Obviously, anything predictable is boring. Everything is more fun when random stuff happens.
Like when your grocery delivery comes and that litre of vodka you ordered has a new design of security cap still firmly attached to the bottle. You can’t just drill it like the old kind, but you’re blessed with the novelty of figuring out how to remove this new one with a hacksaw. Who doesn’t enjoy unexpectedly having to learn another useful transferable skill?
It’s the same with racing.
So, is MotoGP currently being gripped by a Randomness Crisis?
Let’s investigate by looking at some of the main sources of randomness in current MotoGP to see how they’re bearing up.
Stewards Panel Decisions
Current Randomness: 🎲
Back when Fast Freddy Spencer was Chief Steward, there was no rhyme or reason to the way penalties were handed out. Unfortunately, this resulted in a barrage of criticism for one of MotoGP’s most talented, honourable and loveable legends, so he stepped down. Little did we know how much pleasure Freddy’s crazy decisions had brought to the sport.
These days, Simon von Kiwi is the Longlappenfuehrer and you could set your atomic clock by the regularity of his rulings. 3-place grid penalty for Frankie: Check. Drop one place for a well-dodgy overtake: Check. Long lap penalty if you torpedo somebody: Yawn, check.
Simon’s a cool guy (like all dog lovers, obviously) but he could really learn a thing or two about randomness.
Maverick Vinales
Current Randomness: 🎲
Mav used to be such a reliably unreliable random number generator that scientists at CERN used his MotoGP finishing positions to add a few sigma to the results from the Large Hadron Collider. But then he hitched his wagon to the fat, Majorcan, talking metronome Jorge Lorenzo, who is one of the least random people on the planet.
(Only someone as unpredictable as Maverick Vinales could be insane enough to think he was a good match with a guy whose specialist subject was predictably hitting the exact same millimetre of corner apex, lap after lap after lap, race after race, year after year…)
Since then, Mav’s ability to surprise has evaporated. Even having yet another massive fallout with yet another team hasn’t budged the needle of the randomometer. It’s a tragedy.
Pecco Bananas
Current Randomness: 🎲🎲
Though his results are uniformly terrible these days, Pecco is still vaguely amusing us by finding new ways to crash. Like at Silverstone, where the dodgily-bearded Rossi acolyte admitted that he’d never been spat off a bike quite like that before, and hadn’t the remotest clue about what just happened.
Marc Marquez
Current Randomness: 🎲🎲
Since skipping the Barcelona round to have his 387th arm operation, Marc’s results in the main feature races have been 7th, 1st, 1st, 7th, 1st, 7th. This is a lot less random than it seems because he’s just flipping between two states in a not very random manner. But there is some fun in predicting which of these two states he’ll end up in at the next race. (Or there would be if it wasn’t Aragon, where he’ll finish 1st again.)
Joan Mir
Current Randomness: 🎲
It used to be fun trying to guess how far into the race Mir would get before lobbing the bike at the scenery. But these days he always crashes on lap one.
Aprilia
Current Randomness: 🎲
It always used to be hilarious watching the many and varied ways that Aprilia found to throw away races. From random conk-outs, to barbecuing the riders, to uploading the wrong engine map onto the ECU, nobody knew which rake the likeable Italians would step on next.
But not any more. The Aprilia RS-GP is hands down the best bike in MotoGP these days. Even when individual riders crash, the Ducati-hating Italian manufacturer predictably kicks ass.
Moto2
Current Randomness: 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲
Could Moto2 actually be sucking randomness out of MotoGP like a black hole? The Silverstone Moto2 race was one of the most random races anyone can remember. Apart from all of the random overtakes and crashes, it produced a supernova of randomness as the leaders crossed the line for the penultimate time.
Championship leader Manu “Ass” Gonzalez has been so boringly impressive this year that bird-brained F1 journos even started using statistics to prove that he should be in MotoGP next year. But in the British GP, Manu reverted to his average performance of being flakier than a “99” ice cream. Celebrating his victory a lap early, “Manu Ass” backed off and got rammed by his main rival, who was right on his tail. This led to 1st and 2nd places in the race being taken by a pair of total randos who needed SatNav to find Parc Ferme.
We can only dream of something so ludicrously random happening in MotoGP right now.
Conclusion
It is painfully clear that MotoGP is suffering from a severe randomness crisis. Although there is still enjoyment to be found in watching the evil Ducati Lenovo team having their backsides handed to them by the two loveable Aprilia squads, even this is getting predictable. With the breakdown of Maverick Random Number Generator and the non-arrival of Manu “Mid-Season Meltdown” Gonzalez, next year’s tyre and tech rules may be the only hope for a return to the joy of true randomness.
