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The winter of MotoGP and F1 is coming to an end, and everything is now ready for a return to the track. MotoGP will resume real action at the end of February, with Superbike as a tasty appetizer this weekend at Phillip Island, while the premier class of car racing still has its testing to go through, but we are almost there now. What has become clear in recent weeks is that while the two disciplines are similar in some respects in their use of a powered vehicle and high speeds, they have now gone their separate ways.
The Circus' hiatus has been total. It's not a statement, not a rumour, nor a comment; on the contrary, the top class of motorcycle racing has offered more excitemtn with its private tests and launches that began as early as January. And it is precisely regarding the unveiling of the bikes and the single-seaters that the difference became marked.
The teams entered in the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP championships gradually showed the world the tools with which they will contest the new season and their respective riders, while F1 denied itself the pleasure of being unusual by giving life to a collective event that smacked of utter farce as, in London on Tuesday, February 18, everyone could see mainly the new liveries. With a few exceptions such as Ferrari, which waited until after the evening to show the SF25, while the real cars will be seen in no particular order mostly in the context of filming days, those days dedicated to commercial purposes where a maximum of 100 km can be covered, or again only at the first GP scheduled for Australia in mid-March.
Although the Circus of the 1990s had accustomed us to lofty presentations with show-biz guests, what went on in the UK capital had that whiff of Americana that now permeates a sport that was born and became world famous in Europe. It's impossible not to make a comparison with Ducati MotoGP, which chose to continue with tradition in Madonna di Campiglio to showcase the GP25 and the brand-new duo of Bagnaia-Marquez, an event that continues along the lines of the legendary WROOOM of Marlboro memory.
What we were able to observe last night, however, was a bare bones spectacle, presented by a comedian, with a mob of U.S. guests and musical interludes that felt like we were at the Super Bowl, and there was even a shameless promo for the movie dedicated to the racing car series featuring Hollywood's Brad Pitt as the main star. The teams were simply allotted seven minutes each, but the feeling was that they attended an event where F1 was a guest and not a protagonist, having been eradicated from its essence. That may be one reason why many of the drivers appeared dazed once they were called onto the stage of the iconic O2 arena, which usually hosts pop and rock concerts.
In short, this is Liberty Media's recipe for getting the sport everywhere, i.e. throw into the fray a little bit of everything so that it can attract different fish into the net in terms of age and characteristics. One wonders if this will be the future that will also befall MotoGP. The hope is that it will not happen and that someone will stop the drift in time.
