2005 Moto GP Year in Review

[G.Irish]

Welp the season is now over and Rossi has once again been crowned king of grand prix motorcycle racing. Since the word go it hasn't even really be close, with Rossi winning 11 out of 17 rounds. However, he was not able to equal Mick Doohan's record of 12 wins in a season (and they had less races back then to boot).

Here's the finishing order:

Rider's Championship
1. Valentino Rossi
2. Marco Melandri
3. Nicky Hayden
4. Colin Edwards
5. Max Biaggi
6. Loris Capirossi
7. Sete Gibernau
8. Alex Barros
9. Carlos Checa
10. Shinya Nakano

Manufacturer's Championship
1. Yamaha
2. Honda
3. Ducati
4. Kawasaki
5. Suzuki
6. Blata
7. Proton KR
8. Moriwaki

So we're left with some big winners and big losers.

WINNERS
Rossi
What can you say? After stuffing Sete in the season opener (a move nobody particularly approved of) Rossi never really looked back. This season many of his races consisted of Rossi either leading the whole race or skulking about in the lead group until the last few laps then effortlessly pulling away to victory.

The Yamaha M1 seems to be a significantly improved back this season, yet it only seems to have improved in the hands of Rossi.

Marco Melandri
In his first season on a satelitte Honda the young Italian rose up to take second place in the championship while taking two wins in the latter half of the season. It was extra special to see Melandri do so well after struggling on a satelitte Yamaha ever since he came to GP. Furthermore, his crew was able to claim their first victories since the death of Daijiro Katoh from Marco.

Now Marco is poised to be lead the Honda charge next season to dethrone Rossi.

Nicky Hayden
At the beginning of the season many people were beginning to question Nicky's right to be in Moto GP, much less on a factory Honda. Many said that he only got his seat because he is American, and that there were other deserving riders who should have been under Repsol colors.

During the first half of the season Nicky only did so, so; often times jumping out to a good start only to fall back at the end after having used up his tires with his high slip-angle style. But as the season went on he steadily improved and when Moto GP came back to America for the first time in 11 years, Nicky took the opportunity to win his first ever Moto GP race.

Since then he has been more consistently finished near the front and closed the season with 4 consecutive podiums and consolidated 3rd in the riders championship.

LOSERS
Sete Gibernau
Rossi's prophecy that "Sete will never win another race" last season certainly must have haunted him because after coming off a relatively successful 2004 season with 4 victories and taking second place, he recorded zero victories and finished in 7th place in 2005.

While some of Sete's woes were bad luck (2 mechanical failures) his poor results were largely because of him crashing out of the lead. Somehow Sete just didn't have it together mentally this year.

Next season Sete will ride for Ducati Marlboro in the hope that he can leave 2005 behind.

Max Biaggi
Max also had a tough season, finishing in 5th and not recording any victories while aboard the Repsol Honda. All season Max was complaining about front end chatter but ultimately many began to question his skills when Nicky started to have success with the very same bike.

Of course Max, being the whiny asshole that he is, publicly criticized Honda and blamed his poor results on the bike. Towards the end of the season he (in)famously claimed that there was a HRC conspiracy to sabotage his bike.

Naturally HRC doesn't take kindly to being bashed in public by its employees. Then there's the small question of Max's general rudeness, and the little pit lane incident where Max's uncle choked Melandri after an on track incident between the two of them (uncle was subsequently banned from the paddock).

For 2006 HRC has made it no secret that they don't want Max on any of their bikes. More on that later.

Colin Edwards
4th place in the championship is not bad by most measures. But for Colin Edwards it is a sore dissapointment. In 2004 he complained about being low in the HRC pecking order for bike updates and in 2005 he skipped for the factory Yamaha, thinking that he would then be able to contend for the championship.

Welp, in 2005 he finished only one spot higher in the championship with the factory Yamaha. Its a bitter pill to swallow, but Colin got exactly what he wanted and failed to deliver.

Still 4th place is not bad considering the company he's in. Colin still has his ride for 2006 and thus a chance to redeem himself.

Next post: Highlights

[G.Irish]

HIGHLIGHTS

Nicky's Maiden Victory


No one could have wrote a better script for the first United States Grand Prix in 11 years. I'm glad I decided to pony up the dough and go because it was easily the best motorsports moment I've ever seen in person.

It couldn't have come at a better time for Nicky because a lot of his detractors and critics were growing louder, saying he didn't deserve to be on the Honda factory team. But from there on out Nicky steadily improved his results and proved without a doubt that he belongs where he is.

Rossi's Ride in the Wet at Donington



Note: There is an awesome pic of Rossi saving a highside, but I haven't been able to find it. If you see it, post it here.

