Yes, his dad was banned from the pits for always complaining (incorrectly) that Niall McKenzie got better Yamaha equipment than his son.
Yeah, funny how that worked out. Ruggia got to pick which of his two bikes he would run in the race after second practice, giving the rejected bike to Niall.
Yamaha did that at the Sepang winter tests to prove to The Ben that Rossi wasn't going to get better bikes. (before any bike was fired up, though. So not exactly the same situation, but close enough.)
Careless Chucka’ - both him and Xaus were cool cats in the paddock. How’s Lowes? Are the crashers in general mostly laidback blokes?
I hope they cool. If not, the people taking care if them and rebuilding their bikes wont do it for long.
So no one else wanted to update this one... I guess Ill have to keep doing it. 16/17 march 2019 Thailand Race 1 AB Race 2 AB
I have a question for those who feel that Bautista is proving that Rea was never good enough for MotoGP. This hypothetical scenario crossed my mind last night. Suppose they'd moved the top six MotoGP riders behind Marquez (let's be real here) to WSBK this year and given each of them the choice of a factory Yamaha or Kawasaki, whichever worked best for each. So the hypothetical 2019 WSBK field would be the current top 14 superbike riders plus those six new guys (I'm guessing Dovi, Lorenzo, Crutchlow, Rossi, Viñales, Rins, give or take a name or two, doesn't really matter so long as we leave Marquez out). Does anyone actually believe that Bautista couldn't win that championship on his Ducati V4? Go.
Rossi would win every WSBK race on an R6! Didn't he crush WSBK records on a fairly stockish R1 with a broken leg?
Any of them could win it. The likelyhood of him winning it would be greatly reduced, but he'd still have a chance.
This could be interesting… https://motomatters.com/analysis/2019/04/16/alvaro_bautista_the_excessive_cost_of.html I could see Miller getting a promotion next year, replaced by Bautista, with Petrucci replacing Bautista.
After tasting the factory team at PI last year and the way he's doing this year, I highly doubt the 34 year old Alvaro would go back to motoGP for Pramac. Then again, he doesn't seem the brightest bulb in the paddock.
This assumes that he wants to return to MotoGP. Maybe he enjoys the big fish in a little pond situation and would rather continue to extract maximum financial gain and the concurrent celebrity status. Unless Ducati has options to exercise that don't necessarily take Alvaro's personal wishes into consideration.
Also.... why would they quit when they are winning? That’s not that much loot for a company their size. Look what they paid Lorenzo and Rossi to ride for them. If either of them had gone on a tear like this Ducati would possibly be cringing though.
I never understood stuff like that. It's like a company complaining about how much a salesman makes in commission. "we only payed the last salesman 30k/yr, and you cost 100k/yr. Therefore you cost too much". Failing to realize that 100k/yr salesman brought in more more revenue for the company..... Bautista dominating on the V4 is surely going to be a big boost to the sales dept that should more than cover the win bonus. If it doesn't than the jackass bean counter at Ducati who agreed to that contract needs to be fired.