Ryder Notes: 58

I'm not sure he'd have been able to do that earlier in the season. He crashed twice in the first three races then had the infamous coming together with Dani Pedrosa in France. At the time, I took the view that Marco was largely to blame and it would be hypocritical of me to change that opinion in the light of last weekend's tragedy. What I will say is that those crashes in the two previous races had ramped up his desperation to get that elusive rostrum finish. What he endearingly called 'the polemic' surrounding the incident then affected him, as he admitted later in the season. He had a run of six front-row starts up to and including Mugello that produced very little in the way of results, including two pole positions, Catalunya and Assen, that he didn't take advantage of. The next time he started from the front row was Phillip Island. In the three races previously he had a hat-trick of fourth places. A few months earlier that would have been a prelude to another disaster.

He'd also started getting the better of Ben Spies, who'd overtaken him on the last corner of two GPs in the middle of the season. It'd taken Marco until Misano, the thirteenth race of the season, to beat Dovi in a race. It might only have been a fight for fourth but it started the run-up to that Phillip Island race.

It took Marco a good while to learn how to ride a MotoGP bike. Restrictions on testing made life very difficult for him as a rookie, and just when he thought he was getting to grips with the RCV, HRC gave him the factory electronics package. His understanding of the bike dropped, he said, from 90% to 40% overnight. He had to start the learning process all over again.

The record books will show that Marco only had two rostrums and two poles in MotoGP. No-one believes it would have stopped there. HRC clearly thought the graph was going to continue upwards, otherwise they'd have kept hold of Dovizioso. Whatever the paddock thought of Marco, one thing is certain: the paying punters loved and adored him, and not just the Italians. There was a good deal of the old-school, don't give a damn about him, as Kevin Schwantz touchingly pointed out earlier on Soup. He didn't really say it, but there was an awful lot #34 and #58 had in common.

Of course fans loved watching him on a bike. Too tall, feet crammed into boots two sizes smaller than his shoes, knees and elbows everywhere, playing fast and lose with the laws of physics. There's no doubt he was intimidating on track; as Rossi noted before Marco came to MotoGP, "He's f****** big and he's F****** aggressive. I think the thing that really attracted everyone to Marco was the difference between the racer and the off-track persona. I never heard of or saw him refuse to pose for a picture or sign an autograph, and he always did it with a smile. He enjoyed everything about his job. And of course the magnificently scruffy yet ultra cool look, the hair, the sonorous voice that resonated so charmingly with his use of the English language didn't do any harm.

The bottom line is that he was a thoroughly nice man. Mary Spies told me about a riders' visit to a children's cancer ward before one race. Guess who was down on the floor with over-excited kids riding on his back, pulling his hair and generally making a lot of noise. But when you look at the astonishing courage, dignity and humanity exhibited by Marco's father, Paolo Simoncelli, you start to understand where he got it from

Would Marco Simoncelli have won a MotoGP race? Of course he would. He would have lit the sport up for years. Would he have been World Champion? We'll never know.