This race was definitely the soggiest of the season and the entire weekend saw the most recorded crashes in GP history.

Soon after the start and several crashes from front runners like Hayden, Biaggi, and Gibernau; a small group broke away from the pack. Rossi led for a little bit, then relinquished the lead to Hopper for awhile, but Hopper ended up laying it down.

Rossi, Barros, and Roberts Jr. were racing around in a fairly tight pack spread by 1.5 seconds (overall) when in the last few laps Rossi simply decided that he was going to check out and pulled out a 3 second lead in what i believe was 3 laps. I'll have to watch the motogp.com replay again but it was definitely his most masterful performance of the year.

Marco Melandri's First Win



Marco Melandri was a strong contender back when he was racing 250cc although he never won a championship, having been overshadowed by the late Daijiro Katoh (whose slot Melandri is riding in now). Marco had 2 tough seasons riding a satelitte Yamaha M1 where he was never able to realize any good results.

This season on the Honda Marco was the most consistent performer all year long besides Rossi. At Moto GP's first visit to Turkey, Marco basically led from flag to flag to seize his first victory, and the first victory of his crew who had faced the tragedy of Daijiro's death in 2003.

It was also great for Marco to snatch a victory from Rossi, after Rossi took him out in Motegi, leaving him with an injury to his ankle. With that win, and the follow up win in Valencia, Marco cemented himself as one of the new challengers to the throne.

[G.Irish]

Next post: Silly Season 2006

[G.Irish]

All but a few teams are set for 2006. Teams have already completed their first winter test session at Valencia last week where several young guns rode GP bikes for the first time. More on that later.

Yamaha
Starting with the reigning champs, things stay pretty much the same except that the Yamaha squad now has a bit of a sponsorship dilemma. Rossi has stated that he will not ride under a tobacco sponsor (Gauloises) for another season. That's fine, Yamaha can always put him on a one man team. The problem is, that Gauloises is paying to be associated with Rossi so they are understandably pissed about this and may end up suing Yamaha over it. Right now, nobody really knows how this one is gonna go.

Repsol Honda & Telefonica Movistar Honda (Gresini)
The factory Honda team had a bit of a sponsor spat as well. Dani Pedrosa, the 2-time reigning 250 GP champ, has been sponsored by Telefonica Movistar while he's been riding in 250 GP thus far. So, Telefonica was counting on him to move up to the Telefonica Honda team in Moto GP. However, Honda wanted Pedrosa on the factory Repsol Honda team.

At first it was reported that Telefonica was going to try to work a deal with Repsol where they could be co-sponsors but Repsol wasn't having it. Pedrosa decided that he wanted to be on the factory Honda so he signed with Repsol. Telefonica was pissed so they decided to pull out of Moto GP completely and put their money behind recently crowned F1 champion, Fernando Alonso (Telefonica is Spanish, Fernando is Spanish).

Luckily for the Gresini team Fortuna (Tobacco company) has stepped up in the wake of Telefonica to sponsor their team. They brought along Toni Elias as part of the deal.

Camel Honda (Pons) - The Juicy Stuff
This season, like every season Max Biaggi bitched and moaned about the bike, blaming it for his poor results. He even went so far as to accuse his team of a conspiracy to make him fail. Its as if in his mind, the only reason Nicky could be beating him with the same bike had to be sabotage.

As you could imagine the folks at HRC were very perturbed by his comments. It was already common knowledge that Pedrosa would replace Biaggi on the factory squad next season (as early as probably halfway through 05). It was thought that he could always return to Camel Honda, since he has strong ties with the head honchos there. But Biaggi managed to piss off the head honchos at HRC so much that they have made it clear that they do not want him on ANY of their bikes. The word is that they sent the message that they will refuse to supply any team he is riding for.

So Max has other options right? Well, all of the other factory teams had their lineups locked up, and he burned his bridges at Yamaha after blaming the M1 for his inability to beat Rossi (the same M1 that Rossi has now won 2 championships on). Biaggi has managed to garner such a bad reputation that no one wants him on their team, even though he has the backing of Camel.

It so happens that Camel was so intent on backing Max that they are pulling their sponsorship from the Pons team because they won't give Max a seat. Now its looking like the only way he'll stay in GP is if he rides for the Proton KR team.

So who to fill the Pons seats? Well Alex Barros is out, having come to the end of a long and decent Moto GP career. In his stead comes Carlos Checa. Checa is oft called "Careless Chucka" for the copious amounts of crashing he does but he has gotten some good results at the end of this season on the Marlboro Ducati.

That brings us to the second seat. Chris Vermeulen was in the running for it but he signed with Suzuki. So in came Casey Stoner.

