Racing
at the front looks hard enough from the outside. That's because it is
hard. But sometimes the real struggle takes place at the back of the
pack, away from the cameras and reporters, and is so utterly insane that
it sounds impossible. Sometimes the rider is the victim. Sometimes the
rider is the cause. Sometimes the stars line up in such a way that
well-intentioned people make hideous mistakes. And sometimes hideous
decisions are made by people who - for perfectly reasonable-sounding
reasons - aren't particularly concerned about the well-being of the
rider on the firing line.
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Josh Brookes' talents are undeniable. He's the 2015 British Superbike
Champion and a podium-finisher at Suzuka in the 8 Hours. The SMR team,
which took Brookes to the BSB title, also is a proven winner. And yet
this season, when the team stepped up to the Superbike World
Championship, is a disaster. Brookes has only three top-nine finishes
aboard the team's BMW S1000RR and is languishing 15th in the standings;
teammate Karel Abraham, a MotoGP veteran, has done worse.
Brookes
told me at Suzuka that, to put it simply, the team can't get all of the
bike to work at the same time. The team loads software that doesn't
work with the other software on the bike. Imagine having to get on a
machine that the team doesn't understand. And Brookes really opened up
in an interview with an Australian website, revealing that he really
doesn't have a "team" in the traditional sense of the word. SMR runs the
chassis; BMW the engine and electronics, and each camp says what it is
doing is fine and the other side needs to change, long arguments ensue,
and the bike never improves. It's amazing the bike actually starts.
It's
hard to imagine something worse. But if you read the interview, Brookes
talks about his crew chief being prohibited from calling him in for a
tire change in the drying conditions at Assen. Brookes had a shot at the
win, but was forced to stay out longer than the other riders because he
was temporarily in the lead after other riders had pitted. "The
management says they ‘need the television time and leave him out
there,'" Brookes says his crew chief told him after the race. When
Brookes finally came in, the rear tire that went onto his bike had been
unplugged for too long and was cold and he crashed on the next lap. What
goes through a rider's head when she or he hears that? How do you even
show up for work the next race? And yet, you do, because if you walk
away from that situation, you run the very real risk of walking away
from your career.
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Sometimes the rider senses the oncoming decline in fortunes, and
desperate to reverse it, makes it worse. It is a spiral, tightening like
a noose, a python that slowly and painfully crushes a promising career.
Karel Hanika won the 2013 Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup championship,
winning half the races that season. He moved up to Moto3 with a
front-line team and struggled initially. Then he struggled some more. In
two years of Moto3 competition his best finish was a seventh. Dropped
by the Ajo Motorsports team, he joined Mahindra for the 2016 season.
Seven races in, he was pointless, and the team decided that continuing
with him was as well. Hanika found a ride in the Repsol CEV European
Championship in the Moto3 class. At the last round, in Aragon, he
demonstrated why his former crew members had nicknamed him "Gravel"
Hanika. In an overataking move that reeked of desperation, Hanika flung
himself into a corner and crashed, taking out two other riders. In 2014,
Hanika had a VIP ticket into the GP world. It's hard to see him finding
the entrance again.
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Louis Rossi, fired from the GMT94 Yamaha squad in the Endurance World
Championship after crashing three times in his first race, landed
another ride for the 2016/17 season. It wasn't nearly as competitive or
as lucrative, but at least he was in the game on the Tecmas Racing
Team's BMW S1000RR. But he never made it to the starting lights.
Incredibly, at the season-opening Bol D'or, in his first appearance for
Tecmas, Rossi crashed the BMW on the warmup lap, putting himself out of
the race with a concussion and delaying the start of the event.
Winning
is hard. Truth. But look down the field and there is a deeper truth to
be found. Racing is hard. And sometimes there's no reward at all.
http://www.cycleonline.com.au/2016/09/06/catching-josh-brookes/
http://www.cycleonline.com.au/2016/09/06/catching-josh-brookes/
