By Germán Garcia Casanova
The announcement of the withdrawal at the end of this season of Casey Stoner has revolutionized the market of drivers for next year and has returned to put on the table the future of the Spanish pilot Marc Márquez, which some point to as the new Valentino Rossi .
Márquez, without being Moto2 champion (at the moment), without being in MotoGP (yet) and without power, as long as he does not change the norm, make the jump to the official Honda team next season, it seems that he is the driver who holds the key to future of the world’s leading riders of motorcycling. The rumors, dimes and diretes are constant and the pools, endless. Even Stoner has named him as his ideal successor in HRC. But the reality is quite different.
At this point in the film, no one doubts that Honda will offer Jorge Lorenzo a multimillion-dollar contract to occupy the post that will vacate Stoner, a proposal that will be answered by Yamaha to try to retain him. The decision of the Mallorcan champion will depend, surely, on the relocation of the rest of the drivers. If the theory is true that Honda does not want to have two Spanish drivers in its ranks, the future of Dani Pedrosa will depend on Lorenzo’s response. Both are Spanish and if the Mallorcan comes, the Catalan must emigrate to another team. A change of cards with Yamaha would be the most logical, because like Jorge is the most coveted piece of the market, Dani is next.
In any case, whether it is the signing of Lorenzo or the renewal of Pedrosa, it seems clear that the first Honda HRC driver next season will be Spanish, with which we will find the same ‘problem’, the second, on paper , it can not be Marc. A Márquez who, in addition, is penalized by the norm that prevents a debutant driver from aligning with an official factory team, a law that the teams try to eliminate, but that Dorna and the FIM are willing to keep up against the odds.
Starting from this base, Marquez’s options are reduced to two: or to continue one more year in Moto2 (little possible, and less if he wins the championship, then surely not), or to run, even if it is the first year of his debut in Moto2. MotoGP, with a satellite equipment. That is, in some way, the spirit of the rookies norm, that at least a year some satellite equipment may have level pilots, novices, but level. The solution is not bad, as is being seen with Stefan Bradl, champion last year of Moto2 and giving a very good result in the LCR team, a performance that can take him, next year, to the official team, with Lorenzo or Pedrosa
Own equipment
And the question is, what team? … and this is where the majority gets confused. Marc Márquez will jump next year to MotoGP, yes, and with a private team, yes, but it will not be neither the Gresini, nor the LCR, nor much less the Yamaha Tech3, it will be his own team, the Monlau, the Emilio Alzamora, the ‘CatalunyaCaixa-Repsol-Estrella Galicia’, a great team, by the way.
The association between Emilio Alzamora and Marc Márquez comes from far, from the CEV, from his first year in the world 125 and from the second, when he was champion; and last year, when he made the jump to Moto2. During all these years, Marc and Emilio have grown together, one as a driver, the other as a skipper, until creating a structure, a team, that nothing, absolutely nothing, being right now in Moto2, has to envy teams like the Gresini or the LCR.
Pilot, organization, team, media, mechanics, structure, sponsors … even the trailers !, the power of the Monlau team right now in Moto2 is MotoGP level, it is as if they had already had everything prepared and planned in case, the year In the past, they would have won the Moto2 World Championship and made the jump to MotoGP, a jump that has simply been postponed for one season.
Marc Márquez will be, next year, in MotoGP, and will step with his people, with their own, with a team made to measure, designed for him, and will do so with a Honda as official as that had the ill-fated Marco Simoncelli in his two seasons with Gresini, or before Sete Gibernau in that same team, or Rossi himself, who also had a private structure with a Honda as the official (or maybe better). Because Honda will already take care that Marc has a good bike, and his sponsors pay for it. And just as Simoncelli, if his career had not been truncated so miserably, would have been two or three seasons in Gresini, Marc can be in the Monlau MotoGP and finished as a pilot before arriving through the front door to the official Honda team.
Because no one doubts that the future of MotoGP is called Marc Márquez, the present, for now and until proven otherwise, is called Stoner (until the end of the year), Lorenzo, Pedrosa and, if you hurry, Valentino Rossi .
Motocuatro
