Cedric
31-01-2009, 06:39 PM
Mentioned in another forum. It's a really (long) good read, and the page it used to be on can't be found anymore (speedtv). About the 990's.
THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: How to drive off pesky sponsors (Or, Take your 50 Million and Shove it!) Part 1 of 4
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/2/2006
What is really going on in MotoGP that makes it in anyone’s interest to drive away three huge sponsors whose combined spend with their teams in 2005 was around 50 million dollars? It is one of those subjects that defies simplification and, therefore, requires a concentration span of more than a TV soundbite or a quick magazine column. But if you really want to know at least as much as I think I know about all this, here goes:
In the spirit of Christmas, I held off writing this review of post season hostilities. Now, however, we can’t avoid looking at the extraordinary chain of events that finds MotoGP chasing away three major sponsors and all for the same reason…that being the sponsors want to choose the riders and the Japanese manufacturers have decided that that prerogative is now exclusively theirs.
1. French cigarette brand Gauloises wanted to sponsor Valentino Rossi but Yamaha granted to Rossi the right to reject tobacco sponsorship leaving Gauloises the absurd alternative of spending big bucks to sponsor a second” factory” Yamaha team without Rossi. Altadis, owner of the Gauloises brand, is threatening legal action against Yamaha Motor Company and withdrawing what would have been 20 million dollars in sponsorship.
2. Spanish communications company Telefonica Movistar wanted to continue in MotoGP with the Gresini team and with their three-time World Champion (2003 in 125 and 2004 and 2005 in 250) as their rider of the future alongside long-time Telefonica rider Sete Gibernau. But Pedrosa signed directly with HRC and HRC let their intention be known to slot him into the factory HRC Repsol Honda team. That infuriated Telefonica Movistar brass so much that they told Sete to go looking for a new home and withdrew a spend that was probably also in the 20 million dollar range.
3. Finally Max Biaggi over a long and frustrating season earned a place at the very top of Honda’s persona non grata list. Apparently Honda vetoed Max from any Honda-related MotoGP team and this Honda ban might appear to have been supported by Suzuki and Kawasaki as well…and maybe even by Bridgestone, leaving Max without a team in spite of the fact that Camel, with Biaggi as rider, approached Pons Honda and even Team Roberts (who will be using Honda engines) before offering their estimated 12 million dollar spend to Suzuki and Kawasaki. Suzuki already had a deal with Rizla, but how could Kawasaki, un-sponsored with two riders, refuse to make room for a third rider bringing at least half that 12 million to the team? It may never be completely clear if Kawasaki were really prepared to admit MotoGP’s pariah because Bridgestone told Kawasaki that they were unable to supply tires for an additional rider.
So, Camel wanted Biaggi and couldn’t find bikes for him, Gauloises wanted Rossi, only to learn that Yamaha had given Valentino the right to refuse tobacco sponsorship and Telefonica-Movistar wanted to continue with Honda and Pedrosa but found that HRC had given him to Spanish petroleum company Repsol.
There is no way to be exactly sure of the amount, but the total sponsorship spend of the three departing sponsors from the MotoGP paddock is at least $50,000,000 and that does not include what the three rejected sponsors, Gauloises, Camel and Telefonica-Movistar spent on trackside signage, hospitality and promotion.
Although I have followed this story since the original “false alarm” (when we first learned that Rossi and Yamaha were considering running in corporate colors without Gauloises in 2005) during the final months of the 2004 season, I really believed that some kind of last-minute compromise would be reached between Yamaha Motor Company and the Altadis/Seita company to allow Gauloises branding on the factory Yamaha M1s that will be campaigned by Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards in 2006.
The following press releases, issued recently by Yamaha and by Altadis, however, have ended any possibility of that happening. First Yamaha announced that Gauloises would not continue as the sponsor of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team, and shortly afterward Altadis responded, threatening legal action if a settlement is not “amicably” reached. (These releases were posted on SpeedTV.com but are reproduced here.)
Yamaha Press Release
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. hereby announces that Altadis/Seita’s sponsorship regarding Yamaha's Factory MotoGP Team will not continue after the end of the 2005 season.
For more than 40 years, Yamaha has successfully participated in the Road Racing Grand Prix World Championship and it has become the leading manufacturer of the MotoGP competition.
Altadis/Seita have been sponsors of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP project for the past three seasons under both the Fortuna and the Gauloises brands, during which time the companies shared two world championship victories in the MotoGP class in 2004 and 2005.
Yamaha will announce its 2006 MotoGP program in January 2006.
Altadis Press Release
As of today, Yamaha Motor Company has announced that “Altadis/Seita’s sponsorship regarding Yamaha's Factory MotoGP Team will not continue after the end of the 2005 season.” Yamaha’s announcement comes while the two companies are still in the midst of negotiating the terms of a settlement agreement that would amicably resolve the dispute that arose between them earlier this year. Altadis considers that Yamaha is still bound by a legal obligation that prevents Yamaha from collaborating with sponsors whose products compete directly with the Gauloises brand or with Altadis products for the 2006 season.
Altadis laments that Yamaha, even while acknowledging that “Altadis/Seita have been sponsors of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP project for the past 3 seasons under both the Fortuna and the Gauloises brands during which time the companies shared 2 world championship victories in the MotoGP class in 2004 and 2005,” appears poised to disregard the significance of the Altadis investment in that project.
In the absence of a settlement, Altadis will not hesitate to seek the appropriate legal remedies if Yamaha fails to abide by its legal obligations towards Altadis and the Gauloises brand.
In those “good old days” of 500cc racing the cost of leasing competitive Japanese machines finally climbed over a million dollars during the final years of the Doohan reign when only Honda NSR 500s were considered really competitive. During the late eighties and early nineties even teams that formed dynasties, like Team Roberts which, after Kenny’s retirement, won three 500cc titles with Wayne Rainey and a 250 title with John Kocinski, were more like today’s private teams than full factory teams.
Sponsors were a vital part of racing at the highest level, and all the major sponsors were tobacco brands. Look back in the coffee table books and you see them…Rothmans, HB, Lucky Strike, Marlboro, Ducados, Bastos, Gauloises…later joined by Fortuna, M.S. Chesterfield and even a few other small national brands.
With so much tobacco, the Pepsi Cola sponsorship by Suzuki and the timid initiative from Budweiser, backing Randy Mamola on a Team Roberts “back door” effort, offered some promise of a move to Grand Prix racing by more mainstream sponsors, but the bottlers and brewers withdrew, unable to match the budgets of the cigarette companies and, in some cases, uncomfortable as a minor player in a TV package dominated by tobacco signage both on the bikes and at trackside.
I am not sure whether the dynamics behind what is actually happening are not generally understood or whether a kind of inverse political correctness makes Grand Prix journalists reluctant to openly discuss the politics of tobacco sponsorship, without whose millions Grand Prix teams would never have survived the final decade of the two-stroke years.
The reality is that during the final years of 500cc two stroke racing, Grand Prix was losing its place as the world’s premier motorcycle road racing championship, being displaced by World Superbike. With no practical reasons to justify investing in two stroke development, Japanese factories and especially Honda, were pouring money and effort into wringing the most out of their 750cc four-cylinder Superbike engines.
For several years HRC was spending far more to develop the RC45 than on the obsolete NSR500. Likewise Yamaha was developing the five-valve R1 and Suzuki was concentrating on the GSX-R 750. The other two roadracing giants, Kawasaki and Italy’s Ducati, had no Grand Prix programs at all. Factory and satellite 500 teams were sustained by sponsorship from Big Tobacco.
But all this changed when the 500cc class morphed after a transitional 2002 season into the current 990cc four stroke prototype class. With the change came a sudden escalation in costs and, over the first three years of MotoGP rules, a change in the way factories make their decisions and how much leverage sponsors have in decision making. Suddenly the Japanese factories were fully engaged again and with huge budgets to throw into prototype development, while sponsors, accustomed to calling the shots and choosing the riders, were asked to limit themselves to painting fairings and trucks and running the hospitality units.
In Part Two of “The Idiot’s Guide to MotoGP”, we’ll discuss these changes.
THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: How to increase costs and decrease speed (Part II)
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/3/2006
It had never been completely satisfactory for Japanese competition engineers to throw all their effort into hot-rodding big street bikes because Superbike regulations required bothersome homologations and meant that in order to introduce any major innovations to either the rolling chassis or the engine, homologation of a new model for sale to the general public was required.
The move to four strokes meant that Japanese R & D departments could finally get back to blue sky engineering, building racing prototypes for the sole purpose of racing. It meant that costs of leased machines increased exponentially too. When the new rules were first adopted teams were told to expect modest increases in lease costs of 25% to 33%. Add a zero and you have the real increase…the days of the $800,000 to 1.2 million dollar lease have given way to a price tag of somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million (depending upon the level of machine and the amount of spares and maintenance included) for a couple of RC211V for a single rider.
But when the old GPMA (Grand Prix Manufacturers’ Association) finished its rule making and dissolved itself to become the MSMA (Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association), adding Kawasaki and Ducati, the factories no longer saw Grand Prix racing as a pointless exercise in revamping old, obsolete two-strokes with no commercial relevancy. Instead they were able to fly the banner of “racing improves the breed,” and suddenly the budgets from Superbike development were switched to Grand Prix and increased.
With the buzz from the new class combined with the blossoming of Valentino Rossi into a huge superstar, the racing became more intense and factories, especially Honda, were increasingly annoyed at having their racing plans impacted by sponsor’s preferences for riders of a specific nationality. They were now spending three times more, maybe four times more, and the increased TV audience and growing impact of the sport in major markets meant that racing directors wanted to be free to hire the rider of their choice unhindered by commercial considerations.
Cost increases were absorbed by the factories, but sponsors were also asked to increase their spending. As they did so the big sponsors, accustomed to have significant input in rider choice, expected their clout to grow
For years certain sponsors had insisted on riders from their market, a galling restriction for race bosses who cared only about lap times and results.
On the one hand the manufactures, who now control the rule-making and therefore control the future of the series, understood Dorna’s reasons for needing a “token Brit” like Jeremy McWillliams or Shane Byrne to bolster British market and mollify the BBC, or a German like Alex Hofmann to add interest in the German Market. 2003 World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson learned the hard way that becoming a “token Brit” on an uncompetitive machine is not a career move.
Weaker teams and beginning teams accepted subventions from Dorna to sign riders of the required nationalities, but the competitive factories, especially Yamaha and Honda, resented any influences from sponsors OR Dorna on their choices.
For Honda one of the biggest frustrations of 2005 was being unable to bring their two top riders together on a single team. That team would have included Nicky Hayden and Sete Gibernau, but Gibernau was contracted to Telefonica Movistar, the title sponsor of the Gresini Honda team.
With Gibernau on a notional “satellite” team, HRC turned to Max Biaggi and soon ran into trouble with the exigent and persnickety Italian…problems that ended in HRC firing Max and placing a virtual veto on his entry in any other Honda team.
We have discussed how Gauloises, Telefonica-Movistar and Camel were all three jilted when Yamaha, in the case of Rossi, and Honda, in the very different cases of Pedrosa and Biaggi, made factory riders unavailable to the sponsors prepared to sign big checks.
And this comes at a time when factory development costs are rising fast. Any factory team that truly has aspirations of winning must develop not one but two prototypes in 2006…first they must work to extract final and full potential from the lame duck 990cc bikes they will campaign in 2006 and, at the same time, they must develop complete new 800cc prototypes for the 2007 season…bikes that will, ironically, be slower and more expensive.
So, just when Yamaha could most use an extra twenty million, and when all the private teams and half the factory teams are virtually un-sponsored, Yamaha and Honda find themselves unable to accommodate Gauloises, Telefonica-Movistar and Camel.
