Micheal Scott Pit Lane Pan Roddi At Your Peril

Want to become unpopular for no good reason? I am already an expert, but now I refer you to Marco Lucchinelli.

“Lucky” is the Italian who narrowly beat Randy Mamola and Kenny Roberts to the 500cc World Champ of 1981; went on to win Superbike races than to run the factory Ducati Superbike team back in the late 1980s. Now the elder statesman is in the dog box, for downing Valentino Rossi.

VR, he opined, is over the hill. He should make way for the young guys, who are currently kicking his backside.

Rossi could, he told Tutto Motori, “run-up to [when he is] 50 – seventh or eighth every Sunday, sometimes fourth and maybe every so often a podium. [But] the Rossi we knew fought for victories every Sunday. Something important has changed.”

After the opening two rounds at Doha, seventh or eighth would be very welcome for the senior figure of the grid but never mind that now. Lucky had more to say.

Elsewhere he described early days Rossi as “a genius, a Martian. But now he’s back on earth.” Now, “he takes the bike off a young man, hasn’t won a race for more than three years, and the last title in 2009. He always competed to win. Now it is just to finish.”

Back at the height of his powers, MotoGP dreaded Rossi’s departure. He was the one-man figurehead with an army of fans, the other riders were just supporting cast. Extras on the set. When news broke that he was flirting with a switch to F1, the doom-sayers were in the ascendancy.