The problem with signing riders before the season is over is that the new team has half a year or more to worry about whether it made the right choice. Signing a rider is always a stab in the dark, a bet on the future, and having time to wonder about whether you've made the right choice isn't always a good thing.
Last weekend's International-level races likely have allowed a few teams to sleep more comfortably, more confident that they have made the right choices. A few have got to be worried about their decisions. And one or two have got to be waking up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m., calling their lawyers to see exactly how iron-clad those contracts with the new riders actually are ...
Among those sleeping well likely are the Ten Kate squad that runs the Honda World Superbike Team. Nicky Hayden managed to squeeze one more front-row qualifying slot out of the aging CBR1000RR platform before it gets put out to pasture. Hayden is the only rider other than Chaz Davies on the factory Ducati and the two factory Kawaski riders to win in World Superbike this season, and he's made his teammate, the highly-acclaimed Michael van der Mark, look slow and inconsistent.
Hayden will be back for another season, alongside Stefan Bradl, a Moto2 World Champion and a guy who is overlooked mostly because he had the misfortune of competing against one Marc Marquez. With an all-new bike on the way and these two riders in their stable, Ten Kate has got to be comfortable looking forward to 2017. Taking the fight to the Ducati and Kawasaki teams is going to be hard, but it's difficult to think of two better riders that Ten Kate could have signed to head the charge.
Ducati's got to be thinking it made all the right choices. On the MotoGP side, signing Jorge Lorenzo was a no-brainer, and he's going to be motivated to make Yamaha look bad. Andrea Dovisioso's win in Sepang last weekend validates the company's choice to keep an experienced hand, skilled in tricky conditions, on board. On the World Superbike side, Chaz Davies and the Panigale look unstoppable. That means that week-in, week-out, Ducati will have a shot at the wins, whichever Marco Melandri - the crazy-fast or the just-crazy - shows up for work on Friday morning for Free Practice 1.
Suzuki's GP squad has got to be a bit worried. Andrea Iannone keeps falling off the bike, as he did again last weekend. (An aside: I am glad that Iannone won in Austria, because I honestly think it will be his only MotoGP win, and I wish that every rider who has the courage to grid up for a MotoGP race could experience winning at least once. Call me a hopeless romantic.) Alex Rins' performances in Moto2 have not been anything to write about of late. Yes, he's been injured. But playing hurt is part of this game. Suzuki has got to be wondering which Rins is going to show up in 2017; the one from the first half of 2016 or the second half.
Yamaha, interestingly, is the factory that has got to be losing the most sleep and spending the most time pouring over escape clauses in rider contracts. Valentino Rossi is still fast, but is making more mistakes than ever before to ride at that pace, and he seems to be struggling to find the magic he could pull out of a hat a decade ago. It's hard to see Rossi losing a race like Sepang if you wound the clock back a decade. And Maverick Vinales is fast but inconsistent, and Yamaha has to wonder if it's the Suzuki that Maverick rides or ... Maverick.
Yamaha's World Superbike team has to be even more worried than its MotoGP team. Alex Lowes has defined under-performing this season. When teammate Sylvain Guintoli has been fit, he has been Lowes' equal at worst and thoroughly thrashed him at best. After Guintoli came back from missing half a season due to injury, matched his teammate straight away and put the YZF-R1 on the box in Qatar last weekend, Yamaha had got to be wondering if keeping Lowes and letting Guintoli go was the right call. And who is taking Guintoli's seat next season? van der Mark, whose picture is next to Lowes' mugshot in the dictionary next to "under-performing."
By the time Phillip Island rolls around, every one of these observations may be proven to be incorrect. But that's a long way away, a lot of rest for some teams, and a lot of sleepless nights filled with cold sweats for others.
