Welcome to 2022! With the start of the season less than two months away and pre-season testing soon to be underway, it’s time to complete my series reviewing my rider rankings for the 2021 season. With only two manufacturers left to go, can we end the series with a positive overall score, or did I miss some important riders in my predictions for last year? Let’s have a look and find out!
Joan Mir – 4.3
Mir begins his title defense and his third season in the premier class looking relaxed and confident, which must be scaring the pants off his rivals. He will face greater challenges this season – the return of Marc Marquez for one, a longer season for another – but he’s also on what is arguably the best bike on the grid. If Suzuki can figure out how to qualify with consistency, then things should become far easier for Mir, but either way he seems a strong favourite for the title once again.
This feels like another one of those cases of the words not lining up perfectly with the results, but my actual numerical rating saves the day here. Sure, Mir didn’t win the championship in 2021, but he did remain a contender until the last couple of races, and the fact that he was able to take so many podiums given how far Suzuki fell from their 2020 success is testament to his skill as a rider. I’m not going to discuss his chances for 2022 here – that’s going to require an entire article on its own – but I do think he earned that 4.3, so I’m chalking this one up as a hit.
Alex Rins – 4.0
Rins comes into this season with a fire and drive he’s not had for a while – he’s the second best rider in his pit box. Losing the title battle to his teammate last year must have stung, especially since his early season was hampered by injury, and Rins will want to bounce back from that with some serious form. While he is a multiple-times race winner, he’s not been a consistent presence on the podium before, so if he can change that then he may pose a serious problem for Mir.
Yeah, this one was a tad optimistic. The issue with Alex Rins is that he just doesn’t have any kind of consistency to show for his time in the MotoGP class. He’s won multiple races across multiple seasons, and has a solid track record for taking podiums every season since 2018, but 2021 was a real showcase for how difficult it is to predict his form. Just thinking about the sheer number of times he crashed out of a podium position last year is giving me a headache, and so is that 4.0 score I gave him. A miss to be sure.
Maverick Vinales – 3.6
My ratings for Vinales continue to dip as he continues to disappoint me. Sure, he’s the only rider to have won at least one race every season since 2016, but his off days are almost hard to watch. When he’s on form – think Malaysia/Australia 2019 – he’s damn near impossible to beat, but consistency issues and struggling with race starts constantly get in his way. I really, really hope to be proven wrong on this one.
If you take the first half of the 2021 season in a vacuum, then this score actually looks pretty reasonable, but unfortunately this wasn’t the whole story for Vinales. Internal troubles with Yamaha led to one of the ugliest splits I can remember in recent history, and while he seems genuinely happy to be at Aprilia the bike is assuredly less competitive than the one he started the year on. A couple of podiums and a lone victory just doesn’t match up with my rating here, and while I genuinely hope he finds a better headspace for 2022 and beyond, I have to chalk this one off as a miss. Apologies, Top Gun.
Fabio Quartararo – 3.9
This one was difficult. Quartararo is clearly a talented rider, and by all rights should have made a strong challenge for the title last year, but his form just completely slipped away from him in the second half of the season. His qualifying record is unbelievable, and he’s proven he knows how to win races, but I worry he may continue to struggle to put together consistent results. This is a hopeful rating from me, as I really want the young Frenchman to have a good season.
I actually remember seriously debating Quartararo’s score for quite some time before I finalised this article, and I think I ended up dropping him several points out of fears that he would have the same problems he had in 2020. If only I had known that this was a brand new Fabio we were about to witness. By far the most consistent rider of 2021, the Frenchman took five wins and a slew of podiums on his way to his first ever World Championship, and he didn’t really put a foot wrong at any point along the way. Congratulations once again to Quartararo, and another miss for my tally, though it is a relief to finally have one where I underscored the rider in question.
Franco Morbidelli – 4.1
Morbidelli starts this year as a favourite to take the fight to Mir, and for good reason. He showed blistering form at multiple stages last year, hampered primarily by technical issues from Yamaha and an unfortunate DNF in Austria. Should everything come together for Franco, then he will be one of the few who could really dominate this year’s championship, and I have been nothing short of impressed by his turnaround from 2019.
This is another one of those ratings where I’m left wondering what might have been. Morbidelli’s problems in 2021 came from two sides – being given a 2-year-old bike from Yamaha for most of the season, and losing a massive number of rounds due to a terrible leg injury. While I obviously couldn’t have predicted the second one, perhaps I should have lowered his score somewhat knowing that Yamaha had opted once again to undervalue the Italian in giving him the worst bike on the grid. Let’s hope his move to the factory squad proves fortuitous, and leave this one as a miss.
Valentino Rossi – 2.6
Rossi is a known factor in the MotoGP field. Nine times champion, with a record that other riders could only dream of, Rossi has made an incredible impact on the sport through his 20+ years of racing, but I honestly don’t believe he has the form or the pace to continue fighting for podiums. I overshot him last year, I’m trying to be more realistic this year, and knowing my luck I’ll be completely wrong and he’ll win the title. You just don’t know with a wily old fox like Rossi.
Ah, the beloved Vale. I don’t exactly take pride in predicting the worst season in the Doctor’s illustrious career, but I will say that pretty much everything I said rang true. It was the right call for Rossi to retire given how close he came to taking the wooden spoon last year, but it must also be remembered that we may never again see a single rider make such a global impact. You’ll be missed, Valentino, but I am racking this one up as my final hit for the series.
Final Tally
Riders reviewed: 22
Hits: 10
Misses: 12
So, I ended up getting a negative score in the end, with the riders I incorrectly judged just barely outweighing those I predicted to a T. It’s obviously a very difficult task trying to predict where a person will land at the end of an 18-round championship, but I am somewhat disappointed with the overall result here. Especially with the number of years I’ve spent watching motorcycle racing, I would certainly hope to be able to foresee a strong or weak season from a rider with at least 50% accuracy.
What were the lessons learned for next time? For starters, I won’t be focusing as much on pre-season results in the future, as my gut instincts were actually more correct than those that I ignored for the sake of testing times. There were also a number of cases were my thoughts and opinions didn’t actually line up with the score I gave out, and if I had actually listened to my own ratings I might have ended up with a better score. I also think it’s time to do away with the logic of giving drastically lower scores to rookies – the last few seasons have proven that riders are adapting to premier class bikes quicker than ever before, and my future ratings will aim to reflect that.
I hope that you’ve all enjoyed this series, and stay tuned for more articles as we head towards the start of the 2022 season. From predictions on the rider market to testing summaries and the return of the pre-season rider predictions, there’s plenty to look forward to before lights go out in Qatar in March.
Solomon Talks Bikes 