As Scott Redding moves on from the Marc VDS Team to race a Ducati MotoGP bike, former Moto2 champion Tito Rabat gets the call to move up to MotoGP next year. Rabat is a teammate of Redding, although Rabat is still at the Moto2 level on the Marc VDS team.
Rabat recently had a chance to test Redding’s bike at the Michelin tire test earlier this week at Aragon. Not surprisingly, the MotoGP bike is a big step up from the Moto2 bike, as Rabat describes in the video below.
Rabat has been racing at the GP level since 2006, and at 26 years old he is entering MotoGP later in life than some of the current stars (such as Marc Marquez). Nevertheless, Rabat is very highly regarded by his team and his opponents in Moto2. Although a distant second in the championship this year, Rabat dominated when he took the title in 2014 with 7 wins and 14 podium finishes (along with 11 poles). His humble, positive outlook comes through when you watch this video. We wish him luck in 2016.
He always comes off as nice and likable in interviews but is really ferocious out on the track. I think he’ll do well in the Show.
Not another SPANIARD! the conspiracy continues……..
Shhh. Quiet Senior Mickey!
You calling mickey old?
🙂
he IS old. Good to see you posting again VLJ! Ever figure out what happened?
Nope. No clue. Two posts in a row, they just vanished. Never even went into moderation status. It was as if they simply never happened.
I’ve had that happen once or twice over the years, but never two in a row.
anyhow good to have you back
S’alright? (S’alright…)
Close De dorr!
It would be nice to have ALL on equal equip… like in Moto 2, but this is premier league and unfortunately most teams can’t afford the cost of having a front line bike with the right engineers, etc. too bad is right.
I’m not too up on the specifics of Moto2, but I don’t really think the equipment is what you could really call “equal,” apart from the spec engine. Lots of differences in chassis, electronics, setup, crew quality, etc., that can make a huge difference on the track. If you look at qualifying results from Aragon, the gap between fastest and slowest Moto2 bike is nearly as big as the gap in MotoGP.
If Marc VDS can provide him with a competitive bike he’ll do fine. Otherwise he’ll languish until hopefully scoring a factory ride. Redding is in 13th place in the GP championship, which qualifies as languishing.
I wish him luck. It is too bad there aren’t more competitive saddles in MotoGP. So many great racers never really get a solid chance.
Agreed. Much as I want Rossi to win the rest of the races this year (after that, I don’t really care), as a fan it’d be nice to feel like someone other than the usual suspects had even a small chance of winning. Swap Marquez for Stoner and it’s the same four guys winning now that were winning in 2008. In all those years, only 2 races have been won by someone other than those 5 riders (26, 27, 46, 93, 99)…1 by Dovi and 1 by Spies. That’s 2 out of 138 races.
Well that’s depressing, but if it’s mostly “the kit” that takes ’em to the front, why do we call those 5 “aliens”?
I’ve always felt that “alien” probably overstates things a bit…I mean, really, all these guys are aliens compared to the average rider–maybe even compared to the average racer. That said, I do think there’s evidence that these guys probably are the best riders on the grid, even if the difference between a Rossi and a Dovisioso, for example, probably isn’t as big as many imagine.
They are just the best of the best, proven champions of many championships that have earned rides on the best motorcycles. That is the way of all sports. If one of them were to retire, the next best rider will move up. The real problem is for fans of tighter racing is the disparity of talent and too few top rides. No matter what, if all 24 riders had the exact same bike, there would be groups of riders battling each other by talent pool, and the best riders would be way out in front of the rest, and some would be way far behind.
I think Moto 2 proves that the talent pools are closer and more mixed than the premier class would indicate. Marquez was dominant but he lost to several other riders in his time there that can’t keep him in sight on the big bikes.
Mickey, I really don’t think that there is a lack of top talent. That kind of skill is rare for sure, but I believe you could find enough to fill a MotoGP grid with guys who are capable of winning on any given day all else equal. In fact, I suspect at least the top 15 riders in MotoGP right now are capable of winning on any given day all else equal. Even if all the bikes were exactly the same save for setup, I agree that you would still have a handful of rider/team combos that were dominant overall. However, the points leads wouldn’t be anything like they are now, and the number of guys fighting it out to the end might be as high as five or six riders rather than two.
While I would love tighter racing, I am not in favor of some kind of NASCAR-style bike scheme that renders the OEM pretty much irrelevant. I am fans of the manufacturers as much as I am the riders, and that would be too high a price to pay to get closer racing.
Well deserved; another superb rider gets the promotion. Too bad there’s still this “open bike” thing going on; all of the premier class guys deserve full factory setups.
Scott is on the Marc VDS satellite Honda and not an Open Honda. The other satellite Honda is the LCR bike that Crashlow rides. Both of these machines are way faster than the open Hondas.
I agree that it is not enough. Only a scant 4 podium spots have been claimed by Satellite riders this year. Smith (2nd place), Petrucci (2nd place), Crashlow (3rd place), and Scott (3rd place.) The rest of the podiums are all by factory riders. The open bikes just don’t have the horsepower to even compete with the satellite bikes let alone the factory machines.