelli’s death was due to the heavy traffic that was currently on the track. He leaned into a turn just a tad too hard and didn’t have any space to fall. There were too many bikes in the vicinity, and Simoncelli ended up paying the ultimate price.

While it wasn’t as congested as the Indy Series at Las Vegas, there were still too many bikes on the course. Maybe some more precautions when it comes to maintaining the track need to be in order.

Regardless of what they end up doing, they need to be more forward thinking in their adjustments. They need to stop letting tragedies like this one take place before making some sort of change. Two deaths in two years isn’t a fluke.

Being proactive may not have saved Simoncelli on Sunday, but it can save somebody else.

Let’s hope officials take a long look at this incident and figure out how we can make the sport safer.

Just one week after the death of Dan Wheldon in an Indy car race, Italian motorcyclist Marco Simoncelli died in a horrific wreck in the Malaysian MotoGP.

While the two racing series are obviously very different, two deaths in such close proximity bring up the question of whether motorsports are sufficiently safe. There are obviously certain risks involved when becoming a racer, but every measure possible should be taken to protect the drivers.

NASCAR went to great lengths to improve driver safety following the death of Dale Earnhardt in the Daytona 500 in 2001. Use of the HANS device was made mandatory following his death and it could very well have prevented serious skull and neck injuries since its institution, although we'll never know for sure.

In addition to that, NASCAR drivers also have the benefit of a much larger car that protects them pretty sufficiently. IRL cars, on the other hand, are open wheel and leave the drivers susceptible to injuries, as do motorcycles as Simoncelli fell off the motorcycle during his fatal crash.

It is difficult to say what more can be done, particularly in an inherently dangerous sport like motorcycle racing, but there have to be furthered safety devices that can be created or implemented to prevent another grisly wreck like the one that Simoncelli was involved in.

I do think that the deaths of Wheldon and Simoncelli were coincidental, but if nothing else it should give the racing world an excuse to look further into safety precautions. NASCAR should be commended for taking extreme measures to protect the drivers even if some resisted the extra protection.

The rest of the racing world, particularly IRL and MotoGP, need to approach safety with the same urgency that NASCAR did. There is no guarantee that either series will be as successful since it is almost like comparing apples to oranges, but it is very clear that something needs to change.