At least this year they will have a test rider who isn't out of shape and slow...
That's a really poor assessment of the situation with COVID, and crashlow while a more active rider was still not as good as he was in his last year at Ducati. His only year at Honda was a mess but he set a time comparable to the race lap record at Sepang on his first test out for Yamaha. And to be honest, I think Fabio benefited a great deal from JLO's injput on the bike, and could have won the title had Yamaha not been so severally impacted.
Granted, JLO failed on trying to keep fit but who here is really going to fault a guy for staying at home during a pandemic?
Not me. I didn't care for most JLo wins: leap out to an early lead and like clockwork set almost the same lap time in the last lap as the second lap. Hugely impressive for the consistency, but not so fun to watch. It was a continuation of the 250 style with high corner speeds and keeping the bike in shape at all times. He was a perfect match for that Yamaha and those Bridgestones at that time, but I'm not nostalgic for more of the same. Dull as watching him crush the field became, at least Marquez did it spectacularly, with endless WTF moments where he seemed to achieve the impossible...
I hate to break it you but just like Doohan before him, the Worlds best riders are not going to be very
chummy; it's just not in their nature which is what makes them exceptional talent (at one thing), they refuse to compromise at ANYTHING are competeive about everything and will ***** and moan about litterly anything under the sun. And JLO was an extreme case of that to be honest.
This also goes to show the PR machine surrounding professional motorsports does pay off, I can tell you from experience a lot of the guys I met throughout the years in various categories of motorsports are more like Casey Stoner and Kimi Räikkönen than you think and only pretend to be otherwise for sponsorship deals and money. I've partied with some of them at a very young age during Redbull events or at SEMA outside the track when I was still in my teen years in 4 wheel motorsports and some when out their way to make others look bad in public for seemingly no reason than 'f that guy' it really opened my eyes to what these guys are like--many of them are children from affluent families that will remain spoiled, immature children until they die as they never grew up because they could make a piece of metal go really fast around a race track and sometimes not crash it in the process.
Personally speaking, I was in motorsports for the experience (I was never going to make a career of it outside of fabrication/sales) and started relatively late (16) but by my 20s I knew this was a man-child's fantasy World of make-believe and guys like JLO are the norm, not the exception--things got worse due to social media in my opinion.
I got into altercations with guys with fragile egos overcompensating for their lack of results/talent over seemingly nothing and I just laughed it off (which often made thngs worse) as I knew that this would be the most significant thing they'd ever contribute to Society/World/Species, which if you really think about it is pretty pathetic: Motorsports is at its core just a convoluted advertisement and PR campaign to sell stuff except, and not always, a couple of hours on Sunday.
After a while this made me lose interest it in entirely as you can lose so much time and money trying to win over people in some endless political in-battling on a team for little to no return.
With that said, as a non professional or even amateur racer on 2 wheels if you cannot appreciate JLO's precision and accuracy on the bike when he is on form, I think you need to spend more time on the track and take a good look at your own results: those times come from a super human level amount of skill and talent on top of obsessive dedication: JLO was manically obsessed about every detail (on and off the bike) during his Yamaha days and its well documented. Were his races as exciting as Marc's, no... not even close to be honest, though 2019 was close... but that is just like saying
vanilla sucks because it's not chocolate. It's just different but amazing nonetheless.
Would I want to hang out with JLO, no, not really... he seems like the typical guy I mentioned before who would have little to no insight about about the World or much other than what he portrays his image to me, which apparently now in retirement includes some odd social media influencer that sings on TV instead of trying to get fit for another shot at a Yamaha test rider slot or come out of retirement for a spot at Ducati.
And to be honest, I'd rather hang out with Marc and Alex Marquez as they seem like genuinely grounded guys from a small town having fun at the highest level of their category if I had my choice. They honestly remind of the neighborhood kids I'd play as a kid that you knew were super talented but refused to take things too seriously unless it was for a reason. Alex messing around in the off season was actually kind of a good look into who he was, instead of just Marc's little brother. And while I still think Zarco should have gotten that 2nd HRC ride alongside Marc, it was still cool to see Alex get those podiums last season.
