Repsol Honda's Marc Marquez (Photo: Dorna Communications)

Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Rossi And Márquez Will Provide “The Show”

If, by “the show” we mean tire-smoking slides and Moto2-type clusters of bikes overtaking and re-overtaking all the way, that won’t be happening for several reasons.

The need to conserve fuel will mean that programmers will seek to prevent what Greenspan would call irrational exuberance. The character of the Bridgestone tires will continue to accentuate corner speed and, unless some F1-inspired early degradation is introduced, tire management will only rarely be a factor.

I guess it is time to just accept that the kind of racing we saw when 500s still roamed the earth is not coming back, not unless we go back to pre-Gulf War I tires, carbs operated by cables, and short-fuse 500cc two strokes.

It seemed that Carmelo Ezpeleta was going to follow the path of his friend and mentor, Bernie Ecclestone, and seriously limit or even ban electronic rider aids, but he must have been discouraged by the lack of promise shown by the CRTs, and who could blame him if he were not frightened by the prospect of Honda withdrawing in 2014 and probably taking Yamaha with them.

The prospects for the 2013 season are exciting. Jorge Lorenzo, now a two-time world champion, will be joined by nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi in the Yamaha garage. For low-key Jorge it will be like rooming with the Beatles, but he was well on the way to beating Rossi in 2010 when the Italian crashed and broke his leg at Mugello, so he is confident that he will hold his place as team leader. Millions of Rossi fans are confident of the contrary and the inter-team rivalry promises to be at Gardner-Lawson or even Hailwood-Agostini level.

But the real question for both Yamaha riders is whether Honda, winners of eight of the last ten races of 2012, can be contained.

Dani Pedrosa will start his eighth season as a Repsol Honda rider. No factory Honda rider has ever stayed on the team that long without winning a title, but the little Spaniard is coming off his best season and won seven races, one more than Lorenzo, easily the most Pedrosa has ever won in a single season in the premier class.

And, like Lorenzo, Pedrosa has a teammate to be concerned about. Marc Márquez looks like the real deal, but he will have a lot to live up to if he is to equal the rookie year performances of his two fellow countrymen.

Pedrosa was second in his MotoGP debut in 2006 and won his fourth time out, finishing his rookie season fifth with two wins.

Lorenzo, who made his MotoGP debut in 2008, started his very first premier class race from the pole, equaled Pedrosa by taking second first time out and bettered him by winning his third time out. He had only a single win, suffering a rash of mid-season crashes, but did finish fourth overall.

When Pedrosa and Lorenzo came into the big class there were four manufactures and three of them, Honda, Yamaha and Ducati, were clearly competitive. Márquez enters a narrower field now that Ducati seems likely to be off the pace.

Assuming Dorna is satisfied with the prices and availability of the additional bikes from Honda and engines from Yamaha for 2014, and that Ducati recover from the last two dismal seasons, the prospects for 2014 and the future seem good.

As a preface to my interview with Shuhei Nakamoto in Malaysia, I compared the move toward the Valencia deadline between Dorna and the MSMA as a potential “Cuban Missile Crisis” event, and, just as that potential MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) scenario of October 1962 was averted by some secret agreements (the Jupiters deployed in Turkey and Italy were taken out and the US agreed never to invade Cuba), Ezpeleta and Nakamoto had already come, one-on-one, to an understanding prior to the deadline. (Ezpeleta and Nakamoto pride themselves on having conceived the Moto3 class during their frequent, private meetings.)

Honda will stay. Dorna will not limit electronics or impose a rev limit, and Honda and Yamaha will agree to fill out the grid with “respectable” (as opposed to CRT) machinery.

There was palpable relief in the Media Center in Valencia when the FIM release came out with the conditions of the Dorna-MSMA compromise. Maybe both sides, those who wanted a ban on electronic aids and a 15,500 RPM rev limit and those who wanted a totally open “blue sky” prototype series, each knew in their respective guts that neither extreme would work.

Now, as we concentrate of the up-coming four-way battle for the title in 2013 and hope that 2006 World Champion Nicky Hayden, finally the established #1 rider on his team, will be able to lead Ducati back to the lead group, the final details, where the devil is said to lurk, will be worked out prior to Qatar.

Let’s see how long peace in our time lasts this time.