In The Paddock Column
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History Looms Over Pecco’s Catalan Catastrophe
Championships often hinge on crashes. Usually in a bad way. It might happen again in 2023. Thanks to a horror crash in Catalunya, with an extraordinarily fortunate outcome.
Pecco Bagnaia led off the line through the first corner. Rivals and fans alike held their breath after witnessing the defending champion flung violently into the middle of the track in the subsequent left-hander, under the wheels of the pack.
Just four days after being carted off in an ambulance and transferred to the hospital for investigation, Francesco Bagnaia was back in the paddock and throwing a leg over his Lenovo Ducati. Photo: Gold & Goose
Bagnaia was massively lucky to escape with no broken bones after his horrible highside, not to mention even more massively lucky that it was only his legs that were run over by Brad Binder’s KTM, rather than his chest or his neck. The outcome then doesn’t bear thinking about.
All the same, “severe polytrauma … in the femoral and tibial area” are not words describing trivial injuries.
Pecco amazed everybody at the following weekend’s Misano GP. Four days after being carted off in an ambulance and transferred to hospital for investigation, he was back in the paddock. He was stiff and sore but able to walk to and from his paddock scooter without crutches. Passed as fit for the race, he was back on his Desmosedici the next morning.
He was following a great tradition of riders ignoring pain and injury.
At the time of writing, he was out for the first day of practice and gradually got up to a respectable pace. In morning free practice, he was an unfamiliar 20th in the close pack; in the afternoon a highly impressive seventh in the session, which determines the top 10 of the grid. It remains to be seen whether he will complete the weekend and just how strong he will be starting the intensive series of flyaways coming up a fortnight later, eight races in 10 weekends. But it shows an impressive commitment to the comeback.
Bagnaia had started to look calmly invincible, in command of his destiny. A precarious position in an action sport.
Before the crash, his lead over Jorge Martin had stretched to 66 points, on a steadily rising trend. After Sunday’s Catalan catastrophe, it shrank to 50, on a falling trend. A small advantage, with nine 37-point weekends remaining.
In the past three decades, career-ending injuries have turned the title on two notable occasions.
The first was in 1993 when Wayne Rainey was closing rapidly on an injured Kevin Schwantz. It looked rather as though Rainey was set for a fourth successive crown. Then he was gone.
The second was in 1999, when Mick Doohan’s crash opened the way for Repsol Honda teammate Alex Criville. Admittedly that happened early in the season, and Doohan wasn’t actually leading on points; the following year’s champion Kenny Roberts had taken a couple of surprise wins in the opening flyaways. But there could be little doubt that Mick would have continued to dominate for a sixth straight year.
These things can go both ways. Doohan had been romping to a dominant 1992 title when he crashed at Assen. By then, defender Rainey, injured and lying third overall, had all but given up. With renewed hope, he was able to reverse a huge points deficit.
The back story is a racing legend. Doohan’s double leg break caused major complications, saved only by sewing both legs together to share blood supply. It never fully healed, but Mick, pale and wasted, came back eight weeks later in a last-ditch attempt to save the title. He failed by four points. Ironically, had a threatened rider’s strike at the penultimate Brazilian GP gone ahead, he’d have been champion.
Other stories might inspire Bagnaia. The record for fast comeback from a double leg break goes to Randy de Puniet in 2010—26 days. This outdid Rossi’s 41 days the same year, the difference that Rossi, on crutches, finished fourth in that German GP and was on the podium at Laguna Seca a week later. But the championship went to Lorenzo.
In 2013, Jorge Lorenzo raced to fifth at Assen 36 hours after surgery to pin a broken collarbone, but Marquez won the title by 14 points. In 2011, Colin Edwards came third at a wet Silverstone nine days after breaking his collarbone. He’d been ready to ride in Catalunya but hadn’t been allowed to.
Barry Sheene was the comeback king, back on a 750cc two-stroke in 1975 49 days after breaking his femur and arm, among other things, in a very fast crash at Daytona in 1975. And back again after his huge Silverstone crash in 1992.
There are other injury-return heroes: Franco Uncini, Kevin Schwantz and Marc Marquez to name but three. World Championship motorcycle racers have a different way of looking at injuries. By ignoring them.
Some of the above returned to win championships. None, however, in the same year. Perhaps Bagnaia will be able to upturn that statistic. CN
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