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Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki's Ben Spies and crew chief Tom Houseworth (Photo: Brian J Nelson) ยป More Photos
Note: In Part I Dennis Noyes looked at the history and current status of American riders in premier class Grand Prix racing.
The advantage of the 125 and 250 riders is that they know the circuits and are already comfortable with the MotoGP life before they ever get on a MotoGP bike. The last rider to move directly from a national championship to MotoGP without doing the two-stroke apprenticeship was Nicky Hayden. But Hayden, thanks to the muscle of American Honda, was thrust (against HRC’s will) into the full-factory MotoGP team and as inconspicuous second rider in the long shadow of Valentino Rossi.
Hayden, who was 21 when he came to MotoGP after winning his first AMA Superbike title in 2002, won his first GP in his third year in the class and took the title in his fourth season. And as ‘reward’ Honda built an absurdly compact RC212V that did not fit their World Champion. Honda even admitted this and denied that, after Spencer, they had ever built their machines to suit the special requirements of their top rider -- as if the NSR500 was not ‘Doohan’s
Spies will make his MotoGP debut at Laguna Seca at age 24 and would join the series as a regular in 2009. He will have either two or three AMA Superbike titles under his belt. Hayden went from American Honda to the factory HRC team. Spies rides for American Suzuki, and might replace Loris Capirossi on the factory Suzuki team and join former World Supersport Champion (and World Superbike runner-up) Chris Vermeulen. But, when Hayden joined Honda, the Repsol Honda RC211V was clearly the best in class. The Rizla Suzuki GSV-R, by contrast, has had a single win (taken by Vermeulen in the rain last year at Le Mans) and is not yet considered competitive.
Like Hayden, Spies will have to learn new circuits and accustom himself to the lighter MotoGP machines. Unlike Hayden, who moved from a twin cylinder Honda RC51 to a much more powerful five-cylinder RC211V (with probably 40 HP more and much more sophisticated electronics), Spies would ironically find himself riding a machine that has equivalent and perhaps even less power than his current Yoshimura GSX-R 1000.
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