Tomorrow we’ll revisit these three situations in a little more detail and also look to the future of the MotoGP riders moving to World Superbike in a Diaspora that could just make watching Superbikes more exciting in 2006 than watching Rossi run away with his sixth straight title in the premier class of Grand Prix racing.
THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: The Devil is in the details (Part III)
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/4/2006
They will be retelling these stories for years to come and at least one of these strange tales will probably be studied by the Harvard Business School along with other confusing classic imbroglios like “Ducati & Texas Pacific Group---A ‘Wild Ride’ Leveraged Buyout” (Currently available from HBS.)
Today Sito Pons announced that due to the withdrawal of his major sponsor, Camel, the two-times World 250 Champion and owner of what has been clearly the most successful satellite team in the history of modern Grand Prix racing, the Pons Honda team will not take part in the 2006 MotoGP world championship. Apparently his attempts to bring in Postal, the Spanish mail service, as a sponsor, came up short. (Even Postal would have preferred Biaggi, who got his first two-wheel training as a motorbike messenger in Rome.)
At the same time stories are coming out of Italy about a possible move by Camel to the factory Yamaha team of Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards…all this at a time when the two riders left without a ride due to the loss of sponsorship at Team Pons, Max Biaggi (who wanted to return) and Alex Barros (who wanted to stay) were both send scrambling to try and put together World Superbike rides.
Barros has just announced today that he found budget from “a global sponsor” (un-named) and Honda Brazil, and will ride in the Klaffi Honda team alongside young German Max Neukirchner. The bike will be prepared with full support from Honda Europe.
Biaggi has had very recent talks with Federico Minoli, CEO of Ducati Motorholdings (now controlled by the Italian investment group Investindustia who bought the shares owned by Texas Pacific Group holdings), with Francis Batta, owner of the World Championship winning Alstare Corona Extra Suzuki team, and with Carlo Fiorani of Honda Europe, the man in charge of support to World Superbike and World Supersport teams.
Ducati, with Troy Bayliss (riding for Camel Honda Pons in 2005) and Lorenzo Lanzi on the works Ducati Corse team and supporting the Austin Ducati team in the AMA, the Airwaves Ducati team in the BSB and also assisting the Carrachi Ducati team, with Roberto Rolfo, and the newly formed Sterilgarda Berik Ducati team which will be the new home from returning Superbike hero Ruben Xaus, probably have too much on their plate to make room for Max now in Superbike. In fact they probably feel they don’t need a rider who does not know the tracks or the bikes, especially after the very fast lap times put up in preseason World Superbike tests by veteran Bayliss and young Lanzi.
Barros, Bayliss, Rolfo, Xaus and possibly even Biaggi….a veritable diaspora of MotoGP talent…all displaced stars and winners with known names for the SBK posters and with strong fan support in their respective countries.
Now that we are up to date, let’s look at the details of the Camel decision to leave Team Pons.
Who Really Choked on the Smoke? Yamaha or Rossi?
The Altadis contract for Gauloises sponsorship that is still currently “active” would oblige Altadis to sponsor the “Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team” for two years, the already completed 2005 season and the up-coming 2006 season. Altadis signed this agreement when Yamaha had not yet confirmed Valentino Rossi (or Colin Edwards) for the 2006 season.
Sometime early in the season Yamaha notified Altadis that, although Valentino Rossi had signed to ride for Yamaha in 2006, the Italian would not be part of the “Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team” referred to in the Altadis-Yamaha agreement.
The idea was, then, that Gauloises would sponsor a “factory team” that did not include Rossi…possibly a team consisting of Edwards and a rider to be named later, perhaps even a French rider nominated by Altadis.
Needless to say Yamaha were unable to slip this sunrise past the Altadis rooster.
All hell broke lose in the Altadis offices and it wasn’t long before “Legal” was involved on both sides, but no suits were filed and still haven’t been as far as I know.
Yamaha’s Lin Jarvis kept mum, but Altadis’ executives were livid and spoke their mind. At the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi Dani Hindenoch, Communications Officer for Altadis reporting to Central Marketing Director Drago Azinovic, and speaking on behalf of Gauloises and Fortuna, two of the family of over twenty brands of tobacco owned by Altadis, told me, “The matter regarding Yamaha and Valentino Rossi is now in the hands of our attorneys and we are waiting for a response from Yamaha. Speaking frankly the situation is one that anyone can understand. Altadis agreed with Yamaha to sponsor the factory Yamaha team. It was understood that Yamaha did not have Valentino Rossi contracted for the 2006 season but it was understood that if Rossi signed it would be with the factory team. The possibility that Rossi would go to another team was an accepted risk, but not that he would ride for Yamaha on a “private” team. There are only two acceptable conclusions to this matter for Altadis: that Rossi returns to the Gauloises Yamaha team in 2006 or that Yamaha compensates Altadis. Until this matter is resolved satisfactorily all of our involvement in the MotoGP class, both as Gauloises and Fortuna, are frozen. Fortuna’s agreements in the 250 class are not affected.”
Hindenoch would not be drawn into speculating as to the motives behind Yamaha’s decision. The credible Italian motorcycling press carried several very similar versions. The most diaphanous version theorized that Valentino Rossi simply did not want to be associated with cigarette publicity and had included a clause in his contract that left him free to reject tobacco advertising. A more cunning version of the same story also said that Rossi’s contract included a clause that allowed him to reject a tobacco sponsor, but went on to suggest that Rossi had already signed some kind of agreement with Philip Morris in connection with the Ferrari Formula One team…either that he had already agreed to drive for Ferrari as a tester in 2006 or that his agreement extended to a full F1 driver’s contract for 2007…but in both cases with the stipulation that he carry no branding that would rival Marlboro.
The third and more conspiratorial version of the story is that Yamaha agreed to all this willingly because the Japanese members of the MSMA (Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association) had already agreed to wean their members from tobacco advertising over the next two years…honoring existing contracts but looking for any loopholes of escape.
But both these theories are blown sky high if it is true that some sort of discussions have recently taken place between Yamaha and Camel about the possibility of a Rossi-Camel-Yamaha team.
Could it be, and I am only speculating, that there are issues between Rossi and Gauloises that have nothing to do with tobacco? Does Gauloises rub Rossi the wrong way?
Or is it that Yamaha believed that Rossi would put together his own sponsor package with Alice (the broadband internet provider of Telecom Italia), and Nastro Azzuro? There was even talk of McDonalds. Italian sources said the Alice deal was rejected because Rossi would be testing with Vodafone publicity on the Marlboro Ferrari in 2006. Is the Camel possibility being considered because, without a sponsor, the team will be short of funding?
The funniest and scariest theory offered by credible Spanish and Italian journalists is that Rossi, who loves the color yellow, wants to have a yellow bike and yellow leathers. The meanest theory is that Valentino wants the satisfaction of driving Max Biaggi from the paddock and taking his sponsor.
The Camel Caper/ How Max became a non-person
The whole Biaggi affaire is so bizarre that anything seems possible. We’ll probably know who killed Kennedy before we learn what really caused Honda to, as the British say, throw their toys out of the pram (lose their cool).
The paddock story is that Honda became so angered by Biaggi’s statements to the press and, the Italian press suggests, by his verbal abuse of Honda staff, that they decided, after an especially acrimonious episode in Istanbul, not just to fire the four time 250 World Champion, but also to refuse to supply machines for his use to any of Honda’s satellite teams.
Biaggi carried personal sponsorship from Camel (Japanese International Tobacco) even after leaving the Camel Honda Pons team at the end of the 2004 season to join the full factory Repsol Honda team. Sito Pons had allegedly been told by Camel that they would renew their sponsorship with the well-established and successful Pons team only if Biaggi was signed for 2006.
Normally Honda HRC’s approval of a factory Honda rider moving to a satellite Honda team would be automatic, as when Barros moved from the Repsol HRC works team to the Camel Pons satellite team last year. But not this time.
In fact, even though he carried a considerable Camel sponsorship package under his arm, Biaggi was turned down by Suzuki. This was because Suzuki had already signed an agreement with Rizla (the Dutch cigarette paper company), but the fact that there were discussions at all indicates that some kind of accommodation might have been possible.
Things went further with Kawasaki until Bridgestone nixed the deal for a third bike for Max alongside Shinya Nakano and Randy De Puniet, stating that they did not have the capacity to produce tires for an additional rider. (A slightly more credible reason for Bridgestone’s refusal to supply Max might be the fact that, due to his peculiar riding style, Max heats tires less than other riders and that to develop a tire for Max would take Bridgestone down a path very different that the one that aggressive riders like Sete Gibernau, Loris Capirossi, Chris Vermuelen and John Hopkins prefer…but, on the other hand, Kawasaki’s lead rider, Shinya Nakano, has a style similar to Max and Randy de Puniet, up from 250, will probably also prefer a 250 style more like Max’s.)
Max also spoke to Team Roberts about the possibility of bringing Camel sponsorship to the team and riding as team mate of Kenny Roberts Junior on Honda powered KR machines. These talks did not prosper probably because of Honda’s objections to supplying RC211V five-cylinder engines for Biaggi. Or was it the tobacco thing again?
If there is an ulterior anti-tobacco motive behind all this on Honda’s side, why did Honda accept the Altadis brand Fortuna to sponsor the Gresini satellite team (Marco Melandri and Toni Elias)? Perhaps because Fortuna is not an internationally known brand and, therefore, is not a “blatant” tobacco sponsor…perhaps because otherwise Fausto Gresini would not have had the money to run this team and Honda would have had to bail him out in order to keep the young and talented Melandri on competitive Honda machinery. (Fortuna would not have gone to the team without Elias.)
Clearly there is more to Max’s sacking than simple dissatisfaction with his results. If the dismissed Honda factory rider had been fired simply because of performance, as was the case with Alex Barros at the end of 2003, no one in HRC would have refused an outstanding satellite team like Honda Pons its choice of rider. Clearly the Biaggi veto and its disastrous effect on the economy of Team Pons invite us to wonder. Tobacco is, after all, a legal product still, with growing restrictions and a very limited future, but while factory teams may prefer to move away from tobacco branding, it seems extreme that Honda would deprive a satellite team of a sponsor just to avoid distant association with a tobacco company when that same factory, Honda, will even continue running Lucky Strike branding on their BAR Formula 1 team in 2006.
Max must have done something or said something that constituted the straw that broke the camel’s back…no pun intended…and Honda fired him. It would never have been necessary for a secret meeting to have taken place between Japanese factory bosses where it was agreed that the veto of Max would include the Big Four. In a country where “non verbal communication” often means more than actual words, the message travels fast.
Honda Youth Movement
Or maybe, at the end of the day, Honda just decided that they had given the veteran riders a shot and it hadn’t worked. Now it was time to move veteran riders on. Barros, Bayliss, Gibernau, Biaggi and now Checa, all thirty-somethings with, in Honda’s view, their best days behind them, replaced on the Honda V5s by a new generation of fast and compact riders, Pedrosa, Elias, Stoner, joining Hayden and Melandri, and hedging their bet on youth by providing motors to Team Roberts for former 500 World Champion Kenny Roberts Junior to use in the KR chassis.
(If Honda were obliged to form a basketball team of RC211V riders in 2006 Nicky Hayden would be the big man on a team averaging about 5’4. And they’d probably win too, because only Honda has enough riders to put five men on the floor.)
I prefer to believe this is all just a Honda youth movement. But Camel rejected the option of returning to team Pons without Max and sponsoring young Australian Casey Stoner along with journeyman Carlos Checa.
It seems that Camel Europe has very specific interest in sponsoring an Italian superstar, not a kid from Australia and an ex-Marlboro veteran (Max was also a Marlboro rider, but several that was three seasons back). Left out of the Honda youth movement, rejected by Kawasaki and Suzuki and also by Team Roberts (due to Honda’s allergy to Max) it appears that Camel are still interested in staying in MotoGP and are talking to Yamaha. How ‘ bout Rossi for an Italian superstar?
