Feature: FEBVRE PITCH
By Team TMX on 16th Dec 15
The 2015 MXGP billboard design owed much to a WBA/ WBC title decider without fists, as Youthstream milked the confrontation of world supremo Tony Cairoli and US champ Ryan Villopoto to the hilt.
Right to the end of the series posters and programmes carried images of the two giants together with Gautier Paulin representing series backer Honda.
But the reality was so different, as class rookie Romain Febvre decimated the field from mid-summer to clinch gold even before the series left Europe for the end-of-season two-round North American GP tour.
Indeed the hype lasted just four GPs before Villopoto departed for good but the pattern of a savage season had been set, with 23-year-old firebrand Febvre – who would not even have contemplated moving up from mx2 until 2016 if he had been born a day later (his New Year's Eve birthday is the cut-off date) – the unlikely trailblazer.
With the entire world looking on 15 full factory riders went to the gate for the Qatar opener of the longest GP season in history and no-one was taking prisoners under the floodlights – but Villopoto showed he was on the wrong path from day one.
Allegedly on a base salary double that which five times champion Cairoli could earn with bonuses – and with sights on four times that if he took the crown – the Kawasaki leader had followed the normal US preparation of keeping his cards close to his chest.
He headed into the series opener cold, having merely pounded out the training laps in relative isolation back in the US and then in Europe.
Know-alls questioned the wisdom of entering the challenge without a benchmark and it is true that he may have recognised his failings earlier with a couple of pre-season races.
But he could equally have built misguided confidence as everyone sandbags those races anyway and no amount of practice in Florida, Sardinia and Belgium could have prepared him for the 18 vastly different tracks he could have faced through the year.
Courses ranged from the uninspiring Qatar desert through the Thai brickyard to the unrelenting sand of Lommel and the pebble-littered hard-pack of Pietramurata, which claimed the US superstar on his European GP debut.
US pros have become acquainted to running a hard set-up through 17 rounds of SX, each one little more than a varied combination of the obstacles they ride daily on the training track, the only differential being slightly tackier ground in the East.
Three weeks off to adjust suspension and they switch to a dozen outdoors, all rotovated and graded to the same surface and prepped each moto.
I am reliably told that Kenny Roczen warned ‘RV2' back in the summer of 2014 that: "You don't know what you're letting yourself in for.”
But by midnight on Saturday in the Gulf he already had much more of an idea.
Watch the AMA Nationals and you'll see the likes of Blake Baggett railing the outside berms but that doesn't work in MXGP, not even in MX2 and certainly not on a 450.
From first practice at Losail Villopoto looked really fast but the screens told the reality as RV2 posted 11th best time, more than two seconds down on the pace – and the regulars weren't even trying at that stage.
So who was to blame? It'sDifficult to say as everyone involved has remained defiantly tight-lipped as KRT staff held back from reading the book to their superstar and the champ didn't know what or who to ask for a solution.
The facts are that KX450F-SR electronics bear no relation to the US equivalent, and rolling chassis set-up is equally different, yet Villopoto chose to start the campaign with as close to his winning US formula as KRT could deliver – and failed.
By timed practice Villopoto was on the same second, and in qualifying he was eighth.
But dumping the clutch with the set-up he had after himself prepping a gate for the first time in his life left ‘RV2' sitting there prodding the kick-start and was not a recipe for success in the opening moto of his short GP career.
Another eighth in moto two, even after getting away with the rest, sent rider and team back to the airport with long faces and just five days to turn it around before the second round.
Ironically the opening performance was not as bad as it might appear – Ryan only lost only one place all moto, to Romain Febvre.
Kawasaki engineers had worked on set-up with Villopoto in Europe before they flew back out to Thailand with extra luggage and the American dominated for most of the weekend.
The Stars and Stripes fans were back shouting again, but their delight was misplaced. The jump-littered track, basically an outdoor SX bar the rubble-littered ground, was tailor-made for the four-time Supercross champ and his technique visibly gained him fractions of a second on every jump – but by the second GP moto he got his butt kicked.
