Honda’s RC213V now tops the list of World’s Worst Carbon Fibre Contraptions (HRC has been accused of “sub standard engineering”). The brave titans who ride these beasts are truly heroes, but how can you tell if you’re one of them? Here are the top 5 signs.
1 Difficulty Counting
If you’re a Honda MotoGP rider, it takes you both hands to count the number of crashes you had in Free Practise. This is partly because the bike viciously spat you off so many times, and partly because by the end of FP2, one of your hands will be in a plaster cast and the other will have several broken fingers taped together. In fact, you’ll struggle to find more than 4 countable objects between both hands by the time you have to start the sprint race.
2 Your Autobiography Was Ghost-Written by Clinica Mobile Nurses
Normally when riders want to write an autobiography they have to spend months being interviewed by a top ghost-writer like Matt Roberts. Then it takes several more months for Matt to turn their disjointed, concussion-addled ramblings into a gripping page-turner.
As a Honda MotoGP rider you were able to bypass this long and arduous process. You’ve spent so much time chatting to the nurses in the Clinica Mobile after being suddenly and violently ejected by the RC213V that they were able to type up your entire life story from memory in between race weekends. (Even including that stupid table at the back that lists your results in Spanish Junior Moto3 when you were 14 years old).
3 Your Team Doctor Gets Busted by the DEA at COTA
The U.S. Goverment is a bit conflicted when it comes to drugs. First they encouraged Big Pharma to flood American communities with a deadly scourge of highly addictive painkiller pills. Then they told the Drug Enforcement Administration to start a completely deranged, knee-jerk clampdown that forced all the addicts onto lethal fentanyl and stopped people in genuine pain from getting any relief, as their doctors were terrified of serving 15 consecutive life sentences in a Federal SuperMax.
When your team arrives in Texas to race at the Circuit Of The Americas, the poor team doc doesn’t stand a snowball in hell’s chance of convincing the DEA that 2 Honda MotoGP riders really do go through enough painkillers in a long weekend to support 28 drug addicts for an entire year. Still, you can help out by showing the court your terrifying, RCV213V-induced X-rays and medical records. That should help the team doc to cop a plea bargain that sees him released in as little as 4 lifetimes plus 90 years.
4 Airport Body Scanners Explode When You Walk Through Them
Everybody knows not to put cutlery in the microwave. For much the same reasons, you should never put a Honda MotoGP rider’s titanium-reinforced skeleton through a body scanner. Unfortunately, nobody told this to the bird-brained rentacops who act out the security theatre at airports.
If the body scanner explodes when you walk through it, your hair catches fire, and foot-long sparks shoot out of your backside, then you’re certainly one of Honda’s finest. Luckily as the machine goes kaboom instead of beep, the rentacops will simply steal your laptop and wave you through to catch your flight.
5 Your Orthopaedic Surgeon Just Bought A New Speedboat
Orthopaedic surgeons are the envy of the medical world as they get to re-enact scenes from the Saw movies without getting dragged away screaming in handcuffs. If you dream of knocking people out with drugs then hacking up their skeletons with hammers, chisels and power drills then you’re a sick, sick puppy. But you could make some serious cash out of your perversion if you go to med school and specialize in orthopaedics.
Unfortunately, most celebrity surgeons are forced to spend loads of time treating complete nobodies for no money, just for the PR value. Re-attaching little Timmy’s head after he stuck it into a spin dryer might make the doctor look like a legendary hero, but it isn’t going to pay for the new Lamborghini that he has been lusting after.
No, what those surgeons really want is a top level sportsman as a patient. And proudly topping the list for emergency bone surgeries are Honda MotoGP riders. Those chumps have money to burn, grade-1 medical insurance and a delightful habit of breaking bones on a fortnightly basis. When your orthopod heard that you’d signed for a Honda team, he opened that bottle of vintage Dom Perignon that he’d been saving, toasted his good fortune with the cutest nurse in the hospital then went out to buy a speedboat.