But if Altadis, as they say in their press release, quoted here yesterday, really have language in the contract that obliges Yamaha to refrain from involvement with any sponsor that competes with Gauloises, a Yamaha-Camel deal can only be possible if some compensation agreement is reached.
So, do Camel and Gauloises have any pieces to trade on the worldwide monopoly board or does Japanese International Tobacco have to write a big check not just to Yamaha Motor Company but also to Altadis/Seita?
Let’s go on to something a lot more simple…as simple as two Spanish companies fighting over a Spanish superstar in the making.
The Telefonica-Movistar Saga
Honda HRC signed a contract with Telefonica-Movistar’s MotoGP rider of the future, two times and current 250 World Champion Dani Pedrosa, and agreed to assign him to the Repsol Honda team as team mate of American Nicky Hayden. This angered Telefonica Movistar, the company that ran the talent search Movistar Cup that discovered Pedrosa and developed his talent in 125 with former GP 500 star Alberto Puig as mentor.
Their idea was to bring Dani into the Telefonica Movistar Honda Gresini team along with Sete Gibernau, but Honda had decided to go back to their old game plan of concentrating almost exclusively on the one true HRC factory team…and this was a condition of Repsol’s renewal. Repsol executives say that they signed on with HRC as sponsors of the “factory team” with reason to believe that Pedrosa would be signed by HRC, but with no language in the contract that assured this.
A verbal, then, is all they had at that time, and perhaps a letter of intent.
Honda had tried last year and continued to try early this year to get Repsol and Telefonica Movistar to work together, with Telefonica Movistar as secondary sponsor on the Repsol team and perhaps with Repsol as secondary sponsor on the Gresini Telefonica team. Past attempts to work together had poisoned the well and it was soon clear to HRC that this would not work. Then, before the final Repsol – HRC deal was signed, Telefonica-Movistar executives made Honda their famous “offer they can’t refuse” which consisted in tacking on a few million more, hoping Honda would break allegiance with the sponsor that they have worked with since 1995, the year of Doohan’s second title.
Fat chance. Honda is a tough company to deal with but they are they known to be loyal. I remember Soichiro Honda wearing a Rothmans Honda jacket at the Spanish GP at Jarama in 1985, instead of the generic Honda uniform. It was an extraordinary thing at the time and set Honda policy toward sponsors based on close ties and long term relationships.
Unable to displace Repsol, Telefonica made one last run at Repsol but Honda had informed Repsol of Telefonica’s attempted end run and a Reposl executive told the Spanish press at Catalunya, “We will always talk to other companies, but it is difficult to negotiate with a company that tried unsuccessfully to take our place with a team we have sponsored for ten years.
Telefonica Movistar, foiled again, decided to pull out, announcing this on the very day that Pedrosa won his third world title in three years at Phillip Island, Australia. (Pedrosa won the 125 title in 2003 and has taken back-to-back 250 titles, always riding in Telefonica-Movistar blue.)
Antonio Lombardia, Sponsorship Director of the Spanish phone and cell phone company, admitted that, following the breakdown of the Repsol-Honda talks, he has discussed the possibility of moving in to take the place of Gauloises in the factory Yamaha team, but had declined saying, “Our involvement with Rossi would only be for a single season and then we imagine that he would join Ferrari where one of the sponsors is our direct rival Vodafone. We want more than a one-year involvement.”
Instead Telefonica decided to concentrate their motorsports sponsorship exclusively in Formula 1 and on Renault’s new World Champion and Spanish national hero Fernando Alonso.
Ironically, however, Alonso has signed with McLaren Mercedes for 2007 and with Vodafone as the new sponsor…meaning that another Spanish superstar will leave Telefonica after the 2006 season just as Pedrosa left them at the end of this season.
While six of the eleven MotoGP teams are still un-sponsored as we move into 2006, three big sponsors with the firm desire to continue with specific riders have been shunned and driven away.
What is really happening here, I believe, is that the Japanese manufacturers are sending a strong message that sponsors are welcome to back teams, but not to choose riders. It is also clear that, in spite of efforts by Dorna to prolong the agony of the death of tobacco sponsorship in televised motorsport, the Japanese MSMA members have decided to discourage tobacco advertising. (Remember, the Winston-sponsored Ten Kate Honda team in World Superbike has no direct contact with Honda HRC and is backed by Honda Europe, outside the sphere of influence of the MSMA.)
It was a Honda HRC executive who, off the cuff at a Tokyo press dinner in 2004, said it best: “With the amount of money that MotoGP costs, the contributions of the sponsors are like tips.”
That sentence takes on an even deeper meaning when you take into consideration the fact that Japanese culture, unlike that of every other country that racing has taken me to over the last thirty years, does not solicit, welcome or, in most cases, even accept tips.
Meet you here soon for the fourth and final part
The Idiots’ Guide to MotoGP, part IV
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, CA*–*1/9/2006
Crisis? What Crisis?
As discussed in Part III of this series, Camel, frustrated at every turn in its attempts to land a berth with Honda or anyone else for Max Biaggi, had turned attentions to the Camel Yamaha team. This seemed impossible at first, impossible because of the conditions of the Yamaha-Altadis agreement and because of the romantic notion (weakened by Rossi’s Marlboro-Ferrari involvement) that the Valentino Rossi did not want to be sponsored by a tobacco company. Or was it just that he didn’t want to be sponsored by Gauloises?
Thus ran last minute speculation (guessing) from Part III:
Could it be that there are issues between Rossi and Gauloises that have nothing to do with tobacco? Does Gauloises rub Rossi the wrong way?
Or is it that Yamaha believed that Rossi would put together his own sponsor package with Alice (the broadband internet provider of Telecom Italia), and Nastro Azzuro? There was even talk of McDonalds. Italian sources said the Alice deal was rejected because Rossi would be testing with Vodafone publicity on the Marlboro Ferrari in 2006. Is the Camel possibility being considered because, without a sponsor, the team will be short of funding?
The funniest and scariest theory offered by credible Spanish and Italian journalists is that Rossi, who loves the color yellow, wants to have a yellow bike and yellow leathers. The meanest theory is that Valentino wants the satisfaction of driving Max Biaggi from the paddock and taking his sponsor.
But, does Rossi really have that much power over Yamaha? Not if his people cannot provide the sponsorship that they believed they could. With the pre-season testing about to begin, even a huge company like Yamaha will not voluntarily choose to go without a sponsor now Rossi’s fantasy sponsorship package completely failed to materialize. And, although we will never get to see the document, Italian scuttlebutt always affirmed that Rossi had a clause in his contract allowing him to turn down tobacco sponsorship. So, does mean is that he could turn down one tobacco but accept another? My guess is that Yamaha, notionally developing two bikes at the same time, the 2006 990cc version of the M1 and the new 800cc bike for 2007, must have told Rossi that, since the cavalry of multi-colored sponsors that Gibo and the rest of Rossi’s management promised was not on the horizon, it was time to get a sponsor on the bike. Obviously from Yamaha’s point of view, continuing with Gauloises would have been a lot easier and less risky.
Clearly, in light of the Altadis press release posted here, there has been no “amicable” (Altadis’ choice of words) settlement, the Yamaha-Altadis case will go to court, in which case it will be a couple of years before the first ruling and the start of the appeals process. There won’t be any Camel-Altadis case thought…tobacco companies are too busy fighting off public health restrictions. (There is a Spanish refrain that covers this… “Los lobos no se muerden,”… or Wolves don’t bite each other.)
A Sponsorship Crisis is not a Championship Crisis
One word that has been used a lot in the European press is crisis. But, in spite of the potential loss of sponsorship monies, the backbone of the MotoGP championship is firm factory support and long-term commitment. In reality, the championship, in that respect, has never been stronger.
If what is meant by a “crisis” in MotoGP is a situation that is leading to collapse and that places the World MotoGP series is immediate peril, then there is certainly no crisis in MotoGP. In most ways the premier series has never been stronger, but the times are precarious for the independent teams, those that pay leasing costs, buy tires and fill out the grid in this Godzilla versus King Kong extravaganza. However, the fact is that there are more full factory machines on the grid now than at any time in the history of Grand Prix racing.
The (temporary) fall of the house of Pons illustrates the trauma that MotoGP is going through now is a crisis of sponsorship for independent teams. (Who would have guessed that the first one forced to leave the island in this game of MotoGP Survivor would be the powerful Pons squad, owned by the President of IRTA?) In the full factory world of MotoGP the financial realities of three and a half million dollar machine leases and million dollar tire bills (if you are even allowed to buy from the brand of your choice) is taking private teams to the edge of bankruptcy and driving the last true independents into a subservient relationship with a manufacturer. That is not a crisis. That is Grand Prix motorcycle racing as it has become and as it will remain for a long time to come. It is called factory racing and market forces alone determine whether companies feel that sponsoring a specific team, whether a factory team on an independent one, is a good investment.
Dorna, Yamaha and Red Bull have come up with the funds to allow Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca to carry out the FIM-mandated work requested by riders and this will give MotoGP a strong foothold in the United States. Hopefully a window in the USA will induce new American and global sponsors to take a longer look at MotoGP team sponsorship.
But, how did Grand Prix costs in the premier class triple (according to most estimates) since 2002? Ask the rule makers.
The role of the MSMA
When The MSMA (Manufacturers group) got control of the rule making process they finally had the key piece of the puzzle. The fear that factories have in motorsports is that the federation technical director will wake up crazy one morning and ban everything they have spent years developing, or make them jump through hoops regarding inlet track diameters, tires, number of gear ratios…any one of a Pandora’s Box of bad surprises that cost factories money and time; sometimes it drives them right out of the championship.
Now the Japanese Big Four and Ducati, the full-fledged racing members of the MSMA, make the technical regulations.With Honda’s Suguru Kanazawa as Chairman of the MSMA, all factories are consulted, listened to and, even if they don’t agree with the majority decision, given ample warning of new rule changes. A couple of little-publicized decisions of the FIM make it clear that the general interest of the six are more important that the individual issues of members. Ducati would have likes to see pneumatic valve closing mechanisms banned, but Aprilia and KTM (only an observer at the time) have MotoGP engines with this systems and opposed the move.(The Japanese manufacturers, aware that the 800cc bikes might eventually rev over 20,000 RPM did not want to give away a proven alternative to valve springs either.) The MSMA did not ban pneumatic valve control. Honda would probably have preferred to keep their oval pistoned engine as an option, but since Honda hold patents that would give them a monopoly on oval piston technology, the MSMA banned ovals. And, after a two year transitional period, the MSMA banned two stroke engines.
The most controversial move the MSMA has made is the decision to reduce capacity to 800cc in 2007. They first approved a 900cc capacity limit for 2007 and then changed it to 800cc after bankrupt Aprilia’s Ivano Beggio passed the chairmanshipship to Honda’s Kanazawa. This move, driven by Kanazawa in the interests of safety, was opposed by the European factories at first, but finally Ducati accepted and Aprilia was only concerned about putting off the introduction of 600cc four-stroke prototypes in the 250 class. The move to 800cc caused new-comers KTM to abandon their V4 project. Rather than bothering with a lame duck 990cc, Ilmor, the engine-designers, went straight to work on an 800cc motor for 2007, though they still have no confirmed clients. If it is true that BMW are seriously working on a MotoGP motor, they too will have gone straight to an 800cc mill. And, while it is true that the 800cc high-revving four strokes will be yet more expensive than the big 990cc (“nothing beats cubes’) method of making 250 horse power, the fact is that the factories themselves are not complaining (yet, or out loud) about the anticipated costs, because they are the ones who ran up the ante.
