‘Only in Spain’ again
The ‘Spanish motorcycle racing championship’ comes to a climax in Valencia this weekend, with national hero Marc Marquez on top of the pile. Whoops! Sorry – I meant the ‘World championship’, of course. The Spanish series is only called ‘the Junior World Championship’, at least in Moto3.
Forgive the confusion. GP racing nowadays is so Spanish, with four of 19 races on Spanish soil, slews of Spanish winners and most of the champions. And while one 2020 world champion is not Spanish, Dalla Porta is the first from Italy in 125/Moto3 since Dovizioso in 2004. If this seems like a xenophobic rant, please bear with.
I recall writing in 1987 under the headline ‘Only in Spain’ about events at the then newly-built Jerez. It was a hoot, a proper shambles: Sunday traffic jams so bad that riders ran across open fields in their leathers to arrive in time; telephone networks totally overwhelmed (a big problem for pre-internet journalists); local villages swamped by manic helmetless bikers intent on crashing into one another at high-speed; and, a crowning glory, a police car whose handbrake failed rolling into the crowd, causing several injuries.
Nearby a Guardia Civil policeman on a shiny horse, military-style uniform capped by the weird trademark three-cornered leather hat, paid no attention, preferring to remain spectacularly silhouetted against the skyline.
The article gained me little favour among the growing Iberian contingent but I like to think it had a small but important effect in the total transformation since.
It didn’t take long, for example, for Jerez to become a model among contemporary venues: the crowds got bigger but new roads and infrastructure were in place to cope, while small changes to track layout improved the racing, too.
New circuits followed: Montmelo outside Barcelona and, later, Motorland Aragon carried standards further forward in all sorts of areas, including safety.
Dorna took over GPs four years after the birth of Jerez and, along with wealthy, well-focused Spanish sponsors like Repsol and Movistar, started programmes to develop national talent. The first 500-class Spanish champion was Alex Criville in 1999, paving the way for Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Marquez and co.
From its own xenophobic beginnings, Dorna also became a forward-looking company embracing internationalism. Next year there will be 20 races, compared with 1987’s 15 while rider training has gone global.
Yes, motorcycle GP racing is overwhelmingly Spanish. But at the end of a great season, that’s overwhelmingly positive.
‘The first Jerez GP was a hoot, a proper shambles’