A seasoned pro like Max Nagl uses first practice to work on avoiding arm-pump, while Clement Desalle would rather close the throttle than win qualification and have to listen to inane questions at Saturday's press conference.
Two-day GPs are hard work at the pace they run at the front, and ‘winning' free practice by two seconds and qualifying by half-a-minute in humid weather and temperatures topping 100 degrees are not part of the plan.
Within a couple of laps of race two Villopoto's momentum was gone and by half-distance he was simply hanging on, losing seconds a lap to Cairoli and Desalle, and thankful that Febvre was a long way back in fourth after gating only eighth.
There was a fortnight before Argentina but Greg Atkins' final track for Youthsteam was a classic and everybody was up for the win as the tension started to grip.
Saturday was once again all about Villopoto, but after his win at the previous round the regulars were not about to let his confidence build.
Desalle sailed to fastest qualifying lap before a relaxed race for grid positions, 16 seconds back in fourth – however Cairoli took it to the American.
Had it been anybody else ‘TC' would have let them have it, but no way was the Sicilian going to let ‘RV' pass him, dropping his lap times by two seconds as the American closed in. The Rollerball scenario was building.
There has been rubbish written about Villopoto's starts. The fact is that he was gating well, but, surprisingly in view of his years of SX experience, was pussy-footing out in the first couple of turns, desperate not to make contact in the phase of the race when GP hard men are ruthless.
As ‘RV' sped through the pack to third within three laps of race one with a succession of 1.48 laps, his fans were grinning from ear to ear.
The smiles soon disappeared from their faces, though, as his lap times suddenly slumped by two seconds and, to quote one US on-line blogger: "Who the hell is Max Nagl? I never heard of him but he just went past Ryan like he was stood still.”
The new track, bedded-in and rutty, was tough and after ten minutes Villopoto's tongue was hanging out.
He rode more calmly in race two and had something left at the end but lessons which someone should have been whispering in his ear before the show started to roll, were being learned much too slowly.
The American was already 27 points down on Desalle, 17 down on Nagl and Cairoli and panic started to set in.
Another fourth in the first race at Pietramurata extended the deficit, and things stared to go wrong within a few laps in race two. The American could hang on to Cairoli but Nagl had checked out and Desalle, who had started to look for wins after a string of podiums had earned him the red plate, was on Villopoto's case.
Time and again the Suzuki drew alongside and finally, diving inside at the jump onto the pit straight Desalle had the line. Villopoto panicked, grabbed a fistful of throttle and looped out.
Crawling to safety, it was clear his race was run. What we didn't know at the time? His season and his career were done too, new complexities being added to the back injury theme.
Within days he had given up on a Valkenswaard return and gone back to the States. KRT didn't hear a word from him for weeks and by mid-summer they didn't seem too interested in ever hearing from him again as unconfirmed reports had him bad-mouthing the team in private.
It was July before the retirement became official but it had long been inevitable.
Again the GP boys were racing by themselves and Youthstream had lost its star attraction but the positives or, if you look at it from a different perspective, negatives had been done.
The string of humbling defeats had woken up America, and the world, to the fact that MXGP is THE toughest series on the planet, media exposure continued to solace main sponsor Monster and the GP regulars had all upped their game.
Nagl admitted freely: "When I saw Ryan ahead of me, it was like a red rag to a bull.
"He rode fair and it was great fun but I think we all wanted to pass him to prove how much we are worth.”
Having once upped their pace, no-one was prepared to slacken off and in the coming weeks the rest of the initial ‘Big Four' went into self-destruction mode.
First to go was Desalle. A crash alone in timed training at Villars left the Belgian nursing a painful shoulder and the weakness probably played a role as he slithered to the ground on lap two of qualifying.
Nico Aubin couldn't avoid him and slammed into his knee and that was effectively the end of the Panda's season.
Cairoli, able to run away and hide if he holeshot on the 350, simply didn't have the straight-line speed to pass the 450s on the straight as they took away his momentum in the turns, and by Valkenswaard the larger capacity bike was rolled to the gate.
