I don’t envy Manuel González. The man’s probably had an emotional rollercoaster given the last few days.
Only some people follow Moto2 as a racing series, so I’ll explain. On Sunday, Manuel won his first race in the class in dominant fashion in a shortened, rain-affected race in Motegi, Japan. It was an outstanding, emotional victory after three years of grinding away in the class and putting some respect on World Supersport 300’s name, a world title he won over in the Superbike support system back in 2019. Sounds great, right?
Well, two days later, it all came crashing down. González rides for Gresini’s Moto2 team, the same sub-team as the Premier Class team the Marquez brothers ride for. Their title sponsor is QJ Motor, one of the big up-and-coming Chinese biking manufacturers, trying to take some market share off the usual big names. And they didn’t take too kindly to González sporting a Hachimaki headband, a traditional Japanese headband, but with connected imagery to the Imperial Era of Japan, pre-World War 2. You don’t have to have an A-level in history to know that that era of Japan was abhorrent in how they treated other Asian countries during that time, China included.
QJ Motor responded by removing all association with González from their website despite being arguably their star rider in terms of sponsorship and released an angry press release demanding that González be fired by Gresini or that they’d be pulling their partnership with the team. Gresini via GPOne.com have apologised for the offence caused but has publicly questioned the source of the press release, despite it being on QJ Motor’s official website. Not the best of looks.
This has inevitably led to a lot of discussions on the Interwebs about the nature of “political correctness”, as these sorts of incidents normally do. I reached out to a good friend of mine who covers Japanese Motorsport as a journalist and is far more embedded in the country’s culture than I am, and this is what they said when they saw the news (They requested I keep them anonymous):
This seems a bit harsh, especially the “heavily associated with the WW2 military” part. Sounds more to me like someone wants to stir up some shit and found a good reason to do so. Yes, kamikaze pilots in WW2 wore them and yes, some nationalists are wearing them, but those headbands are a very common sight at athletic youth meets, either by the athletes themselves or their cheerleaders. some students are even wearing them while studying and they are like the most cliché thing foreigners can wear at sporting events.
BMW folk wore it at the SUPER GT x DTM Dream Race, you see F1 folks wear it at the Japanese GP, you see Toyota folks (like the mechanics) wearing it at Le Mans etc. Now, I don’t know what characters the dude was having on his headband and if they perhaps have an association that warrants this, but by default this is not nearly as bad as using the Kyokujitsu-ki (the Imperial Rising Sun flag). That being said: If your main sponsor is Chinese, you should probably be a bit more careful.
Since they wrote that statement, we found out the translated text on González’s headband meant: “Number 1”. It leans into my gut feelings at the time of the QJMotor statement – González probably isn’t to blame here. As my source said above, it IS a common part of Japanese culture, and has been accepted in other Motorsport series, it’s understandable that he likely just “leaned into the bit” like so many others have. But if you’re Gresini, who has a Chinese company as your title sponsor… you probably need to keep an eye on shit like that.
If you’re taking that money and slapping their name on the bike and trying to raise your profile, you probably shouldn’t be doing anything that will likely piss off the sponsor. It just isn’t worth the social media clout in your content to have that headband on display, compared to the potential ramifications of having it on a Chinese biking brand’s website.
And for Gresini, it’s the second time this season they’ve been caught being at best – guilty of cultural appropriation. For those who didn’t see it (And I don’t blame you, it wasn’t picked up by the majority of the biking press), at the German Grand Prix pre-summer break, Gresini was photoshopping dreadlocks on their white members of staff in response to the rumours that Lewis Hamilton may have been interested in buying the team. A massively inappropriate thing to do and they were very lucky they weren’t called out by more of the dedicated LH44 fanbase on social media for it. It still angers me that it took the threat of a sacked rider and a press release for more people to be “on it” this time around.
Gresini never publicly apologised for the post, and as of the time of writing, it’s still on their Instagram page, with the social team joking about its potential offence, with both riders in the comments laughing about it.
It reeks of a general blase attitude towards Asia from the sport in general. I haven’t forgotten how long Johann Zarco rode with the Imperial flag as a helmet design, or when Repsol Honda once pushed a horrendous T-shirt via Marc Marquez when he debuted in Japan in the top flight. I’m not posting it here for obvious reasons, but you can easily Google it.
It doubly sucks because it inevitably leads to huge “whataboutery” from fellow biking fans where it’s another classic cultural case of “Why is this offensive?” or “What about when this happened?”, rather than tackle the root of the problem being, why are MotoGP’s PR and communication departments so ignorant of Asian culture? And why are we as fans so insensitive to hearing valid criticism of it?
Yes, you can post Valentino Rossi wearing the same headband and say: “What about him?!” looking for that elusive “gotcha” that social media loves to generate, but his Indonesian sponsor isn’t threatening to turn out the lights. You might think it’s “political correctness gone mad” or “cancel culture” kicking in, but you’re not the one paying their bills, and ultimately, that’s the only opinion that matters.
And this is Moto2, a series where teams are losing money hand over fist. Many teams wouldn’t have survived without Dorna’s handouts during the pandemic four years ago, and teams have been shut down in recent years or are having to resort to paying riders to get by. The last thing you’d want to do is lose a title sponsor over a headband and yet, this is what Gresini are risking.
Like I said earlier, I don’t envy Manuel González, and I don’t think he’s to blame for all of this. I don’t think he should be losing his job over what he’s done. You’d be hard-pushed to think he was doing this intending to hurt anyone’s feelings. But his team, who read the comments on their Hamilton post in July and should be more than aware of the risks involved, should have stepped in and said no.
Gresini saw the bridge they had already lit on fire and decided to reach for the jug of kerosene. All it will end up doing is potentially cost themselves, and the sport millions of dollars in the long run if Asian companies steer clear of MotoGP and what its teams think is “good content” coming at their expense. And with Liberty Media working furiously to figure out how to crack that market, they’re only going to make that job so much harder if keep biting the hands that want to feed them.
Gresini and the sport at large need to do better, in some cases, their very survival may hinge on it.