Stoner was the runner up this year in the 250cc class. Jerry Burgess (Rossi's crew chief) had been talking up Stoner's skills a lot in the press and it was no secret that he wanted to groom him to replace Rossi, should Rossi leave to race cars.

For 2006, Yamaha made an offer to Stoners 250cc team that they would supply M1's if the team could raise enough money. Apparently this didn't work out so well.

So in what may prove to be one of the biggest talent coups in recent memory, HRC signed Stoner to a 3 year deal. He will be riding on the second Pons Honda.

Everyone is waiting with baited breadth to see who does better next year, Stoner or Pedrosa. Stoner is bigger and stronger than Pedrosa, which some believe is part of the reason Pedrosa has an advantage on him in the 250 class, but will be at a disadvantage in the GP class. In the 250 class the diminutive Pedrosa (I believe he only weighs about 115 lbs) has an advantage since the 250's don't have much power and don't require a huge amount of strength to control. However, the GP bikes have a ton of power and require decent strength to ride well, something Stoner has more of than Pedrosa. This is why he could possibly do better than Pedrosa, even on a satelitte Honda RC211V.

Suzuki
After over a half a decade together, Suzuki and Kenny Roberts Jr are calling it quits. KRJR won the last championship for Suzuki in 2000 and since then has failed to win a race. Its been plain for all to see that the Suzuki GSV-R is just not a competitive machine. Sete Gibernau won one race on it, but when he moved to Honda he obviously won a ton more.

But, somehow Suzuki was able to convince John Hopkins, the 22 year old star from California, to sign to a 2 year deal. On top of that, they somehow snatched the World Superbike phenom Chris Vermeulen from Honda for a 3 year deal.

Chris Vermeulen was fresh off the runner-up position in World Superike where he closed the season with 5 wins out of 8 rounds. It was plain to see that if his Ten Kate Honda squad had gotten started earlier with developing their Fireblades (CBR1000RR) they could've taken the championship. And therein lies the rub.

It would have been a natural progression for Vermy to move up to a Honda Moto GP ride. However, Honda wanted him to return to WSBK to win the title, then come ride for Honda in GP in 2007. Vermeulen didn't want to wait.

Suzuki saw an opportunity to get a great up and coming rider with Vermeulen, and Vermeulen saw an opportunity to get a factory ride, something he was unlikely to get with Honda considering that Nicky Hayden, Dani Pedrosa, and Marco Melandri were all ahead of him in the Honda pecking order. So apparently he made a verbal commitment to Suzuki.

Honda didn't want to lose Vermeulen so they came up with a counter offer of giving him a ride on the second Pons Honda seat, but Vermeulen ultimately chose to ride the Suzuki. Again, somehow Suzuki was able to convince him that they will be competitive in the near term future. Personally its a long shot, considering that Suzuki has been the poorest performing factory team for the last few years but who knows. I do know that riders have won on the Pons Honda for the last several years running and no one has won on the Suzuki GSV-R for several years running.

The Rest
The rest of the rider lineups came together with considerably less drama. Gibernau went to the factory Ducati team, Englishman James Ellison got promoted from the WCM Blata team to the Ducati D'Antin satelitte team, and Randy DePuniet got promoted from 250cc to Kawasaki's factory team. DePuniet's selection has left a lot of people scratching their heads though, because he finished 8th in the 250cc championship with only 1 win and 2 podiums to his name. Maybe he's riding for free or something.

So here are the rider lineups:

Yamaha Factory Team
Valentino Rossi
Colin Edwards

Tech 3 Yamaha
???

Repsol Honda
Nicky Hayden
Dani Pedrosa

Fortuna Honda
Marco Melandri
Toni Elias

Pons Honda(formerly sponsored by Camel)
Casey Stoner
Carlos Checa

Konica Minolta Honda
Makoto Tamada

Kawasaki
Shinya Nakano
Randy DePuniet

Ducati Marlboro
Loris Capirossi
Sete Gibernau

Suzuki
John Hopkins
Chris Vermeulen

D'Antin Ducati
Roberto Rolfo
James Ellison

Team Proton KR
Kenny Roberts Jr

[JohnC]

Just wanted to shit up your thread by saying that I'm enjoying reading it Keep it coming!

And where is Motoczysz in all of this? For some reason I thought that they expected to field a team in 2006... That could be a whole 'nother thread though.

[REED]

man - I see potential for a new reality show following the lives of the racers, kinda like the one they had for nascar i think, anyway this is some great reading keep it coming

[Kaan]

I really dont see much of a change... Rossi vs Hayden with an Edwards spoiler... Vermeulen can ride... but the Suzuki is poop... they need to put a bike under that rider!

