The silly season period of any racing season is always very interesting. Who moves where becomes the big question. Everyone inside the paddock is listening for whispers and the chance to be in the know. But what actually happens during the negotiations and how much can be trusted? Everyone has an angle. Riders want to be linked with seats and teams want there to appear to be competition for saddles. The MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship paddock is the same and this year, it’s the most intense it has ever been.
THE MAIN FACTORS: keys to moving on
Once MotoGP™ seats have been filled, what motivates the decisions we see during the summer months in WorldSBK? A lot of the time it’s a combination of money, respect, ego and, perhaps most interestingly, spite, that create the combination of teams and riders that line-up on the grid. Don’t look too far past the managers and advisors for riders. Their motivation can be summed up by the Wu-Tang Clan; CREAM. The famous acronym of Cash Rules Everything Around Me! Money makes the world go round. No matter what we want to believe as sports fans, we see it time and again. Why do our favourite players move from one league to another? Why do golfers or tennis players play certain events? Higher wages and appearance fees will make people’s heads turn faster than a Ducati off the grid in WorldSBK!
Ego, spite and cold, hard cash are the main deciding factors in the decisions made to move from one team to another in motorcycle racing. That’s a two-way street too because whilst high wages can motivate a rider to make a switch, the same is true in reverse for manufacturers. Why were Aruba.it Ducati motivated to replace Scott Redding (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) with Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) in 2021? Competitive performance for sure but the lower wage demands of the Spaniard made it a win-win for Ducati; boy have the won since Bautista jumped back on the V4R.
EGO AND RESPECT: it’s about feeling wanted
Ego and respect go hand in hand with the decisions made by riders. Anybody that is one of the best in the world at their discipline expects their employer to respect them. Jimmy Johnson, the Hall of Fame NFL coach, famously said that all of his players were treated equally but some players were treated a little more equal than others! This approach basically meant that if you had the talent there would be more flexibility for his players. Riders expect the same.
When they get this flexibility and respect, they thrive. When they don’t, they can look for the exit door straight away. Toprak Razgatlioglu’s (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) decision to leave Yamaha and move to BMW next year can be explained by this. Would he have left Yamaha if he was given, what he sees as, a fair crack of the MotoGP™ whip? When that didn’t happen, the BMW contract suddenly would have looked more and more appealing.
SPITE AND A BIG MISTAKE: a combination that fuels Razgatlioglu for 2024
Toprak will be motivated by spite when he lines up for the first time on the BMW M1000RR. He’ll be out to prove to Yamaha that they made a big mistake. Ironically it will be a very similar motivation to when Toprak signed on to ride the blue bikes in 2020. At that point he had been disrespected by Kawasaki and out to prove his worth at Yamaha. The world keeps spinning and Toprak’s motivation can be seen as being the same.
BOMBSHELL SWITCH: the biggest move in WorldSBK yet to come?
There are still seats to be filled for WorldSBK 2024. Toprak’s seat is the highest profile to be filled but with plenty of rumours of big-name switches. What happens with Scott Redding? With Iker Lecuona (Team HRC) getting plenty of MotoGP™ replacement rides, will he be on the shopping list for Honda there? The most intriguing of all was Speedweek reporting that Yamaha might be lining up a certain six-time World Champion to replace Toprak at Yamaha… What motivates decisions within racing? Sometimes it’s just the motivation to be able to win.
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Source: WorldSBK.com