WHEN ITALIAN VETERAN ANDREA Dovizioso retired from racing following the San Marino Grand Prix in early September 2022, the MotoGP world championship lost its final link to GP racing’s two-stroke era.
Dovizioso made his GP début at Mugello in June 2001, walking into the paddock to the tune of the ringa-ding-ding of two-strokes being warmed up for action: 500-cc fours, 250 twins, and 125 singles. When he walked out of the paddock at Misano, his ears had been battered all weekend by the roar of open-piped four-strokes: 1,000-cc fours, 765 triples, and 250 singles.
Now that Dovizioso is gone, MotoGP’s longest-serving rider is Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaró, who arrived in 2004 when two-strokes had already been banned from the premier class and plans for the current Moto2 and Moto3 classes were already well under way.
MotoGP today does not only sound different compared to 2001, it is different in just about every other way. The paddock is almost unrecognisable, the riders are different, and the racing is different. Some of the changes have been good, others not so much.
Dovizioso still remembers his first GP, when Italy had fallen head over heels in love with Valentino Rossi and the hillsides around Mugello were already tinged with yellow.
‘When I arrived at Mugello in 2001, it was like, “Wow, there’s Valentino!”,’ he
