From Kenny Roberts in the ’78 to Michael Doohan in the ’98, the Americans and Australians distributed the titles except for ’81 and ’82, which went to Lucchinelli and Uncini. For two decades, Americans and Australians were the great power and in addition to the aforementioned Roberts and Doohan, Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey and Schwantz reached the top.
But now, just coinciding with the celebration of the Grand Prix of the Americas, it is striking that despite having an American team on the grill, there is no pilot or American and only an Anglo -Saxon, Jack Miller who, by the way, is not among the favorites to victory. So there are those who ask the question of why are there no American pilots in MotoGP?
And the reason is, as the documentary that we show you below, the approach of the pilots’ races. And it happens just contrary to what happened in those years of great domain, where Europeans reached the motorcycle being adults, and the Americans and Australians could have taken part in other competitions that, even if they were not speed, did help them to form as pilots and to develop important characteristics.
Now in Europe in general but more especially in Spain and Italy, which have been the great powers in MotoGP for two decades, it starts very soon with motorcycles. The promotion glasses that were launched in the late 1990s, and that launched great figures, gave way to a very different way of working.
If money is not the main problem why there is no American MotoGP?
Some may think it’s a matter of money, but it’s not just that. Although bikes have always needed a lot of money to reach the top, whoever puts is money (Movistar, Caja Madrid, Bancaja …), that is not the problem of Americans, because they have the capacity to launch similar initiatives.
It is more relative to the way in which for a long time they have faced the way in which the new pilots and objectives were worked. We must also be clear that, another of the big problems they have is that, as with other American countries, the base competition prior to reaching MotoGP and in which the level is higher is thousands of kilometers.
That implies that Americans who want to arrive at the MotoGP World Cup have to be out of their homes a long time and that, being children, is very complicated. Even so, in the United States they are already working on their quarry, although being able to see their fruits will still take a few years.
And that if those efforts end up paying fruit, because if something has first level motorcycling is that it is hard, cruel and the money that can open doors, does not guarantee the results when you face the best pilots in the world.
