MotoGP was rocked by the recent news that the Suzuki team boss Davide Brivio has decided to follow the money and leave MotoGP for pastures snooze, moving to the Renault Formula 1 car racing team, so let’s look at the options for his replacement.
Leaving an exciting sport like bike racing for the legalized narcotic they call F1 might seem like madness, but he’s gonna get paid, beeyatch!
Anyway, the likeable Italian is known for his smart thinking and his amazing ability to make a bunch of random people work as a team. When he was at Yamaha, he convinced them to hire Valentino Rossi (back when he was still awesome) leading them to win 4 World Championships with the yellow GOAT. Plus of course he headed the Suzuki team when they stunned the paddock to win the 2020 MotoGP Rider’s World Championship.
So, who on earth will Suzuki find to replace this legendary MotoGP team boss? We at MGPN have decided to run through the most likely contenders.
Carl Fogarty
It would be a lie to say that Foggy is likeable. In fact, calling him unlikeable would be like saying “The Titanic’s final voyage was somewhat eventful”.
However, Fogarty does have experience as a bike racing team boss. His leadership of the Foggy Petronas World Superbike team led to almost as much success as Bradley Smith has achieved in MotoGP. Which is nothing to be proud of, but at least he has been a team boss of some description.
Davide Brivio is known for his great people skills. Fogarty is the kind of person who can clear a room faster than a flatulent skunk with rabies. In fact, the only riders he persuaded to ride for him were a bunch of British also-rans and the quick Aussie Troy Corser, who is so laid back that he wouldn’t care if you set fire to his underpants when he was in the process of farting. But did we mention that Foggy used to have his own team in World Supers?
Pro: Team boss experience
Con: Personality as abrasive as 20-grit sandpaper
Kenny Roberts Sr.
Kenny Roberts Senior is a legend in MotoGP. He arrived back when the bikes were 500cc 2-strokes, and found them tame compared to the fire-breathing Yank dirt track bikes that he was used to. Credited with inventing the knee-down riding style, he won 3 World Championships in a row. Then, after retiring, he became a MotoGP team boss.
King Kenny is the kind of old school Californian that you might call a dying breed. Or more accurately, you might say that his kind of Californians are disappearing because they are all moving to places like South Dakota, South Carolina, Florida and other states where if you take a dump in a kiddies’ playground in broad daylight, the cops shoot you instead of escorting you to the nearest 5 star hotel and securing you a free room.
In his time as a team boss Roberts tried all kinds of insane things, like building his own chassis, building his own engines, and hiring his (now estranged) talentless imbecile of a son Kurtis, who spurred Valentino Rossi to make the immortal quote, “Riders who arrive 13th in Superstock should not be allowed in MotoGP!!!”
Pro: MotoGP team boss experience
Con: Likely to shoot underperforming riders
James Toseland
Although lacking in team management experience, Toseland is a motorcycle racer of some note. He won the World Superbike championship twice. The first time was especially impressive as his factory Ducati team were actively trying to sabotage his title run in favour of his barking-mad team-mate Regis Laconi. After failing to fit the paddock scooter engine into his bike, they gave him a smoking, clapped-out wreck of an engine that they had been planning to sell to Frankie Chili, but Toseland still took the title.
He won another World Superbike championship with the Holland-dwelling Ten Kate team, known for their ingenuity at building race-winning bikes despite minimal support from Honda.
We have to admit Toseland’s plus points. 2 World Superbike championships that were won racing wheel to wheel against lunatics like Troy Bayliss and Nori Haga are nothing to be sniffed at. He then got a crack at MotoGP where he was much less mediocre than Bradley Smith. However, he then had one of those Bridgestone highsides and landed on his head so hard that he took part in a further 5 races before regaining consciousness.
He is also a very talented musician who is married to a pop star.
So what’s the downside? Surely a guy like that must be exciting, right?
Wrong! Toseland is one of the most boring people on planet Earth. If you took an F1 car race, covered it in blancmange, slathered it in plain vanilla ice cream and painted it beige, the resulting mess would still be nowhere near as catastrophically dull as James Toseland.
Pro: MotoGP race experience
Con: Zzzzzzzzzz
Doctor Costa
Sometimes it’s best to think outside the pit box. So instead of hiring a team boss with MotoGP riding or team management experience, Suzuki should consider somebody who has been moving in MotoGP circles for years in a different capacity.
The legendary Italian surgeon Doctor Costa is best known for his unorthodox method of saving Aussie rider Mick Doohan’s leg by sewing it onto his other leg, turning him into some kind of deranged, mulletted mer-man. Utter madness it may have been, but it saved the injured leg and led to Doohan becoming one of the all-time legends of the sport, winning 5 World Championships on the bounce.
More recently, Costa has been complaining that Marc Marquez did not seek his advice for treatment to his mangled arm. The crazy Italian doctor suggested that instead of an 8 hour bone graft operation, surgeons should simply have chopped out the damaged bit of arm bone, stuck the two ends together and left #93 with one arm two inches shorter than the other. (This obviously proves that Marquez was absolutely right to ignore his advice).
Hiring Doctor Costa as a team boss might not bring much in the way of bike racing expertise, but it would certainly bring someone who could persuade the riders that one of their limbs falling off is nothing to be scared of.
Pro: Medical knowledge
Con: Insanity, lack of team management experience
Conclusion
These are clearly the four front runners for the Suzuki team manager post. It remains to be seen whether the tiny Japanese factory will do the sensible thing and hire one of these 4 nutters, or take a wild leap into the abyss and hire someone else.