During my time working in the MotoGP™ and MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship paddocks, only a handful of riders truly move the needle and do things that take your breath away. Casey Stoner was the man to watch when I first ventured into a Grand Prix paddock but I remember Cal Crutchlow telling the media that “the second Marc Marquez jumps onto a MotoGP™ bike, he’ll be the best rider in the world.
RAZGATLIOGLU TO MotoGP™? It’s a hard switch
We took it with a pinch of salt and assumed Crutchlow was exaggerating how good Marquez is…history has shown that he might even have undersold us on the Spaniard! Stoner and Marquez found new ways to ride their bikes and did things that other riders couldn’t do. They made the super-talented look ordinary. In the WorldSBK paddock, Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK) is the rider that has emulated this feat.
The Turkish superstar can do things that others can’t; he has an ability on corner entry that for much of the last four years has almost seemed like a cheat code! Toprak lives up to the hype and speaking to riders about him, they all say the same thing; he deserves a shot at MotoGP™. Whether he gets it will depend a lot on circumstances.
Yamaha gave him a two-day test at Aragon last week to assess whether or not he can make the switch. It was fitting that Toprak was on track with Crutchlow, who made the switch in 2011, to MotoGP™ from WorldSBK. The move almost broke the Brit and he admitted many times that he thought about returning to his production racing roots, such was the challenge of adapting to a prototype. That’s an adaptation that Toprak would have to make too.
LIN JARVIS: “It wasn’t easy for him to really the get the feeling on the bike”
Lin Jarvis, Yamaha Motor Racing Managing Director, didn’t beat around the bush when he spoke to MotoGP.com about the challenge: “Riding an R1 on Pirelli tyres and riding a MotoGP M1 on Michelins is very different,” said Jarvis from the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas. “You need more time to adapt. If I would sum it up, probably it was not easy for him to really get the feeling on the bike. If you watch Toprak riding a Superbike, he is able to do miracles, he has an incredibly good feeling on the front end in particular; we’ve seen that from his stoppies and incredible corner entry and braking. That was not so easy to find on the M1. The bike is much more rigid than the superbike, so really, I think to gain the speed on a MotoGP bike he would need to adapt his style quite significantly.”
Toprak’s area of expertise is the front-end confidence and generating tremendous braking performance with the rear wheel in the air. A MotoGP™ bike with a much more rigid chassis and aerodynamics is all about trying to maintain that rear contact in braking. If the rear wheel is in the air the engine braking doesn’t work. This is one area where Toprak would need to adjust his style.
MORBIDELLI’S PLACE AT RISK? Jarvis says he is “number one choice” for 2024, IF…
Whilst Yamaha gave Toprak two days on the bike and he would have learned a lot, it’s also been rumoured that at the Aragon test his riding position wasn’t optimised. This is something which he would certainly address if he was to move to MotoGP™ and can be a huge factor in performance. Toprak has the talent to switch to MotoGP™ and be a success but circumstances could work against him. Franco Morbidelli has had a miserable run of form in recent years. His top five finishes at Argentina this year are, until he backs them up with similar results, an outlier and to hear Jarvis talk about the Italian is clearly where hope rather than expectation is the key.
“The ideal scenario for us is that Franky continues to show the speed he displayed in Argentina. Our number one choice would be to continue with Franky but if not, we will be obliged to find another candidate and that’s also why we were interested to look at Toprak. The test was a chance for Toprak to start to understand better the needs for MotoGP™ and for us to see his speed. We can’t say very much from two days of testing. I think the conclusion he’d would probably give you and from our side as well, is that it’s very different to his R1 on Pirelli’s. You need time to adapt.”
CLOCK TICKING: Many factors, limited time – a big decision for the future
Time…it’s the one thing that riders don’t tend to get too much of these days. At Yamaha, the paddock rumour mill has linked them to Jorge Martin to replace Morbidelli. The Spaniard, a Ducati protege since joining the premier class, is already a race winner and established front runner. Would anyone blame them for taking Martin over Razgatlioglu?
Toprak has a major decision to make. Yamaha has a major decision to make. It could well be that they both make a choice that keeps Toprak off an M1, but could that also push him closer to another manufacturer? It’s always worth remembering that Toprak was once as close to Kawasaki as he is now to Yamaha. If he is offered the right opportunity, he could well look elsewhere. Toprak is the centre of attention once again, but he knows that the music stops very quickly when you’re looking for a seat at the biggest table in motorcycle racing.
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Source: WorldSBK.com