There is a lot going on in MotoGP and not all of it is good, especially for the smaller teams, but is not a crisis when factory teams turn away sponsors who want to give them their money. It is a crisis when factories cannot afford to race because they have no sponsors to cover increasing costs. That hasn’t happened…yet. With Yamaha’s decision to sign with Camel, we now have the three most competitive factories, Honda, Yamaha and Ducati, fully sponsored. Honda even has it’s second factory squad, Fortuna Gresini Honda, sponsored as well. Suzuki have signed with Rizla, certainly for much less than the kind of money that Marlboro, Camel, Repsol and Fortuna pay. That leaves Kawasaki, who turned Camel (with Biaggi) down, as the only un-sponsored factory team.
With Yamaha now sponsored, six of the twelve teams have announced sponsors and we assume that the LCR-Cecchinello team (with Honda and Casey Stoner) will announce a sponsor as well…perhaps Carrera as with the 250 Aprilia team…leaving Kawasaki, d’Antin Ducati, Tech3 Yamaha. KR-Honda and WCM-KTM still un-sponsored, for the moment…not a problem for Kawasaki, apparently. Roberts also seems very close to announcing his partners, perhaps before the Sepang tests.
If you are running a private team, scrapping to find the cash to pay 2006 costs and dreading the cost of next year’s 800cc machines, you may be in crisis, or on the verge of one, but there has never, yet, been a time when prosperity reached the back rows of the Grand Prix grid as it seems to do in Formula 1.
These, however, are far from the worst years in GP racing.
You want crisis? I’ll give you crisis.
What about the 1968 season when there was only one factory bike in the 500 class and it won all the races? That’s when I came in.
I have been following Grand Prix racing closely since I saw Jack Findlay on a Norton Manx (a one-off Norton ride for the great Matchless privateer) lead Giacomo Agostini on the MV Agusta around beautiful, old Montjuic Park in Barcelona at the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix for 17 hair-raising laps. It was not only the first Grand Prix but also the first motorcycle race I had ever seen and after that I was hooked…still am. Unfortunately it was a 40 lap race and once “Ago” figured out a way to miss most of the manhole covers on the racing line, he cleared off to win by a measly 1 minute and 17.9 seconds, one of the closest races of that year. All season long no one finished within a minute of what the British journalists back then insisted on calling the “fire engine” MV.
That was probably the low point of GP racing. It was the year after Honda retired and paid Mike Hailwood not to ride. I got to Europe just a year too late. Everyone said the 1966 and 1967 seasons, with “Ago” and “Mike the Bike” battling in 500 and Hailwood winning in 250 and 350 on the incredible Honda in-line, six-cylinder four stroke, was the zenith of motorcycle racing.
I am sorry I missed it, though I did get to see the great years with Agostini up against Phil Read and the late Jarno Saarinen, and I was there proudly doing the advance publicity in Motociclismo before Kenny Roberts showed up in 1978 to take the 500 title in his first season in the big class. But, because I wasn’t there in 66 and 67, the tracks in the late sixties and early seventies seemed to reverberate with the echoes of ghost races.
In a way, I guess, I sort of clung to the idea that those Ago-Hailwood days were the supertime of Grand Prix racing, defending what I hadn’t seen against what I had…a kind of nostalgia for unseen, legendary days.
Then one day somebody dared to say at the start of the 2005 season in Jerez, the day before Valentino knocked Sete off the race line on the final corner to start his run for his fifth straight title in the premier class that this was “the greatest grid of riders and machines ever assembled.” (I think it was Sete, who being from the Bultó family, knows Grand Prix history and lore.) I found myself questioning this. How could a lot of people I know, knew as kids coming up, like Sete and Kenny Junior and old motocrosser Toni Elias’ namesake, compare with the gods of the black and white mid-sixties when titans like John Surtees, Gary Hocking, Mike Hailwood and Giacomo Agostini plus all the demigods from smaller classes still raced?
But, nostalgia and the ghost of the howling MV aside, the reality is that even in the very best of times in those pre-two-stroke days of yore there were never more than three or four truly competitive bikes on a 500 grid…and usually only two.
And at the first GP I saw there was but one, and yet I went away from Montjuic with my ears buzzing from the open megas of the MV and rooting for the underdogs…that is to say, Findlay and the rest of the field.
That really was a crisis because it was a time when one factory was cherry-picking world titles from a paddock of riders who owned their own bikes, worked on them, slept in the back of their vans and worked in the off-season to finance their racing, and it came about because the big and little factories that had driven Grand Prix racing in the early sixties did not feel they were partners with the FIM in the racing business. They raced when they felt like racing and withdrew when they felt like it.
In fact, the last major FIM rule changes, prior to the move to 990cc four strokes in 2002, was made way back in 1968 when 50s were limited to one cylinder, 250s and 125s to two cylinders and 350s and 500s to four cylinders. Those rules, which the Japanese factories believed to be directed at them to prevent such exotica as Suzuki’s three-cylinder 50cc, and Honda’s incredible 125cc five cylinder and their glorious little six-cylinder 350 and 500 bikes. Want to hear what you missed? Click on this: PLAY VIDEO - HONDA 6 CYLINDER START-UP (thanks to Chris Jonnum at RoadracerX.com for finding and posting this lovely link of a 1967 Honda six-cylinder 350 as ridden by Mike Hailwood and Ralph Bryans).
Glorious to see and hear and ride, and glorious today to think about, but bikes like these were nightmares for privateer riders on underpowered singles and small factories like Bultaco or Ducati trying to race in any class against inspired Japanese factories who justified their budgets as R. & D and had increasing sales to support growing budgets against European factories that were either in decline or too small to compete.
The backbone of Grand Prix racing, the four Japanese factories, are powerful enough to race with or without sponsorship, or so it seems. It also seems Ducati can sustain it’s vast, world-wide racing effort as long as they have Marlboro as sponsor, but the day they have to pay for the MotoGP effort the way their Japanese rivals do, that will be the day that Ducati turns back exclusively to Superbike racing.
Failure of the franchised team concept
If there has been a failure in Dorna’s planning it has been a failure of the five franchised teams concept. That idea has flopped. Only one of the original five franchised teams, Pons Honda, Tech3 Yamaha, d’Antin Ducati (and, first, with Yamaha), KR and WCM, has, as we stand now at the start of 2006, completely fulfilled the main condition of the Dorna-IRTA agreement requiring them to participate in each season with two riders. Ironically, with d’Antin entering a single rider last year, and both Roberts and Tech3 down to a single rider this year, and with Pons Honda withdrawing, the only team that has run two riders every season has been the least competitive of the bunch, WCM.
At this moment none of these teams has a sponsor. Roberts looks close to putting a sponsorship deal together. Tech3 seems to be counting on support from Yamaha and a combination of product and support from Dunlop. D’ Antin, with no sponsor yet, seems more confident than anyone. Finally, WCM apparently have KTM engines but no sponsor yet to help to run the team.
The fact is that Camel came calling with money, maybe as much as 10 million euros (12K), but neither Kawasaki, un-sponsored, nor Suzuki, lightly sponsored, could find a way to accept Camel money if it meant introducing a third rider. Was that because the third rider was Max Biaggi, banished from Honda and cursed in all Japanese factories out of solidarity, or was it just because serious racing teams at this level can’t just add a third rider when they have already decided how many prototype motorcycles to build?
MotoGP, the last of the “Blue Sky Prototype” championships
There are really just two basic forms of motorsport, though with many shades: Production-derived racing and “Blue Sky Prototype” racing (a phrase spoken to me once by a Honda engineer to describe the ideal think-tank race design environment where almost everything is permitted, where almost nothing is prohibited.
The test for the MSMA and Dorna will be to prevent the performance of these “Blue Sky Prototypes” from making existing tracks obsolete and from letting costs skyrocket to the point that even some of the factories cannot afford to continue. And, after the tobacco sponsors have gone, there will be others to replace them, but, unlike production-derived Superbike, where factory participation is no longer necessary to keep the show rolling, the success of MotoGP now depends upon the manufacturers, and primarily the Japanese factories, continuing to participate.
As long as they feel they are partners with the FIM and Dorna in this venture, as long as they control the technical regulations and as long as, among themselves, they prevent any one factory from running away from the rest, MotoGP will avoid a major crisis, like the almost total meltdown of 1968 or the dismal 1991 season, just before Dorna came on the scene, when only 13 machines started the Austrian GP at Salzburgring and when only seven finished on the lead lap. (It was Yamaha, at the insistence of Kenny Roberts, who staved off that crisis by supplying bikes to ROC and Harris and to the back-door Roberts-Budweiser effort for Randy Mamola’s last season…which included a podium finish at Hungaroring. Yamaha also provided selfless assistance to Cagiva to keep the red Italian bikes running and felt a certain satisfaction when Eddie Lawson won the Hungarian GP for Cagiva.)
With Formula 1 going to an 2.5 liter V8 configuration in 2006 and to a single brand of control tire in 2007, the MotoGP class with it’s 800cc engines unlimited to any specific number of cylinders and handicapped only by minimum weight, and with an all-out, no-holds-barred, old-fashioned tire war still raging as Michelin holds off Bridgestone and Dunlop increases its commitment and the number of team supplied, the world’s premier class of motorcycle racing looks like becoming the world’s last and most ferocious true Blue Sky Prototype war.
We should see new sponsors coming into the paddock in 2007, and maybe BMW and Ilmor-powered bikes too. Dorna tried the franchise system and it didn’t work. The new plan is for each participating factory to enter two teams and four bikes, with the remainder of the ideal 24-rider grid taken up either by new factories running complete bikes or by constructor teams, like Team Roberts and WCM running engines bought from the participating manufacturers…like what we’ll be seeing with the KR-Honda and WCM-KTM machines in 2006.
I needed to get Kenny Roberts Senior’s opinion on this and I caught him getting ready to leave for England and in the final stages of putting his sponsorship and tire deals together. He didn’t feel the sky was falling either, not even with the retirement of the Pons Honda team, but when I said that the sponsors were turned away because they weren’t allowed to select the riders, he had his own take on the Gauloises-Telefonica-Camel saga, “For the chickenfeed they spend in relation to what it costs the factories and in relation to the world-wide exposure they get for it, they just don’t pay anywhere near enough. If somebody comes along with 30 million for a factory team and wants to bring a rider, Max or anybody else, that will be a different thing. There is stuff we need to improve on. But the Championship will get through this sponsorship situation just fine, like it had before, and it is going to get bigger, but some guys are gonna get left behind. That’s racing.”
I hope he’s right, and so does he.
Post Script on Max Biaggi and Alex Barros:
Reports from Europe say that Ducati reluctantly turned down Biaggi because, at this late date, they were unable to supply and run an additional rider in the World Superbike Championship.
Likewise Suzuki Alstare are saying they cannot run an additional rider and bikes, but it now seems possible/probably that Yukio Kagayama (one win and eight podiums in SBK in 2005) may return to the British Superbike Championship where Spain’s Gregorio Lavilla on the Airwaves Ducati surprisingly took the title in 2005 in spite of full factory participation by both Suzuki and Honda.
If this happens, the Alstare Corona Extra Suzuki would run both reigning Superbike World Champion Troy Corser and four time World 250 Champion and MotoGP star Max Biaggi on GSX-R 1000 K6s.
Finally, the Klaffi Honda deal fro Alex Barros has not yet come completely together. Honda Europe are still hoping to get Biaggi to change his mind and ride with the Ten Kate Honda team, but if this doesn’t happen and the Barros deal with Klaffi is not immediately done, Honda Europe and Ten Kate are looking at bringing Barros into the Dutch team as team mate to 2004 World Superbike Champion James Toseland.
This could result in 2003 World Supersport Champion Karl Muggeridge moving to the Klaffi Honda team, unless Garret and Ronald Ten Kate have changed their minds and feel they can run three Superbike riders out of the same garage along with two Supersport riders.
THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: How to drive off pesky sponsors (Or, Take your 50 Million and Shove it!) Part 1 of 4
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/2/2006
What is really going on in MotoGP that makes it in anyone’s interest to drive away three huge sponsors whose combined spend with their teams in 2005 was around 50 million dollars? It is one of those subjects that defies simplification and, therefore, requires a concentration span of more than a TV soundbite or a quick magazine column. But if you really want to know at least as much as I think I know about all this, here goes:
In the spirit of Christmas, I held off writing this review of post season hostilities. Now, however, we can’t avoid looking at the extraordinary chain of events that finds MotoGP chasing away three major sponsors and all for the same reason…that being the sponsors want to choose the riders and the Japanese manufacturers have decided that that prerogative is now exclusively theirs.
1. French cigarette brand Gauloises wanted to sponsor Valentino Rossi but Yamaha granted to Rossi the right to reject tobacco sponsorship leaving Gauloises the absurd alternative of spending big bucks to sponsor a second” factory” Yamaha team without Rossi. Altadis, owner of the Gauloises brand, is threatening legal action against Yamaha Motor Company and withdrawing what would have been 20 million dollars in sponsorship.
2. Spanish communications company Telefonica Movistar wanted to continue in MotoGP with the Gresini team and with their three-time World Champion (2003 in 125 and 2004 and 2005 in 250) as their rider of the future alongside long-time Telefonica rider Sete Gibernau. But Pedrosa signed directly with HRC and HRC let their intention be known to slot him into the factory HRC Repsol Honda team. That infuriated Telefonica Movistar brass so much that they told Sete to go looking for a new home and withdrew a spend that was probably also in the 20 million dollar range.
3. Finally Max Biaggi over a long and frustrating season earned a place at the very top of Honda’s persona non grata list. Apparently Honda vetoed Max from any Honda-related MotoGP team and this Honda ban might appear to have been supported by Suzuki and Kawasaki as well…and maybe even by Bridgestone, leaving Max without a team in spite of the fact that Camel, with Biaggi as rider, approached Pons Honda and even Team Roberts (who will be using Honda engines) before offering their estimated 12 million dollar spend to Suzuki and Kawasaki. Suzuki already had a deal with Rizla, but how could Kawasaki, un-sponsored with two riders, refuse to make room for a third rider bringing at least half that 12 million to the team? It may never be completely clear if Kawasaki were really prepared to admit MotoGP’s pariah because Bridgestone told Kawasaki that they were unable to supply tires for an additional rider.
So, Camel wanted Biaggi and couldn’t find bikes for him, Gauloises wanted Rossi, only to learn that Yamaha had given Valentino the right to refuse tobacco sponsorship and Telefonica-Movistar wanted to continue with Honda and Pedrosa but found that HRC had given him to Spanish petroleum company Repsol.
There is no way to be exactly sure of the amount, but the total sponsorship spend of the three departing sponsors from the MotoGP paddock is at least $50,000,000 and that does not include what the three rejected sponsors, Gauloises, Camel and Telefonica-Movistar spent on trackside signage, hospitality and promotion.
Although I have followed this story since the original “false alarm” (when we first learned that Rossi and Yamaha were considering running in corporate colors without Gauloises in 2005) during the final months of the 2004 season, I really believed that some kind of last-minute compromise would be reached between Yamaha Motor Company and the Altadis/Seita company to allow Gauloises branding on the factory Yamaha M1s that will be campaigned by Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards in 2006.
The following press releases, issued recently by Yamaha and by Altadis, however, have ended any possibility of that happening. First Yamaha announced that Gauloises would not continue as the sponsor of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team, and shortly afterward Altadis responded, threatening legal action if a settlement is not “amicably” reached. (These releases were posted on SpeedTV.com but are reproduced here.)
Yamaha Press Release
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. hereby announces that Altadis/Seita’s sponsorship regarding Yamaha's Factory MotoGP Team will not continue after the end of the 2005 season.
For more than 40 years, Yamaha has successfully participated in the Road Racing Grand Prix World Championship and it has become the leading manufacturer of the MotoGP competition.
Altadis/Seita have been sponsors of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP project for the past three seasons under both the Fortuna and the Gauloises brands, during which time the companies shared two world championship victories in the MotoGP class in 2004 and 2005.
Yamaha will announce its 2006 MotoGP program in January 2006.
Altadis Press Release
As of today, Yamaha Motor Company has announced that “Altadis/Seita’s sponsorship regarding Yamaha's Factory MotoGP Team will not continue after the end of the 2005 season.” Yamaha’s announcement comes while the two companies are still in the midst of negotiating the terms of a settlement agreement that would amicably resolve the dispute that arose between them earlier this year. Altadis considers that Yamaha is still bound by a legal obligation that prevents Yamaha from collaborating with sponsors whose products compete directly with the Gauloises brand or with Altadis products for the 2006 season.
Altadis laments that Yamaha, even while acknowledging that “Altadis/Seita have been sponsors of the Yamaha Factory MotoGP project for the past 3 seasons under both the Fortuna and the Gauloises brands during which time the companies shared 2 world championship victories in the MotoGP class in 2004 and 2005,” appears poised to disregard the significance of the Altadis investment in that project.
In the absence of a settlement, Altadis will not hesitate to seek the appropriate legal remedies if Yamaha fails to abide by its legal obligations towards Altadis and the Gauloises brand.
In those “good old days” of 500cc racing the cost of leasing competitive Japanese machines finally climbed over a million dollars during the final years of the Doohan reign when only Honda NSR 500s were considered really competitive. During the late eighties and early nineties even teams that formed dynasties, like Team Roberts which, after Kenny’s retirement, won three 500cc titles with Wayne Rainey and a 250 title with John Kocinski, were more like today’s private teams than full factory teams.
Sponsors were a vital part of racing at the highest level, and all the major sponsors were tobacco brands. Look back in the coffee table books and you see them…Rothmans, HB, Lucky Strike, Marlboro, Ducados, Bastos, Gauloises…later joined by Fortuna, M.S. Chesterfield and even a few other small national brands.
With so much tobacco, the Pepsi Cola sponsorship by Suzuki and the timid initiative from Budweiser, backing Randy Mamola on a Team Roberts “back door” effort, offered some promise of a move to Grand Prix racing by more mainstream sponsors, but the bottlers and brewers withdrew, unable to match the budgets of the cigarette companies and, in some cases, uncomfortable as a minor player in a TV package dominated by tobacco signage both on the bikes and at trackside.
I am not sure whether the dynamics behind what is actually happening are not generally understood or whether a kind of inverse political correctness makes Grand Prix journalists reluctant to openly discuss the politics of tobacco sponsorship, without whose millions Grand Prix teams would never have survived the final decade of the two-stroke years.
The reality is that during the final years of 500cc two stroke racing, Grand Prix was losing its place as the world’s premier motorcycle road racing championship, being displaced by World Superbike. With no practical reasons to justify investing in two stroke development, Japanese factories and especially Honda, were pouring money and effort into wringing the most out of their 750cc four-cylinder Superbike engines.
For several years HRC was spending far more to develop the RC45 than on the obsolete NSR500. Likewise Yamaha was developing the five-valve R1 and Suzuki was concentrating on the GSX-R 750. The other two roadracing giants, Kawasaki and Italy’s Ducati, had no Grand Prix programs at all. Factory and satellite 500 teams were sustained by sponsorship from Big Tobacco.
But all this changed when the 500cc class morphed after a transitional 2002 season into the current 990cc four stroke prototype class. With the change came a sudden escalation in costs and, over the first three years of MotoGP rules, a change in the way factories make their decisions and how much leverage sponsors have in decision making. Suddenly the Japanese factories were fully engaged again and with huge budgets to throw into prototype development, while sponsors, accustomed to calling the shots and choosing the riders, were asked to limit themselves to painting fairings and trucks and running the hospitality units.
In Part Two of “The Idiot’s Guide to MotoGP”, we’ll discuss these changes.
THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: How to increase costs and decrease speed (Part II)
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/3/2006
It had never been completely satisfactory for Japanese competition engineers to throw all their effort into hot-rodding big street bikes because Superbike regulations required bothersome homologations and meant that in order to introduce any major innovations to either the rolling chassis or the engine, homologation of a new model for sale to the general public was required.
The move to four strokes meant that Japanese R & D departments could finally get back to blue sky engineering, building racing prototypes for the sole purpose of racing. It meant that costs of leased machines increased exponentially too. When the new rules were first adopted teams were told to expect modest increases in lease costs of 25% to 33%. Add a zero and you have the real increase…the days of the $800,000 to 1.2 million dollar lease have given way to a price tag of somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million (depending upon the level of machine and the amount of spares and maintenance included) for a couple of RC211V for a single rider.
But when the old GPMA (Grand Prix Manufacturers’ Association) finished its rule making and dissolved itself to become the MSMA (Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association), adding Kawasaki and Ducati, the factories no longer saw Grand Prix racing as a pointless exercise in revamping old, obsolete two-strokes with no commercial relevancy. Instead they were able to fly the banner of “racing improves the breed,” and suddenly the budgets from Superbike development were switched to Grand Prix and increased.
With the buzz from the new class combined with the blossoming of Valentino Rossi into a huge superstar, the racing became more intense and factories, especially Honda, were increasingly annoyed at having their racing plans impacted by sponsor’s preferences for riders of a specific nationality. They were now spending three times more, maybe four times more, and the increased TV audience and growing impact of the sport in major markets meant that racing directors wanted to be free to hire the rider of their choice unhindered by commercial considerations.
Cost increases were absorbed by the factories, but sponsors were also asked to increase their spending. As they did so the big sponsors, accustomed to have significant input in rider choice, expected their clout to grow
For years certain sponsors had insisted on riders from their market, a galling restriction for race bosses who cared only about lap times and results.
On the one hand the manufactures, who now control the rule-making and therefore control the future of the series, understood Dorna’s reasons for needing a “token Brit” like Jeremy McWillliams or Shane Byrne to bolster British market and mollify the BBC, or a German like Alex Hofmann to add interest in the German Market. 2003 World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson learned the hard way that becoming a “token Brit” on an uncompetitive machine is not a career move.
Weaker teams and beginning teams accepted subventions from Dorna to sign riders of the required nationalities, but the competitive factories, especially Yamaha and Honda, resented any influences from sponsors OR Dorna on their choices.
For Honda one of the biggest frustrations of 2005 was being unable to bring their two top riders together on a single team. That team would have included Nicky Hayden and Sete Gibernau, but Gibernau was contracted to Telefonica Movistar, the title sponsor of the Gresini Honda team.
With Gibernau on a notional “satellite” team, HRC turned to Max Biaggi and soon ran into trouble with the exigent and persnickety Italian…problems that ended in HRC firing Max and placing a virtual veto on his entry in any other Honda team.
We have discussed how Gauloises, Telefonica-Movistar and Camel were all three jilted when Yamaha, in the case of Rossi, and Honda, in the very different cases of Pedrosa and Biaggi, made factory riders unavailable to the sponsors prepared to sign big checks.
And this comes at a time when factory development costs are rising fast. Any factory team that truly has aspirations of winning must develop not one but two prototypes in 2006…first they must work to extract final and full potential from the lame duck 990cc bikes they will campaign in 2006 and, at the same time, they must develop complete new 800cc prototypes for the 2007 season…bikes that will, ironically, be slower and more expensive.
So, just when Yamaha could most use an extra twenty million, and when all the private teams and half the factory teams are virtually un-sponsored, Yamaha and Honda find themselves unable to accommodate Gauloises, Telefonica-Movistar and Camel.
Tomorrow we’ll revisit these three situations in a little more detail and also look to the future of the MotoGP riders moving to World Superbike in a Diaspora that could just make watching Superbikes more exciting in 2006 than watching Rossi run away with his sixth straight title in the premier class of Grand Prix racing.
THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO MOTOGP: The Devil is in the details (Part III)
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, Calif.*–*1/4/2006
They will be retelling these stories for years to come and at least one of these strange tales will probably be studied by the Harvard Business School along with other confusing classic imbroglios like “Ducati & Texas Pacific Group---A ‘Wild Ride’ Leveraged Buyout” (Currently available from HBS.)
Today Sito Pons announced that due to the withdrawal of his major sponsor, Camel, the two-times World 250 Champion and owner of what has been clearly the most successful satellite team in the history of modern Grand Prix racing, the Pons Honda team will not take part in the 2006 MotoGP world championship. Apparently his attempts to bring in Postal, the Spanish mail service, as a sponsor, came up short. (Even Postal would have preferred Biaggi, who got his first two-wheel training as a motorbike messenger in Rome.)
At the same time stories are coming out of Italy about a possible move by Camel to the factory Yamaha team of Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards…all this at a time when the two riders left without a ride due to the loss of sponsorship at Team Pons, Max Biaggi (who wanted to return) and Alex Barros (who wanted to stay) were both send scrambling to try and put together World Superbike rides.
Barros has just announced today that he found budget from “a global sponsor” (un-named) and Honda Brazil, and will ride in the Klaffi Honda team alongside young German Max Neukirchner. The bike will be prepared with full support from Honda Europe.
Biaggi has had very recent talks with Federico Minoli, CEO of Ducati Motorholdings (now controlled by the Italian investment group Investindustia who bought the shares owned by Texas Pacific Group holdings), with Francis Batta, owner of the World Championship winning Alstare Corona Extra Suzuki team, and with Carlo Fiorani of Honda Europe, the man in charge of support to World Superbike and World Supersport teams.
Ducati, with Troy Bayliss (riding for Camel Honda Pons in 2005) and Lorenzo Lanzi on the works Ducati Corse team and supporting the Austin Ducati team in the AMA, the Airwaves Ducati team in the BSB and also assisting the Carrachi Ducati team, with Roberto Rolfo, and the newly formed Sterilgarda Berik Ducati team which will be the new home from returning Superbike hero Ruben Xaus, probably have too much on their plate to make room for Max now in Superbike. In fact they probably feel they don’t need a rider who does not know the tracks or the bikes, especially after the very fast lap times put up in preseason World Superbike tests by veteran Bayliss and young Lanzi.
Barros, Bayliss, Rolfo, Xaus and possibly even Biaggi….a veritable diaspora of MotoGP talent…all displaced stars and winners with known names for the SBK posters and with strong fan support in their respective countries.
Now that we are up to date, let’s look at the details of the Camel decision to leave Team Pons.
Who Really Choked on the Smoke? Yamaha or Rossi?
The Altadis contract for Gauloises sponsorship that is still currently “active” would oblige Altadis to sponsor the “Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team” for two years, the already completed 2005 season and the up-coming 2006 season. Altadis signed this agreement when Yamaha had not yet confirmed Valentino Rossi (or Colin Edwards) for the 2006 season.
Sometime early in the season Yamaha notified Altadis that, although Valentino Rossi had signed to ride for Yamaha in 2006, the Italian would not be part of the “Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team” referred to in the Altadis-Yamaha agreement.
The idea was, then, that Gauloises would sponsor a “factory team” that did not include Rossi…possibly a team consisting of Edwards and a rider to be named later, perhaps even a French rider nominated by Altadis.
Needless to say Yamaha were unable to slip this sunrise past the Altadis rooster.
All hell broke lose in the Altadis offices and it wasn’t long before “Legal” was involved on both sides, but no suits were filed and still haven’t been as far as I know.
Yamaha’s Lin Jarvis kept mum, but Altadis’ executives were livid and spoke their mind. At the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi Dani Hindenoch, Communications Officer for Altadis reporting to Central Marketing Director Drago Azinovic, and speaking on behalf of Gauloises and Fortuna, two of the family of over twenty brands of tobacco owned by Altadis, told me, “The matter regarding Yamaha and Valentino Rossi is now in the hands of our attorneys and we are waiting for a response from Yamaha. Speaking frankly the situation is one that anyone can understand. Altadis agreed with Yamaha to sponsor the factory Yamaha team. It was understood that Yamaha did not have Valentino Rossi contracted for the 2006 season but it was understood that if Rossi signed it would be with the factory team. The possibility that Rossi would go to another team was an accepted risk, but not that he would ride for Yamaha on a “private” team. There are only two acceptable conclusions to this matter for Altadis: that Rossi returns to the Gauloises Yamaha team in 2006 or that Yamaha compensates Altadis. Until this matter is resolved satisfactorily all of our involvement in the MotoGP class, both as Gauloises and Fortuna, are frozen. Fortuna’s agreements in the 250 class are not affected.”
Hindenoch would not be drawn into speculating as to the motives behind Yamaha’s decision. The credible Italian motorcycling press carried several very similar versions. The most diaphanous version theorized that Valentino Rossi simply did not want to be associated with cigarette publicity and had included a clause in his contract that left him free to reject tobacco advertising. A more cunning version of the same story also said that Rossi’s contract included a clause that allowed him to reject a tobacco sponsor, but went on to suggest that Rossi had already signed some kind of agreement with Philip Morris in connection with the Ferrari Formula One team…either that he had already agreed to drive for Ferrari as a tester in 2006 or that his agreement extended to a full F1 driver’s contract for 2007…but in both cases with the stipulation that he carry no branding that would rival Marlboro.
The third and more conspiratorial version of the story is that Yamaha agreed to all this willingly because the Japanese members of the MSMA (Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association) had already agreed to wean their members from tobacco advertising over the next two years…honoring existing contracts but looking for any loopholes of escape.
But both these theories are blown sky high if it is true that some sort of discussions have recently taken place between Yamaha and Camel about the possibility of a Rossi-Camel-Yamaha team.
Could it be, and I am only speculating, that there are issues between Rossi and Gauloises that have nothing to do with tobacco? Does Gauloises rub Rossi the wrong way?
Or is it that Yamaha believed that Rossi would put together his own sponsor package with Alice (the broadband internet provider of Telecom Italia), and Nastro Azzuro? There was even talk of McDonalds. Italian sources said the Alice deal was rejected because Rossi would be testing with Vodafone publicity on the Marlboro Ferrari in 2006. Is the Camel possibility being considered because, without a sponsor, the team will be short of funding?
The funniest and scariest theory offered by credible Spanish and Italian journalists is that Rossi, who loves the color yellow, wants to have a yellow bike and yellow leathers. The meanest theory is that Valentino wants the satisfaction of driving Max Biaggi from the paddock and taking his sponsor.
The Camel Caper/ How Max became a non-person
The whole Biaggi affaire is so bizarre that anything seems possible. We’ll probably know who killed Kennedy before we learn what really caused Honda to, as the British say, throw their toys out of the pram (lose their cool).
The paddock story is that Honda became so angered by Biaggi’s statements to the press and, the Italian press suggests, by his verbal abuse of Honda staff, that they decided, after an especially acrimonious episode in Istanbul, not just to fire the four time 250 World Champion, but also to refuse to supply machines for his use to any of Honda’s satellite teams.
Biaggi carried personal sponsorship from Camel (Japanese International Tobacco) even after leaving the Camel Honda Pons team at the end of the 2004 season to join the full factory Repsol Honda team. Sito Pons had allegedly been told by Camel that they would renew their sponsorship with the well-established and successful Pons team only if Biaggi was signed for 2006.
Normally Honda HRC’s approval of a factory Honda rider moving to a satellite Honda team would be automatic, as when Barros moved from the Repsol HRC works team to the Camel Pons satellite team last year. But not this time.
In fact, even though he carried a considerable Camel sponsorship package under his arm, Biaggi was turned down by Suzuki. This was because Suzuki had already signed an agreement with Rizla (the Dutch cigarette paper company), but the fact that there were discussions at all indicates that some kind of accommodation might have been possible.
Things went further with Kawasaki until Bridgestone nixed the deal for a third bike for Max alongside Shinya Nakano and Randy De Puniet, stating that they did not have the capacity to produce tires for an additional rider. (A slightly more credible reason for Bridgestone’s refusal to supply Max might be the fact that, due to his peculiar riding style, Max heats tires less than other riders and that to develop a tire for Max would take Bridgestone down a path very different that the one that aggressive riders like Sete Gibernau, Loris Capirossi, Chris Vermuelen and John Hopkins prefer…but, on the other hand, Kawasaki’s lead rider, Shinya Nakano, has a style similar to Max and Randy de Puniet, up from 250, will probably also prefer a 250 style more like Max’s.)
Max also spoke to Team Roberts about the possibility of bringing Camel sponsorship to the team and riding as team mate of Kenny Roberts Junior on Honda powered KR machines. These talks did not prosper probably because of Honda’s objections to supplying RC211V five-cylinder engines for Biaggi. Or was it the tobacco thing again?
If there is an ulterior anti-tobacco motive behind all this on Honda’s side, why did Honda accept the Altadis brand Fortuna to sponsor the Gresini satellite team (Marco Melandri and Toni Elias)? Perhaps because Fortuna is not an internationally known brand and, therefore, is not a “blatant” tobacco sponsor…perhaps because otherwise Fausto Gresini would not have had the money to run this team and Honda would have had to bail him out in order to keep the young and talented Melandri on competitive Honda machinery. (Fortuna would not have gone to the team without Elias.)
Clearly there is more to Max’s sacking than simple dissatisfaction with his results. If the dismissed Honda factory rider had been fired simply because of performance, as was the case with Alex Barros at the end of 2003, no one in HRC would have refused an outstanding satellite team like Honda Pons its choice of rider. Clearly the Biaggi veto and its disastrous effect on the economy of Team Pons invite us to wonder. Tobacco is, after all, a legal product still, with growing restrictions and a very limited future, but while factory teams may prefer to move away from tobacco branding, it seems extreme that Honda would deprive a satellite team of a sponsor just to avoid distant association with a tobacco company when that same factory, Honda, will even continue running Lucky Strike branding on their BAR Formula 1 team in 2006.
Max must have done something or said something that constituted the straw that broke the camel’s back…no pun intended…and Honda fired him. It would never have been necessary for a secret meeting to have taken place between Japanese factory bosses where it was agreed that the veto of Max would include the Big Four. In a country where “non verbal communication” often means more than actual words, the message travels fast.
Honda Youth Movement
Or maybe, at the end of the day, Honda just decided that they had given the veteran riders a shot and it hadn’t worked. Now it was time to move veteran riders on. Barros, Bayliss, Gibernau, Biaggi and now Checa, all thirty-somethings with, in Honda’s view, their best days behind them, replaced on the Honda V5s by a new generation of fast and compact riders, Pedrosa, Elias, Stoner, joining Hayden and Melandri, and hedging their bet on youth by providing motors to Team Roberts for former 500 World Champion Kenny Roberts Junior to use in the KR chassis.
(If Honda were obliged to form a basketball team of RC211V riders in 2006 Nicky Hayden would be the big man on a team averaging about 5’4. And they’d probably win too, because only Honda has enough riders to put five men on the floor.)
I prefer to believe this is all just a Honda youth movement. But Camel rejected the option of returning to team Pons without Max and sponsoring young Australian Casey Stoner along with journeyman Carlos Checa.
It seems that Camel Europe has very specific interest in sponsoring an Italian superstar, not a kid from Australia and an ex-Marlboro veteran (Max was also a Marlboro rider, but several that was three seasons back). Left out of the Honda youth movement, rejected by Kawasaki and Suzuki and also by Team Roberts (due to Honda’s allergy to Max) it appears that Camel are still interested in staying in MotoGP and are talking to Yamaha. How ‘ bout Rossi for an Italian superstar?