[Evan]

didnt know that about Rossi. Fuck he is a little bitch. More and more reasons to hate that punk.

[G.Irish]

didnt know that about Rossi. Fuck he is a little bitch. More and more reasons to hate that punk.

Who knows what the real deal is, but its really suspicious. Why? Well, if he is so against tobacco advertising why is he even bothering to test for a F1 team sponsored by Marlboro? Could it be that he's refusing to run under Gauloises because they're a competitor to Marlboro?

Anyway, Rossi is going to be racing a WRC Impreza at the Monza Rally next week.

[Mike]

Rossi is the TO of motorcycle racing...

[G.Irish]

Rossi is the TO of motorcycle racing...

No way. He might be a bit of a prima donna but TO he isn't.

*Rossi has won championships (7 to be exact)
*Rossi doesn't diss his teammates
*Rossi doesn't bitch and moan to the media
*Rossi doesn't diss management

Biaggi is more TO than Rossi IMO.

One thing I heard about the Gauloises thing is that he doesn't want to ride under Gauloises specifically, not that he wouldn't ride under tobacco as a whole.

[Mike]

Rossi does too bitch and moan to the media! Scheisse! All the time! I don't even follow the sport and I have a bitter taste in my mouth from him. Laguna?

[G.Irish]

Yeah he did whine about Laguna at first, but he publicly apologized. When was the last time TO apologized for anything? He could run over a pregnant woman and he'd probably say something like "I woulda had to swerve and could've gotten hurt. I was looking out for number one baybee."

Don't get me wrong, Rossi can be a prima donna prick sometimes but on the whole he's not bad compared to someone like TO. If you wanna look to motorcycle racing assholes there are a lot of guys that are worse than Rossi.

*Max Biaggi
*Carl Fogarty
*Mat Mladin
*Kurtis Roberts

[mrbaggio]

Will Rossi be the driver or co-driver?

Is that race televised?

-Justin

[.RJ]

If you wanna look to motorcycle racing assholes there are a lot of guys that are worse than Rossi.

*Max Biaggi
*Carl Fogarty
*Mat Mladin
*Kurtis Roberts

Gibby the clown is at the top of that list. "blame the equipment"

[G.Irish]

If you wanna look to motorcycle racing assholes there are a lot of guys that are worse than Rossi.

*Max Biaggi
*Carl Fogarty
*Mat Mladin
*Kurtis Roberts

Gibby the clown is at the top of that list. "blame the equipment"

Well, the bike did stop on him in one race, then his engine blew at Valencia.

But, other than that Gibernau hasn't blamed the bike at all. In some places he struggled with setup but the reason he hasn't had much success this year is because of him crashing out of the lead. He hasn't blamed that on the bike.

[G.Irish]

Will Rossi be the driver or co-driver?

Is that race televised?

-Justin

Rossi will be driving. It won't be televised over here for sure, but I'm sure some of it will end up on the net somewhere or abouts. I'm thinking it might show up on Motogp.com.

[G.Irish]

Rossi finished second in the Monza Rally, beating Colin McRae by 43 seconds...however, McRare was driving the Skoda so they weren't on exactly equal footing.

Correction! Rossi won by 20 seconds over Colin...and Rossi lost out to Rinaldo Capello(I believe he raced the Audi R9 at one time or another) by only 2.6 seconds. But get this, Capello was driving a...Skoda

Somehow I missed this line:

And where is Motoczysz in all of this? For some reason I thought that they expected to field a team in 2006... That could be a whole 'nother thread though.

I thought they were going to compete in 06 too but I have heard nary a murmur about it. When I talked to one of the Motoczysz crew guys at Laguna he said that they were planning on maybe contesting a few rounds but not the full championship.

Personally I thought those guys were idiots to think that they could go from never having made a bike (Michael Czysz was an architect by training) to competing in Moto GP. However, Czysz went out and got a lot of people who DO know about bikes to surround him. And there was an article in Robb Report about the company's business plan which actually sounded somewhat feasible, although a little optimistic on what people would pay for the bikes.

The website says they're working on the 2nd generation C1 for a debut next July. Maybe that means they'll have it ready for Laguna next year *crosses fingers*.

[scottcj]

Excellent write up. Always good to see the whole season condensed to read especially for those of us who couldn't see all the races. Any thoughts on Rossi racing F-1? I know he's testing with Ferrari and has made some kind of deal with them for 2007 I think. Hopefully he'll stay around for the new MotoGP 880cc format, but at this point he doesn't have much to prove in GP.

[JohnC]

And there was an article in Robb Report about the company's business plan which actually sounded somewhat feasible, although a little optimistic on what people would pay for the bikes.

Robb Report article on MotoCzysz

Interesting read...