Changes are already happening in the MotoGP world under its new Liberty Media ownership.

In this article we analyse the What, Where, How and Huh?

S – Standing for the national anthem

When motorcycle racers assemble at the front of the grid before a race, you immediately know that they’ve done it to honour a fallen comrade with a minute’s silence.

Until now, at least.

Under the new Liberty rules, MotoGP riders jarringly have to stand there before every single race, stone-faced and sullen, wondering whether the crew chief will yell at them if they ask for a click less front rebound damping with 5 minutes 40 seconds to go, while a bunch of overweight assclowns in mismatched Hawaiian shirts prance around in front of them playing some gaudy foreign national anthem on the frigging kazoo or whatever.

This is, naturally, borrowed from the so-heavily-polished-that-you-can-see-your-face-reflected-in-it turd that Liberty Media call “Formula One”. But the main reason that F1 do this is because you can’t see the punchable arsewipe F1 drivers’ faces when they’re sitting in their cars with their crash helmets on. Whereas you can get a great look at motorcycle racers as they sit on their bikes being mean and moody in the build-up to the race. They look badass, even when they’re being paid to wear idiotic pink sunglasses.

Grudgingly arrayed at the front of the grid, they look like a bunch of fannies.

H – Hall of Fame

There is already a MotoGP Legend award, but for some reason 350lb lardbucket Yanks have a problem understanding this. They only accept legends that are presented in a Hall of Fame format, just like they only accept Vitamin C if it’s called Ascorbic Acid and it’s the 217th of 219 ingredients in their “cheese flavored processed sliced partially-dairy squares”.

To make things worse, the entry qualifications for the Hall of Fame are truly moronic. Entrants must have 2 World Championships in the 500GP or MotoGP categories, or at least 25 race wins in the top class.

Why 2 World Titles? Because Stoner retired before he won any more, and Liberty would look like complete morons if they left him out.

Why 25 race wins? Because Kevin Schwantz only won 1 World Title and Liberty would look like complete morons if they left him out.

Doesn’t this exclude nearly everyone who competed back when there were only about 8 races per season and their terrifyingly short life expectancy made 25 wins a ridiculous pipe dream?

Yes!!! Screw those guys!!!

Yanks love statistics (Baseball is such a soul-destroyingly tedious game that its crushingly dull statistics are the most interesting thing about it). Presumably this is why entry to the new Hall of Fame is governed by pointless, idiotic and completely arbitrary stats.

I – Ignoring Junior Categories

Another “fart in a spacesuit” idea brought in from F1 is the fiction that racers in the top class simply materialize out of thin air rather than honing their skills in the junior categories. In the Liberty era, it’s clear that orders have gone out for Moto2 and Moto3 to be ignored as much as possible.

In motorcycle World Championship racing, the baby classes have nearly always raced on the same tracks and the same day as the senior class. The risks they take are the same, if not greater. Most crashes happen around corners, and the smaller bikes actually corner faster than the heavier top class bikes. And they race in bigger, more dangerous groups. And in the first 25 years of the championship, racing on road courses, the trees and telegraph poles were no less dangerous if you crashed a 50cc bike into them at 50mph rather than a 500cc bike at 100mph.

It also downgrades the achievements of the 500GP and MotoGP champs who came up through the ranks. When Marc Marquez sews up this year’s MotoGP title, Big Brother will be delighted to announce that the Spanish Antichrist has been upgraded from 8 times to 7 times World Champion.

And what about Fast Freddie Spencer? (Thank God we’re allowed to love Freddie again now that The Kiwi has taken over as LongLappenFuehrer). Previously, Freddie’s 1985 500GP World Title was considered one of the best ever because he achieved it whilst simultaneously winning the 250GP World Title, literally 15 years after winning 2 simultaneous GP titles had become impossible, trashing his arms and destroying his career in the process. Now we have to say that Freddie’s 1985 World Title was amazing because he won it whilst simultaneously carrying out “unspecified leisure activities unrelated to the premier motorcycle racing class”.

In motorcycle racing, a World Championship is a World Championship whatever the hell you were riding when you won it. This is something to be proud of. Only a total imbecile would blunder into MotoGP and fail to notice it.

T – Two Tier Paddock

Taking a leaf out of the British Government’s book, Liberty Media are installing a Two Tier regime in the paddock. The Moto2 and Moto3 riff-raff will have to use the tradesman’s entrance (like Ukrainian male models) and sleep in garage doorways, wrapped in that brown paper Amazon use to stuff the empty space in cardboard boxes. (Because newspapers aren’t a thing any more).

It’s hard enough for teams in the junior categories to attract and keep sponsors. Now it’ll be even harder because the sponsors won’t be in with a chance of an autograph, selfie or mere glimpse of Marc Marquez as he rides past on his paddock scooter. (No undeclared £700,000 donations for these poor chumps).

It will also be much harder for MotoGP stars to help out the kids in the junior categories (as all MotoGP stars do) because they simply won’t have time for the Bataan Death March over to the San Francisco style homeless camp that the Moto3 teams have to live in. (Hopefully avoiding the injecting drugs and crapping in the street that their comrades in Frisco are prone to).

E – Erasing History

The most egregious problem with the whole Liberty MotoGP vibe is the way that it erases history. By ignoring, belittling and deleting the junior categories, not only are they screwing the youngsters who are the future of Grand Prix motorcycle racing, they are insulting the entire history of the sport.

Theoretically, the nepotastic Dorna dynasty are still running the show. It beggars belief that the Spanish company have endorsed Liberty’s dumbass, hotdog-with-extra-hog-anus strategy of shoving the junior classes down the memory hole.

Why? Angel Nieto, that’s why. The guy who won 12+1 championships on small capacity bikes. The legend that inspired generations of Spaniards, who would ride their small capacity bikes to races just to see him, then get bored and go home while the 500cc class was forming up on the grid.

Wait, what??? The collection of Spanish cousins and nephews called Dorna agreed to create a Hall of Fame that does not and will never include Spain’s greatest ever motorcycle racer Angel Nieto??? The guy that Marc Marquez genuinely considers to be a better rider than himself???

Plus all the other legends who didn’t win 2 World Titles or 25 races in the top class (a far harder thing to do when there were about 8 races per year than it is with our 20+ race seasons these days).

MotoGP is now being run by the kind of idiots who would exclude Citizen Kane from the Movie Hall of Fame because it wasn’t filmed in colour or widescreen. They’re not trying to attract new motorcycle racing fans, they’re trying to attract utter morons who would be better off watching Love Island than Phillip Island.

Nobody’s saying that all MotoGP fans should be full-on geeks who can name all champions of the 350GP class and quote the page numbers of geeky facts in the MotoGP Technology book by Spalders. But surely it’s not too hard to tell MotoGP’s new casual fans, “Dude, in motorcycle racing we include World Championships won in the junior categories. We’re different from F1, thank f**k!!!”