This weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix will mark the unlikely return to MotoGP action of one of the series’ most unfortunate riders, and perhaps the most anonymous world champion of the last decade: Tito Rabat.
His replacement ride for Jorge Martin at Pramac Racing is a nice opportunity for a fairytale story, even if the odds will be somewhat against the returning Rabat.
In a series where nearly every past champion, names like Marc Marquez, Johann Zarco, and more recently Franco Morbidelli and Pecco Bagnaia, has gone on to achieve great things in MotoGP, Rabat’s Moto2 title is perhaps up there only with first-time winner Tony Elias in terms of unfulfilled potential.
Making 77 starts up until this weekend during his career as a full-time MotoGP rider, Rabat didn’t even average two points a race across his five seasons, and has only a seventh place in the chaotic 2018 Argentine Grand Prix to show as his best result.
However, that’s not a fair representation of Tito’s actual talent or abilities. His first two seasons in the premier class, at MarcVDS, were hampered significantly by a machine that was nowhere near as competitive even as the other Hondas sharing the grid with him.
Hamstrung electronically by the Japanese factory for budgetary reasons, he still managed to finish only three places behind team-mate Jack Miller in his rookie season, despite the Australian taking nearly half of his total points-haul in a single race win at Assen.
And while the same problems hindered Rabat in 2017, he was making progress at Ducati in 2018 until everything went wrong at Silverstone in the pouring rain. One of the first to crash at Stowe as riders realised the new surface wasn’t draining, he was standing in the gravel trap when his former MarcVDS machine (now piloted by Franco Morbidelli) slammed into him.
The injury kept Rabat out of action for the remainder of the season – but the impact didn’t just end when he jumped back on the bike again at the start of 2019.
His leg had been broken in three places and left ‘looking like an S,’ as Rabat described it afterwards, and the long-term impact from one of the worst MotoGP injuries of the past decade didn’t go away even after the end of the 2020 season, with the 31-year-old still carrying a visible limp throughout last season.
With the injuries came poor results, and with poor results came his unfortunate end to last year, too, when he became the latest rider to discarded by Esponsorama Racing – which tore up an already-agreed contract to make room for its all-rookie 2021 line-up.
Rabat was eventually extended an olive branch not by the team but by the manufacturer, as Ducati found a place for him in World Superbikes with satellite squad Barni – and it’s something of an irony that Rabat has now found himself back on the MotoGP grid before he’s even had a chance to race in the production series, which kicks off next month.
But he hasn’t just found himself back on the MotoGP grid on a hand-me-down machine – instead, he lines up on a bike that very nearly won the opening two races of the year in the hands of Rabat’s former Moto2 rival Zarco.
Even rookie sensation Martin has stuck it on pole position and came home on the podium in Qatar, arguably meaning that Rabat kicks off this weekend on the best MotoGP machine that he’s ever lined up on, after a journeyman career spent on second-hand equipment and technically-restricted bikes.
And in the modern era of crazy MotoGP action, does that mean it would be a huge stretch to imagine that he could be capable of some sort of fairytale ending to what could be his final races in the premier class?
It would be a bit of a shock given that he’s had no time to test and is jumping into something of a bear pit against guys who have already got three races under his belt. But the last time he raced was on a very similar Ducati, he knows the limit of the Michelin tyres and the Jerez circuit, and his injury woes finally seem to be behind him now.
Simply put, anything can happen these days, and it would be a fantastic redemption story if Rabat were able to pull off something special this weekend.
He’s likely to get two races of action, as well, with Martin targeting a Mugello return rather than next time out in Le Mans and with no clashes with the World Superbike calendar – meaning that even if Jerez is an extended weekend of testing for Rabat at a track that isn’t particularly Ducati-favourable, there’s going to be another opportunity a few weeks later.
