Its been a late night at work tonight, so not much time is available to put together a blog entry.

However, the news that has surprised me the most today, and probably the most shocking over the past few months, is that Honda and Mick Doohan have apparently parted ways.

Doohan, the five time world champion, was generally regarded as the greatest motorcycle racer in the world until Rossi came along. Not only was he completely dominant in the last two seasons of racing the brutally powerful two-stroke NSR500, he did so against competition like Gardner, Lawson, Rainey, Schwantz and Biaggi. The era in which Doohan reigned supreme was perhaps the most hard fought championships in the history of Grand Prix motorcycling.

Honda hired Doohan as the General Manager of their HRC racing organization soon after he retired from racing due to his leg injury at Jerez in 1999. Doohan was first hired by Honda in 1989 to race Grand Prix. 5 world championships in 10 years makes for an impressive career! What makes this so remarkable to me are two different aspects: First, Doohan and Honda are synonymous. The guy raced for them for 10 years, as been a high profile employee for a total of 17 years and won all five of his world titles while racing for Big Red. He was General Manager over HRC for the championships of Criville (’99) and Rossi (’01, ‘02, ‘03). What company would dare loose that marketing goldmine? Second, the Japanese in general and Honda in particular have a strong corporate history of life-long dedication to their employees. For Honda to take someone that high up the corporate chain off the payroll is very significant.

While I doubt that Doohan’s leaving will big a huge blow to the team itself (I think his roles were more administrative, and perhaps even symbolic, more than technical) it still shows just how desperate Honda is to get things turned around for next season. Then again, Doohan has always spoken his mind and was clearly impressed by Rossi. He repeatedly complemented Rossi’s 2004 performances on TV while criticizing Honda riders like Biaggi and Gibernau. Maybe that is what ultimately garnered him a pink slip.

I hope this isn’t the end of Doohan’s involvement in the sport. I’m sure he has enough money to comfortably retire to the Gold Coast of Australia (perhaps even enough to *buy* the Gold Coast of Australia) and never been seen again but that would be a loss to the sport as a whole. Here is hoping he’ll be back to help some other teams, to commentate or just to visit the paddock.

[image from Mick Doohan web site.]