Toprak Leaving Yamaha

I wasn’t being flippant here btw, he’d have done more for his reputation if he’d moved to m2 with a team like gas gas and won that, than anything he will achieve in wsb (unless of course he wins it on a beemer lol).

 

Makes you wonder if that recent Yamaha moto gp test was a final thank you or they turned round and said thanks but no thanks, it will never happen to him.

In which case he was obviously after a new challenger in wsb etc…

 

Could well be bud but you’d have thought a new challenge would have meant back to Kawasaki or Honda ! Or anywhere other than BMW!! Most odd!

 

Maybe its a super massive amount of money and he has based his decision on advice from Ronaldo or Alonso?

 

I thought Jack Miller was a bit bonkers going to ktm especially after the pre season test times and look how thats turning out.

“It’s a funny old game” etc.. and I guess you have to trust Topraks made the right decision for himself knowing much, much more than we do.

If it was me I still would have swallowed my pride and gone to m2 (if he really wants to put his talent on the world stage) but sadly I’m not toprak.

 

So if he does go to BMW and a miracle happens and he wins the title, where does he go from there though as no shoe in for a GP shot. Unless he's happy 'just' being a WSBK guy all his career.

 

At a smidge under 6 foot tall, do you think he would be suited to the Triumph ? Last WSBK race out, he was supposed to have removed the seat unit from the Yamaha to sit more in the machine. Clearly whatever he did, it worked after a fashion. Leon Haslam seemed to have found something with the ROKit BMW at Donington this weekend, made Brookes and Hickey look slow. Andy

 

I'm baffled by this decision if I am honest.

Currently you have to be Bautista's team mate to stand a chance of grabbing a win, so common sense would be to try and nick Rinaldi's seat as it's common knowledge it could be up for grabs.

Staying where he is, or going back to Kawasaki (on a factory bike) isn't going to provide him with another world title. If something happened to Bautista though it's his best option.

This has to be money driven, no one at the top of their game would opt for the BMW or Honda, recent history shows that anyone who ends up there stalls their career.

I get a feeling Redding will be shown the door, he's not flown the BMW flag has he and been pretty vocal on screen how bad the bike is. Add to that VDM posted on his insta something along the lines of Welcome to the family Toprak yesterday....

 

That begs the question as to where Redding will go.

Or maybe he'll take his $ and retire to America?

 

I have no idea, probably not but if he does want to end up in Moto Gp as we're led to believe i'd say that was the better route to go down.
Trying to think of the last WSB rider who went to GP?
Eugene Lav? (and i think we all know how that turned out)
And with relative success would prob be Colin Edwards?

 

The screen punching incident cant have helped him either.

 

I do understand his frustration though. From what little I know it's been him vs BMW a lot of the time, where they won't listen to his feedback and requests for non-BMW parts.

 

GP is an entirely different thing to wsbk.

toprak did okay in his gp test but it was still a long way off. The riding styles and bikes are just too different for 99% of production style bikers to adapt to in a reasonable amount of time. And the risk that comes with it for a team to take on a production rider.

 

Didnt he have that issue with Ducati too or was that something else that rocked the proverbial boat?

 

Interestingly (or not), the post on the MotoGP website about Toprak going to BMW, is bland to the point of "yeh, whatever". Have to say I'm coming round to the opinion, WSBK needs Toprak more than MotoGP does. Andy

 

Topraks the only rider who kept the bloody series alive between 2015 and 2020.
Its only the last year or two that we've started seeing the depth of talent improve with the likes of Gardner, Petrucci etc coming from Moto Gp (the latter via AMA obviously).
I also think British race fans (for obvious reasons) put a higher value on the series than anyone else in the world.
Sometimes too much.
(same with the over inflated opinion of bsb)

 

Those comparing BMW WSBK with BSB aren't entirely correct, the big difference is that in WSBK they continue to persist with Bosch electronics rather than use Motec as the entire rest of the grid does..... In BSB they use Motec.

Incidentally; Bosch have just bought Motec, not a co-incidence that...

I think the only way the BMW move makes any sense is if they have committed to ditching the Bosch and going to Motec next year in WSBK. It's Chassis related as well, but most seem to think the issues with BMW in WSBK have long since been a total arrogance to try anything else.

 

I just thought they had MRR lined up and he was pushed out for not being Italian/Spanish.

But then neither was Chas and he lasted longer.