The Launch of an Wehrlein

In his brief career, Pascal Wehrlein is regarded as a driver with huge potential.

However, he is also known for his knack for being stuck in a flipped-over car.

He first did that in the Race of Champions in Miami early this year, when he tried desperately, but in vain, to catch Felipe Massa.

Then he did it again in Monaco on Sunday, thanks to an over-ambitious move by F1 returnee Jenson Button.

He cracked several vertebrae in the first crash which cost him a couple of F1 races early in the season. Luckily, he appeared to have escaped unharmed in the second one.

Yours Truly just hopes that there will not be a third crash like this for him. Otherwise he may have to start thinking about his post-F1 career and, perhaps, launch an airline, no pun intended, like Niki Lauda.

Two Entries Eleven Years Apart

They say that motorcycling is a dangerous sport. To Yours Truly, cycling is just as dicey.

Sadly, that assertion was once again proven to be true as Nicky Hayden, the 2006 MotoGP World Champion, died from a cycling accident in Italy a couple of days ago.

It was a tragic accident, especially when you realise that he has largely avoided major accidents on motorcycles during his career, only to lose his life on the innocent-looking two-wheel cousin. Reportedly, he was distracted by his iPod and failed to stop at a junction and collided with a car.

He was a relative unknown to the European circles when he joined the MotoGP circuit in 2003, after winning the AMA Superbike Championship in the US in 2002. Landed on the Repsol Honda team alongside the almighty Valentino Rossi, Hayden struggled early on, but gradually improved and secured two podiums that year and failed to finish a race only once.

Of course, he would win the championship in 2006 in dramatic fashion. While Toni Elias did do him a huge favour in Portugal, 



many could not forget the amazing finish in Assen that year, when he and fellow countryman Colin Edwards clashed at the very last corner and went off-track together, only for Edwards to take a tumble just metres away from the chequered flag allowing Hayden to pick up his first win of the season?

Edwards-Hayden Assen 2006 by nopeoplethere
 
Yours Truly still cannot. He was watching it live on TV.

After leaving MotoGP at the end of 2015, he joined the World Superbike circuit next year and picked up a win in Sepang en route to a fifth place finish in the standings. When Jack Miller was ruled out of the race in Aragon due to injury late in the year, Hayden got the call from Honda and eventually made his last two appearances in MotoGP.

Unfortunately, his journey came to a premature end. Incidentally, his death came exactly a month after a similar accident which took the life of star cyclist Michele Scarponi who was preparing for the Giro d'Italia.

When Yours Truly looks back at Hayden's career, he sees someone surprisingly reliable and consistent despite his wild image and surly physique. Sadly, he would meet his end while doing a cycling ride for relaxation between races.

In a related note, it dawned on Yours Truly that time is ticking past quickly, as he last wrote about Hayden some 11 years ago, which means that Yours Truly has been writing about sports from his usual non-sensical, incoherent and discombobulated perspectives for at least A DECADE.

RIP #69.