As a racer, Mat is an Isle of Man TT winner and lap record holder. As a scribbler, he’s been at it since the late 1980s and has written acclaimed biographies of Valentino Rossi and Mick Doohan – plus he’s an award-winning commentator too.
It’s going to be a weird weekend for Cal Crutchlow. He will be contesting the Indianapolis GP for Monster Yamaha but I suspect that journalists at his daily media debriefs…
They say that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. If you’re a motorcycle racer, you need to add collarbones to that list. Bike racers break collarbones, simple…
I interviewed Sito Pons at the Sachsenring, chatting about his times winning 250 World Championships in the late 1980s. He told me that when he was training – running or…
Amid all the Assen drama it was easy to forget about the forlorn figure of Dani Pedrosa, slumped in his pit, wondering what might have been. If all things had…
It’s the question you get asked half a dozen times a race weekend, usually by expectant Rossi fans, hoping for a positive answer: when is Valentino going to win a…
Sunday was quite a day for motorcycle racing: MotoGP at Mugello, the world’s greatest purpose-built circuit, and the Superbike TT on the Mountain Course, the world’s greatest circuit carved out…
The race to arm MotoGP’s private teams with higher-performance CRT bikes is gathering pace. Last summer Honda announced that they will sell a lower-cost version of their RC213V and then…
It’s not often these days that one is moved to thank those in charge, but MotoGP’s Race Direction need a big thank you for their unanimous decision not to sanction…
It is a quarter of a century (ouch) since I visited my first United States Grand Prix in April 1988. That Laguna Seca event was historic because it was the…
Qatar is a dry state so there’s no fun to be had with booze on the podium, but I bet the Yamaha crew more than made up for that when…
When someone once congratulated Eddie Lawson for being fastest in practice, the four-time 500 World Champion shrugged his shoulders and said “you don’t get points for practice”. He was right,…
In October 2011, just a few days before the end of the MotoGP season, I visited Giacomo Agostini at his home in Bergamo, Italy. Lunch was served (by the family…