With the Sepang tests done and dusted everyone found themselves marvelling at the Gresini Ducati rider Enea Bastianini who ended the tests topping the timesheets and smashing the lap record.
We love new young riders breaking through to the MotoGP elite. Who doesn’t? Well a few riders actually…
So here’s our list of riders who may find their sphincter twitching with the results Bastianini delivered.
Jack Miller
Everyone loves Jack. He’s a comical rider who’s wacky on-track japes keep the English speaking commentators in constant hysterics. The only problem is that once the horseplay subterfuge has been pealed away you then have to actually perform or risk being an unemployed comedian.
Ducati are on the cusp of realising this.
2020 should have been Jack’s year – the win-monopolising Marc Marquez was banished to the Catalan district hospital in the opening race leaving it a free-for-all the other none-Marc-Marquez riders to finally win some races. Miller took this opportunity with both hands and fell off a lot.
2021 was even worse when his younger team-mate in his first year in the factory team comfortably outscored him.
None of this has escaped Ducati and with Jorge Martin lurking in the shadows along with Bastianini 2022 will be a nervous season for the Antipodean character.
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Fabio Quartararararo
World Champion Fabio Quartararararo should be riding high with confidence after claiming his first MotoGP title last season and putting himself at the very top of France’s ‘Brave list’ – a rather short list that currently only has his name on it.
But that’s not quite the case.
Testing highlighted that his Yamaha hasn’t made any particular steps forward with most engineers still being preoccupied with trying to scrape the remnants of residue from the fairings left by Rossi’s stickers over two seasons ago. This lack of progress has been amplified by seemingly significant gains been made by Ducati, Suzuki and Aprilia.
If this is all true then what the Frenchman really doesn’t want is a new upstart beating him and making him look old and slow which could easily get Fab’s clackervalve twitching.
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Luca Marini
If there’s one thing the Italian rider has been outstanding at all his career it’s having an outstanding brother. Marini, who shares a similar noodle-armed weathervane physique of his aforementioned brother, was teammates with Bastianini last season and really struggled to keep up with his teammate – especially in races. It seemed the famed ‘Rossi DNA’ may have skipped him leading to uncomfortable questions being asked about the time his mother met Bradley Smith’s father in the pitlane.
At the end of last season Marini’s team, SKY VR46 Avintia (also known as Futurama racing), decided they’d had enough and quit. Luckily Luca was instantly snapped up by the Mooney VR46 Racing Team who’s principle and owner had no biased whatsoever.
Fortunately second-choice Enea also found a ride. So for every time Bastianini impresses the world and Marini doesn’t questions will be asked about the young Italian’s race credentials instead of his family ties.
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Alex Marquez
And whilst we’re on the subject of under-achieving brothers….
Bastianini looks set to be very hot property very soon. Over the past two seasons the evil HRC team have come to realise that they have a pretty terrible bike with a pretty terrific rider on it. Or they did until his shoulder snapped off and his eye fell out again.
So to rice-paper over the udon-cracks Honda need a backup star rider. They thought that rider would be Marc 2.0 – i.e. his younger brother. Sadly Ralf Schumarquez hasn’t really achieved that aim – proudly displaying none of the speed of his brother combined with all of his crashing ability.
Honda may not have a decent MotoGP bike (or WSBK bike for that matter) but, thanks to selling millions of lawnmowers and terrible electric cars, they do have more bags of filthy cash than ex-employees in the Tokyo harbour.
Money talks. And it could easily talk to Bastianini enough for him to ditch his morals and long term bone health and instead be the next rider to fail on the factory Honda. If he does make the move then Alex would almost certainly be the one tossed back into the olive trees.
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Johann Zarco
Like Miller Johann Zarco’s poo-chute may be also tensing up. Should, for some reason, Miller retain his factory position at Ducati then the Bolognese based team will almost certainly bid an au-revoir to the croissant munching antics of Johann Zarco.
Worse still being Australian Miller by default has minimal dignity so, should Enea be fast-tracked to the factory team, would probably not be offended by being demoted back into the Primark Ducati again at the expense of Zarco. Either way he’s out on his beret with few opportunities likely.
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