MotoGP incomes

 There's an article by Dennis Noyes at Speed about rumors of Mladin going
to a Honda team in GP next year,
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/17035/ . One thing he talks
about there are salaries, and what he says doesn't seem quite consistent
with what I've generally read in the past. Included in this is "...and
the fact that he [Mladin] might have to take a pay cut in a championship
where only the front row riders earn more than a million Euros…in fact
the combined contracts of Rossi, Gibernau, Hayden and Capirossi would
probably be more than the rest of the field combined" and "Italian
journalists who claim they know, say that Rossi makes around 8 million
dollars a year directly from Yamaha-Gauloises. Sete is thought to make
half that, and Hayden and Capirossi are said, by the Italians, to be the
only other “millionaires” on the grid".

While it's probably true that the GP grid has traditionally been heavily
front-loaded in terms of salaries (more than WSB or the AMA were in the
past), this seems a little extreme. I have a very hard time believing
Biaggi doesn't make more than 1M euros (about $1.25M), for instance, and
less than Hayden. At the very end of Doohan's career Mick was estimated
to make $7-8M, Criville $3-4M, and Biaggi at Yamaha just behind that.
I've see Rossi at $11-12M, so that's close, and Gibernau is probably
about right as well at $5M (the Ducati rumors last year were at $8M, I
think), and I'm sure Capirossi makes very good money. But if Roberts
isn't in seven figures he's either taken a big pay cut or has been
getting burned all along or both. I suppose it's possible that Edwards,
Melandri, Barros, Checa, Nakano, Tamada, Bayliss, Hopkins all make no
more than high six figures, particularly if this is limited to
team/major sponsor salaries. But if so, it would seem that the shrinkage
in well-paying salaries in the SB world has pinched some of the guys now
in the GP scene as well. And I can see why Hodgson seems reasonably
happy racing in the AMA.

In a sport where lots of people say results are "80% rider", they
certainly don't seem to be getting their share of the pie...    

 

Now _that_ I'd like to see - Mat certainly has a big enough opinion of
himself, I wonder just how he'd do against the likes of Edwards,
Gibernau, Biaggi, Capirossi etc... Seeing him on relatively equal
machinery to Rossi would be _great!_

big
--
On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST
ENOUGH FOR ME."' - Hunter S Thompson, 1937-2005 RIP

 Iain Chalmers wrote:


I wouldn't be too optimistic regarding his chances. The guy is 33 now
and is at his peak in the AMA, still having all the drive, knowing every
inch of the tracks, having his guys around him and working like a
well-oiled machine, having the best bike he's ever had. But put him in
GP and he'd have to adapt to the machines, to the tracks, to the tires,
to the whole scene. He's smart to insist on his guys going with him, but
he'd still have disadvantages he'd have to work through, in part only by
posting top results. That all takes a couple years anyway. And he's not
an exceptionally gifted natural talent like Rossi or Schwantz or Gobert
or Spencer and few others.

So it's probably too late, and what we would see might not be so
different from what we've seen from Edwards and Bayliss (even though I
think he's a bit better than those guys). He's part of that lost
generation of riders that suffered under the JIS favoritism in the last
years of 500, and maybe the most shining example of what we missed out
on. He could have been that generation's Lawson or Rainey, the guy who
could have challenged Doohan before he was gone, and made it very tough
for Rossi to completely take over as he did...

 Mark N wrote:


Well said and I completely agree, as much as many would "like" to see
him take his leave of AMA, it's the bottom line that counts at this
point and I think it would take a monstrously big one for him to even
consider it...

 

Which is exactly why he won't go. He knows himself very well.

Simply put, he can't win. He's to big, and he's too old. He knows this, so
he's not going to end his career as an also ran in GP. He runs hard in AMA,
on great machinery that he knows, with a team he knows, on tracks he knows,
against riders he knows (mostly).

He would have to push himself harder to do well in GP, harder than he does
in the AMA. Pushing leads to mistakes, mistakes leads to injuries (and Mat
isn't known as a crasher...). He's not about to risk getting hurt with his
wife, new baby, his budding businesses that he's getting off the ground,
etc. He's far too professional and smart for that.

He will retire from AMA, ideally at the top of his form. I doubt he will
last as long in AMA as Miguel has.

Money isn't Mats driver. It's deeper than that for him, but in truth I also
think he can give it up in a heartbeat if he wanted too.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Mat retired after next year, particularly
if he wins it again.

Regards,

Will Hartung
(willh@msoft.com)