But if Altadis, as they say in their press release, quoted here yesterday, really have language in the contract that obliges Yamaha to refrain from involvement with any sponsor that competes with Gauloises, a Yamaha-Camel deal can only be possible if some compensation agreement is reached.
So, do Camel and Gauloises have any pieces to trade on the worldwide monopoly board or does Japanese International Tobacco have to write a big check not just to Yamaha Motor Company but also to Altadis/Seita?
Let’s go on to something a lot more simple…as simple as two Spanish companies fighting over a Spanish superstar in the making.
The Telefonica-Movistar Saga
Honda HRC signed a contract with Telefonica-Movistar’s MotoGP rider of the future, two times and current 250 World Champion Dani Pedrosa, and agreed to assign him to the Repsol Honda team as team mate of American Nicky Hayden. This angered Telefonica Movistar, the company that ran the talent search Movistar Cup that discovered Pedrosa and developed his talent in 125 with former GP 500 star Alberto Puig as mentor.
Their idea was to bring Dani into the Telefonica Movistar Honda Gresini team along with Sete Gibernau, but Honda had decided to go back to their old game plan of concentrating almost exclusively on the one true HRC factory team…and this was a condition of Repsol’s renewal. Repsol executives say that they signed on with HRC as sponsors of the “factory team” with reason to believe that Pedrosa would be signed by HRC, but with no language in the contract that assured this.
A verbal, then, is all they had at that time, and perhaps a letter of intent.
Honda had tried last year and continued to try early this year to get Repsol and Telefonica Movistar to work together, with Telefonica Movistar as secondary sponsor on the Repsol team and perhaps with Repsol as secondary sponsor on the Gresini Telefonica team. Past attempts to work together had poisoned the well and it was soon clear to HRC that this would not work. Then, before the final Repsol – HRC deal was signed, Telefonica-Movistar executives made Honda their famous “offer they can’t refuse” which consisted in tacking on a few million more, hoping Honda would break allegiance with the sponsor that they have worked with since 1995, the year of Doohan’s second title.
Fat chance. Honda is a tough company to deal with but they are they known to be loyal. I remember Soichiro Honda wearing a Rothmans Honda jacket at the Spanish GP at Jarama in 1985, instead of the generic Honda uniform. It was an extraordinary thing at the time and set Honda policy toward sponsors based on close ties and long term relationships.
Unable to displace Repsol, Telefonica made one last run at Repsol but Honda had informed Repsol of Telefonica’s attempted end run and a Reposl executive told the Spanish press at Catalunya, “We will always talk to other companies, but it is difficult to negotiate with a company that tried unsuccessfully to take our place with a team we have sponsored for ten years.
Telefonica Movistar, foiled again, decided to pull out, announcing this on the very day that Pedrosa won his third world title in three years at Phillip Island, Australia. (Pedrosa won the 125 title in 2003 and has taken back-to-back 250 titles, always riding in Telefonica-Movistar blue.)
Antonio Lombardia, Sponsorship Director of the Spanish phone and cell phone company, admitted that, following the breakdown of the Repsol-Honda talks, he has discussed the possibility of moving in to take the place of Gauloises in the factory Yamaha team, but had declined saying, “Our involvement with Rossi would only be for a single season and then we imagine that he would join Ferrari where one of the sponsors is our direct rival Vodafone. We want more than a one-year involvement.”
Instead Telefonica decided to concentrate their motorsports sponsorship exclusively in Formula 1 and on Renault’s new World Champion and Spanish national hero Fernando Alonso.
Ironically, however, Alonso has signed with McLaren Mercedes for 2007 and with Vodafone as the new sponsor…meaning that another Spanish superstar will leave Telefonica after the 2006 season just as Pedrosa left them at the end of this season.
While six of the eleven MotoGP teams are still un-sponsored as we move into 2006, three big sponsors with the firm desire to continue with specific riders have been shunned and driven away.
What is really happening here, I believe, is that the Japanese manufacturers are sending a strong message that sponsors are welcome to back teams, but not to choose riders. It is also clear that, in spite of efforts by Dorna to prolong the agony of the death of tobacco sponsorship in televised motorsport, the Japanese MSMA members have decided to discourage tobacco advertising. (Remember, the Winston-sponsored Ten Kate Honda team in World Superbike has no direct contact with Honda HRC and is backed by Honda Europe, outside the sphere of influence of the MSMA.)
It was a Honda HRC executive who, off the cuff at a Tokyo press dinner in 2004, said it best: “With the amount of money that MotoGP costs, the contributions of the sponsors are like tips.”
That sentence takes on an even deeper meaning when you take into consideration the fact that Japanese culture, unlike that of every other country that racing has taken me to over the last thirty years, does not solicit, welcome or, in most cases, even accept tips.
Meet you here soon for the fourth and final part
The Idiots’ Guide to MotoGP, part IV
Written by: Dennis Noyes
Borrego Springs, CA*–*1/9/2006
Crisis? What Crisis?
As discussed in Part III of this series, Camel, frustrated at every turn in its attempts to land a berth with Honda or anyone else for Max Biaggi, had turned attentions to the Camel Yamaha team. This seemed impossible at first, impossible because of the conditions of the Yamaha-Altadis agreement and because of the romantic notion (weakened by Rossi’s Marlboro-Ferrari involvement) that the Valentino Rossi did not want to be sponsored by a tobacco company. Or was it just that he didn’t want to be sponsored by Gauloises?
Thus ran last minute speculation (guessing) from Part III:
Could it be that there are issues between Rossi and Gauloises that have nothing to do with tobacco? Does Gauloises rub Rossi the wrong way?
Or is it that Yamaha believed that Rossi would put together his own sponsor package with Alice (the broadband internet provider of Telecom Italia), and Nastro Azzuro? There was even talk of McDonalds. Italian sources said the Alice deal was rejected because Rossi would be testing with Vodafone publicity on the Marlboro Ferrari in 2006. Is the Camel possibility being considered because, without a sponsor, the team will be short of funding?
The funniest and scariest theory offered by credible Spanish and Italian journalists is that Rossi, who loves the color yellow, wants to have a yellow bike and yellow leathers. The meanest theory is that Valentino wants the satisfaction of driving Max Biaggi from the paddock and taking his sponsor.
But, does Rossi really have that much power over Yamaha? Not if his people cannot provide the sponsorship that they believed they could. With the pre-season testing about to begin, even a huge company like Yamaha will not voluntarily choose to go without a sponsor now Rossi’s fantasy sponsorship package completely failed to materialize. And, although we will never get to see the document, Italian scuttlebutt always affirmed that Rossi had a clause in his contract allowing him to turn down tobacco sponsorship. So, does mean is that he could turn down one tobacco but accept another? My guess is that Yamaha, notionally developing two bikes at the same time, the 2006 990cc version of the M1 and the new 800cc bike for 2007, must have told Rossi that, since the cavalry of multi-colored sponsors that Gibo and the rest of Rossi’s management promised was not on the horizon, it was time to get a sponsor on the bike. Obviously from Yamaha’s point of view, continuing with Gauloises would have been a lot easier and less risky.
Clearly, in light of the Altadis press release posted here, there has been no “amicable” (Altadis’ choice of words) settlement, the Yamaha-Altadis case will go to court, in which case it will be a couple of years before the first ruling and the start of the appeals process. There won’t be any Camel-Altadis case thought…tobacco companies are too busy fighting off public health restrictions. (There is a Spanish refrain that covers this… “Los lobos no se muerden,”… or Wolves don’t bite each other.)
A Sponsorship Crisis is not a Championship Crisis
One word that has been used a lot in the European press is crisis. But, in spite of the potential loss of sponsorship monies, the backbone of the MotoGP championship is firm factory support and long-term commitment. In reality, the championship, in that respect, has never been stronger.
If what is meant by a “crisis” in MotoGP is a situation that is leading to collapse and that places the World MotoGP series is immediate peril, then there is certainly no crisis in MotoGP. In most ways the premier series has never been stronger, but the times are precarious for the independent teams, those that pay leasing costs, buy tires and fill out the grid in this Godzilla versus King Kong extravaganza. However, the fact is that there are more full factory machines on the grid now than at any time in the history of Grand Prix racing.
The (temporary) fall of the house of Pons illustrates the trauma that MotoGP is going through now is a crisis of sponsorship for independent teams. (Who would have guessed that the first one forced to leave the island in this game of MotoGP Survivor would be the powerful Pons squad, owned by the President of IRTA?) In the full factory world of MotoGP the financial realities of three and a half million dollar machine leases and million dollar tire bills (if you are even allowed to buy from the brand of your choice) is taking private teams to the edge of bankruptcy and driving the last true independents into a subservient relationship with a manufacturer. That is not a crisis. That is Grand Prix motorcycle racing as it has become and as it will remain for a long time to come. It is called factory racing and market forces alone determine whether companies feel that sponsoring a specific team, whether a factory team on an independent one, is a good investment.
Dorna, Yamaha and Red Bull have come up with the funds to allow Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca to carry out the FIM-mandated work requested by riders and this will give MotoGP a strong foothold in the United States. Hopefully a window in the USA will induce new American and global sponsors to take a longer look at MotoGP team sponsorship.
But, how did Grand Prix costs in the premier class triple (according to most estimates) since 2002? Ask the rule makers.
The role of the MSMA
When The MSMA (Manufacturers group) got control of the rule making process they finally had the key piece of the puzzle. The fear that factories have in motorsports is that the federation technical director will wake up crazy one morning and ban everything they have spent years developing, or make them jump through hoops regarding inlet track diameters, tires, number of gear ratios…any one of a Pandora’s Box of bad surprises that cost factories money and time; sometimes it drives them right out of the championship.
Now the Japanese Big Four and Ducati, the full-fledged racing members of the MSMA, make the technical regulations.With Honda’s Suguru Kanazawa as Chairman of the MSMA, all factories are consulted, listened to and, even if they don’t agree with the majority decision, given ample warning of new rule changes. A couple of little-publicized decisions of the FIM make it clear that the general interest of the six are more important that the individual issues of members. Ducati would have likes to see pneumatic valve closing mechanisms banned, but Aprilia and KTM (only an observer at the time) have MotoGP engines with this systems and opposed the move.(The Japanese manufacturers, aware that the 800cc bikes might eventually rev over 20,000 RPM did not want to give away a proven alternative to valve springs either.) The MSMA did not ban pneumatic valve control. Honda would probably have preferred to keep their oval pistoned engine as an option, but since Honda hold patents that would give them a monopoly on oval piston technology, the MSMA banned ovals. And, after a two year transitional period, the MSMA banned two stroke engines.
The most controversial move the MSMA has made is the decision to reduce capacity to 800cc in 2007. They first approved a 900cc capacity limit for 2007 and then changed it to 800cc after bankrupt Aprilia’s Ivano Beggio passed the chairmanshipship to Honda’s Kanazawa. This move, driven by Kanazawa in the interests of safety, was opposed by the European factories at first, but finally Ducati accepted and Aprilia was only concerned about putting off the introduction of 600cc four-stroke prototypes in the 250 class. The move to 800cc caused new-comers KTM to abandon their V4 project. Rather than bothering with a lame duck 990cc, Ilmor, the engine-designers, went straight to work on an 800cc motor for 2007, though they still have no confirmed clients. If it is true that BMW are seriously working on a MotoGP motor, they too will have gone straight to an 800cc mill. And, while it is true that the 800cc high-revving four strokes will be yet more expensive than the big 990cc (“nothing beats cubes’) method of making 250 horse power, the fact is that the factories themselves are not complaining (yet, or out loud) about the anticipated costs, because they are the ones who ran up the ante.