The Factory Edition SXF450 frame has the same dimensions as its smaller cousins but, like all 450s, is ready to bite with its awesome power.
Tony first crashed at Valkenswaard, then again in France, and his awkward qualifying crash at Maggiora left him with broken bones and a damaged elbow. A three-week rest before Sweden could possibly have salvaged his season but Nagl had been clocking up a minimum 36 points per weekend and the Italian panicked.
His 17-point haul on Sunday afternoon in Maggiora restricted his losses on Nagl – a crasher in race one – to 11 but the damage was done and Tony would never ride without pain for the remainder of the season.
Ironically Cairoli would not have suffered further losses if he had sat out Germany.
Nagl, already feeling the pressure of the red plate, started making mistakes, none less than on the opening lap of qualifying at Teutschenthal when, desperately trying to make a move, he got sideways and was torpedoed by the innocent Paulin.
Within three weeks all three title candidates were out, and a new star was born.
Presumably there will always be some unkind souls who will point to the demise of the early season front four as opening the door for Romain Febvre, as the French rookie won eight of the last 11 GPs.
But look at the facts. Coming off an injury-interrupted winter Romain passed ‘RV2' in Qatar, missed the podium by a whisker in Thailand, was the fastest man on the track at the end of the day in Argentina and Trentino, surrendered only to Cairoli in Spain and passed Nagl and Desalle for the second-moto win at Matterley.
The difference on paper from round six were his starts. Both factory Yams had struggled to get out of the gate through the early races but once Romain was with the leaders from the word go, the only person to stop him for the remainder of the year was Shaun Simpson in sand.
One week after that maiden win at Matterley he was dominant at his local track of Villars and his Maggiora win was amazing. After running away with the opener, he was lucky not to be hit by his own bike as they cartwheeled down the hill early in race two.
Many riders would have withdrawn, shaken and stirred but not ‘Le Petit Prince'. With the bars dropped like clip-ons and hanging at a 15-degree tilt, he stormed back through the pack to clinch the overall and was on his way.
Take the four mid-season GPs at Talavera, Matterley, Villars and Maggiora, when everyone bar ‘RV2' was still there, and Romain scored 156 to the 146 each of Nagl and Cairoli. Now call him ‘lucky'.
Glenn Coldenhoff took Latvia when Febvre lost 30 seconds at turn one but the only man to beat the Frenchman straight up was Shaun Simpson, the Scot revelling in the sand to win Lommel and Lierop but also upping his game all round.
His speed had been good all year but frustrating incidents had dented the Scot's scorecard through the early rounds before he started to turn it around at Matterley.
And he was scarcely out of the top six for the remainder of the campaign as he built to a resounding climax of 1-4-1-2 on two different models in August and the first week of September to complete the term fourth in the world.
The KTM factory support deal was on the table when Mattighofen found itself with an empty awning, but Shaun had already gone 1-1 on Willie's Hitachi Revo 2015 bike at Lommel and the factory deal through Steve Turner for 2016 was in the pipeline even before that dramatic day in the sand.
Simpson apart, it was a wretched season for the Brits, and the Scot was often the only UK representative at the gate.
Tommy Searle had landed a KTM factory deal to race the 350 out of the De Carli awning but the GPs went sour from the word go with injury in Thailand for the second year in a row.
Even when he returned Tommy was carrying injuries and it would be the last Sunday of July before he earned a top ten moto.
Jake Nicholls and Nathan Watson didn't even make it to the first GP and while Nathan returned in July and August for solid top-12 finishes for the remainder of the summer, Jake's only scores came at Uddevalla and Loket before he rejoined the injury list.
Nathan moves on to WEC next year but Shaun, Tommy and Jake will be back for more in 2016 as the old names try to regain their former glory.
But a new generation is on the march. Febvre is already champion and Coldenhoff a GP winner, while Gajser and Guillod join the mix.
Add in Ben Townley and the series loses nothing in status. Villopoto's brief attendance was refreshing – if only to show the world the tough reality of MXGP