There is a lot going on in MotoGP and not all of it is good, especially for the smaller teams, but is not a crisis when factory teams turn away sponsors who want to give them their money. It is a crisis when factories cannot afford to race because they have no sponsors to cover increasing costs. That hasn’t happened…yet. With Yamaha’s decision to sign with Camel, we now have the three most competitive factories, Honda, Yamaha and Ducati, fully sponsored. Honda even has it’s second factory squad, Fortuna Gresini Honda, sponsored as well. Suzuki have signed with Rizla, certainly for much less than the kind of money that Marlboro, Camel, Repsol and Fortuna pay. That leaves Kawasaki, who turned Camel (with Biaggi) down, as the only un-sponsored factory team.
With Yamaha now sponsored, six of the twelve teams have announced sponsors and we assume that the LCR-Cecchinello team (with Honda and Casey Stoner) will announce a sponsor as well…perhaps Carrera as with the 250 Aprilia team…leaving Kawasaki, d’Antin Ducati, Tech3 Yamaha. KR-Honda and WCM-KTM still un-sponsored, for the moment…not a problem for Kawasaki, apparently. Roberts also seems very close to announcing his partners, perhaps before the Sepang tests.
If you are running a private team, scrapping to find the cash to pay 2006 costs and dreading the cost of next year’s 800cc machines, you may be in crisis, or on the verge of one, but there has never, yet, been a time when prosperity reached the back rows of the Grand Prix grid as it seems to do in Formula 1.
These, however, are far from the worst years in GP racing.
You want crisis? I’ll give you crisis.
What about the 1968 season when there was only one factory bike in the 500 class and it won all the races? That’s when I came in.
I have been following Grand Prix racing closely since I saw Jack Findlay on a Norton Manx (a one-off Norton ride for the great Matchless privateer) lead Giacomo Agostini on the MV Agusta around beautiful, old Montjuic Park in Barcelona at the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix for 17 hair-raising laps. It was not only the first Grand Prix but also the first motorcycle race I had ever seen and after that I was hooked…still am. Unfortunately it was a 40 lap race and once “Ago” figured out a way to miss most of the manhole covers on the racing line, he cleared off to win by a measly 1 minute and 17.9 seconds, one of the closest races of that year. All season long no one finished within a minute of what the British journalists back then insisted on calling the “fire engine” MV.
That was probably the low point of GP racing. It was the year after Honda retired and paid Mike Hailwood not to ride. I got to Europe just a year too late. Everyone said the 1966 and 1967 seasons, with “Ago” and “Mike the Bike” battling in 500 and Hailwood winning in 250 and 350 on the incredible Honda in-line, six-cylinder four stroke, was the zenith of motorcycle racing.
I am sorry I missed it, though I did get to see the great years with Agostini up against Phil Read and the late Jarno Saarinen, and I was there proudly doing the advance publicity in Motociclismo before Kenny Roberts showed up in 1978 to take the 500 title in his first season in the big class. But, because I wasn’t there in 66 and 67, the tracks in the late sixties and early seventies seemed to reverberate with the echoes of ghost races.
In a way, I guess, I sort of clung to the idea that those Ago-Hailwood days were the supertime of Grand Prix racing, defending what I hadn’t seen against what I had…a kind of nostalgia for unseen, legendary days.
Then one day somebody dared to say at the start of the 2005 season in Jerez, the day before Valentino knocked Sete off the race line on the final corner to start his run for his fifth straight title in the premier class that this was “the greatest grid of riders and machines ever assembled.” (I think it was Sete, who being from the Bultó family, knows Grand Prix history and lore.) I found myself questioning this. How could a lot of people I know, knew as kids coming up, like Sete and Kenny Junior and old motocrosser Toni Elias’ namesake, compare with the gods of the black and white mid-sixties when titans like John Surtees, Gary Hocking, Mike Hailwood and Giacomo Agostini plus all the demigods from smaller classes still raced?
But, nostalgia and the ghost of the howling MV aside, the reality is that even in the very best of times in those pre-two-stroke days of yore there were never more than three or four truly competitive bikes on a 500 grid…and usually only two.
And at the first GP I saw there was but one, and yet I went away from Montjuic with my ears buzzing from the open megas of the MV and rooting for the underdogs…that is to say, Findlay and the rest of the field.
That really was a crisis because it was a time when one factory was cherry-picking world titles from a paddock of riders who owned their own bikes, worked on them, slept in the back of their vans and worked in the off-season to finance their racing, and it came about because the big and little factories that had driven Grand Prix racing in the early sixties did not feel they were partners with the FIM in the racing business. They raced when they felt like racing and withdrew when they felt like it.
In fact, the last major FIM rule changes, prior to the move to 990cc four strokes in 2002, was made way back in 1968 when 50s were limited to one cylinder, 250s and 125s to two cylinders and 350s and 500s to four cylinders. Those rules, which the Japanese factories believed to be directed at them to prevent such exotica as Suzuki’s three-cylinder 50cc, and Honda’s incredible 125cc five cylinder and their glorious little six-cylinder 350 and 500 bikes. Want to hear what you missed? Click on this: PLAY VIDEO - HONDA 6 CYLINDER START-UP (thanks to Chris Jonnum at RoadracerX.com for finding and posting this lovely link of a 1967 Honda six-cylinder 350 as ridden by Mike Hailwood and Ralph Bryans).
Glorious to see and hear and ride, and glorious today to think about, but bikes like these were nightmares for privateer riders on underpowered singles and small factories like Bultaco or Ducati trying to race in any class against inspired Japanese factories who justified their budgets as R. & D and had increasing sales to support growing budgets against European factories that were either in decline or too small to compete.
The backbone of Grand Prix racing, the four Japanese factories, are powerful enough to race with or without sponsorship, or so it seems. It also seems Ducati can sustain it’s vast, world-wide racing effort as long as they have Marlboro as sponsor, but the day they have to pay for the MotoGP effort the way their Japanese rivals do, that will be the day that Ducati turns back exclusively to Superbike racing.
Failure of the franchised team concept
If there has been a failure in Dorna’s planning it has been a failure of the five franchised teams concept. That idea has flopped. Only one of the original five franchised teams, Pons Honda, Tech3 Yamaha, d’Antin Ducati (and, first, with Yamaha), KR and WCM, has, as we stand now at the start of 2006, completely fulfilled the main condition of the Dorna-IRTA agreement requiring them to participate in each season with two riders. Ironically, with d’Antin entering a single rider last year, and both Roberts and Tech3 down to a single rider this year, and with Pons Honda withdrawing, the only team that has run two riders every season has been the least competitive of the bunch, WCM.
At this moment none of these teams has a sponsor. Roberts looks close to putting a sponsorship deal together. Tech3 seems to be counting on support from Yamaha and a combination of product and support from Dunlop. D’ Antin, with no sponsor yet, seems more confident than anyone. Finally, WCM apparently have KTM engines but no sponsor yet to help to run the team.
The fact is that Camel came calling with money, maybe as much as 10 million euros (12K), but neither Kawasaki, un-sponsored, nor Suzuki, lightly sponsored, could find a way to accept Camel money if it meant introducing a third rider. Was that because the third rider was Max Biaggi, banished from Honda and cursed in all Japanese factories out of solidarity, or was it just because serious racing teams at this level can’t just add a third rider when they have already decided how many prototype motorcycles to build?
MotoGP, the last of the “Blue Sky Prototype” championships
There are really just two basic forms of motorsport, though with many shades: Production-derived racing and “Blue Sky Prototype” racing (a phrase spoken to me once by a Honda engineer to describe the ideal think-tank race design environment where almost everything is permitted, where almost nothing is prohibited.
The test for the MSMA and Dorna will be to prevent the performance of these “Blue Sky Prototypes” from making existing tracks obsolete and from letting costs skyrocket to the point that even some of the factories cannot afford to continue. And, after the tobacco sponsors have gone, there will be others to replace them, but, unlike production-derived Superbike, where factory participation is no longer necessary to keep the show rolling, the success of MotoGP now depends upon the manufacturers, and primarily the Japanese factories, continuing to participate.
As long as they feel they are partners with the FIM and Dorna in this venture, as long as they control the technical regulations and as long as, among themselves, they prevent any one factory from running away from the rest, MotoGP will avoid a major crisis, like the almost total meltdown of 1968 or the dismal 1991 season, just before Dorna came on the scene, when only 13 machines started the Austrian GP at Salzburgring and when only seven finished on the lead lap. (It was Yamaha, at the insistence of Kenny Roberts, who staved off that crisis by supplying bikes to ROC and Harris and to the back-door Roberts-Budweiser effort for Randy Mamola’s last season…which included a podium finish at Hungaroring. Yamaha also provided selfless assistance to Cagiva to keep the red Italian bikes running and felt a certain satisfaction when Eddie Lawson won the Hungarian GP for Cagiva.)
With Formula 1 going to an 2.5 liter V8 configuration in 2006 and to a single brand of control tire in 2007, the MotoGP class with it’s 800cc engines unlimited to any specific number of cylinders and handicapped only by minimum weight, and with an all-out, no-holds-barred, old-fashioned tire war still raging as Michelin holds off Bridgestone and Dunlop increases its commitment and the number of team supplied, the world’s premier class of motorcycle racing looks like becoming the world’s last and most ferocious true Blue Sky Prototype war.
We should see new sponsors coming into the paddock in 2007, and maybe BMW and Ilmor-powered bikes too. Dorna tried the franchise system and it didn’t work. The new plan is for each participating factory to enter two teams and four bikes, with the remainder of the ideal 24-rider grid taken up either by new factories running complete bikes or by constructor teams, like Team Roberts and WCM running engines bought from the participating manufacturers…like what we’ll be seeing with the KR-Honda and WCM-KTM machines in 2006.
I needed to get Kenny Roberts Senior’s opinion on this and I caught him getting ready to leave for England and in the final stages of putting his sponsorship and tire deals together. He didn’t feel the sky was falling either, not even with the retirement of the Pons Honda team, but when I said that the sponsors were turned away because they weren’t allowed to select the riders, he had his own take on the Gauloises-Telefonica-Camel saga, “For the chickenfeed they spend in relation to what it costs the factories and in relation to the world-wide exposure they get for it, they just don’t pay anywhere near enough. If somebody comes along with 30 million for a factory team and wants to bring a rider, Max or anybody else, that will be a different thing. There is stuff we need to improve on. But the Championship will get through this sponsorship situation just fine, like it had before, and it is going to get bigger, but some guys are gonna get left behind. That’s racing.”
I hope he’s right, and so does he.
Post Script on Max Biaggi and Alex Barros:
Reports from Europe say that Ducati reluctantly turned down Biaggi because, at this late date, they were unable to supply and run an additional rider in the World Superbike Championship.
Likewise Suzuki Alstare are saying they cannot run an additional rider and bikes, but it now seems possible/probably that Yukio Kagayama (one win and eight podiums in SBK in 2005) may return to the British Superbike Championship where Spain’s Gregorio Lavilla on the Airwaves Ducati surprisingly took the title in 2005 in spite of full factory participation by both Suzuki and Honda.
If this happens, the Alstare Corona Extra Suzuki would run both reigning Superbike World Champion Troy Corser and four time World 250 Champion and MotoGP star Max Biaggi on GSX-R 1000 K6s.
Finally, the Klaffi Honda deal fro Alex Barros has not yet come completely together. Honda Europe are still hoping to get Biaggi to change his mind and ride with the Ten Kate Honda team, but if this doesn’t happen and the Barros deal with Klaffi is not immediately done, Honda Europe and Ten Kate are looking at bringing Barros into the Dutch team as team mate to 2004 World Superbike Champion James Toseland.
This could result in 2003 World Supersport Champion Karl Muggeridge moving to the Klaffi Honda team, unless Garret and Ronald Ten Kate have changed their minds and feel they can run three Superbike riders out of the same garage along with two Supersport riders.