From Grand Prix to Grand Trees: Michael Ranseder
During the history of motorcycle racing we have seen plenty of riders who, after dedicating their life to motorcycle racing and even reaching MotoGP or WorldSBK, went in a completely different direction once they retired. Here at Palmen in Motorradsport, we have talked about Axel Pons, Vincent Braillard and a few more instances.
In this article, we will walk through another interesting story: Michael Ranseder, an Austrian rider who raced in the 125cc World Championship and is now working in a completely different field.
How it started
Michael Ranseder was born in Antiesenhofen, a small municipality not far from Vienna, in 1986. His passion for motorcycles began at an early age, but not on asphalt. Instead, it started on dirt. Little “Michi” initially raced in minicross, and in 1997 he became Austrian Champion in the 60cc class. A few years later, however, Ranseder tried road racing and fell in love with it. Therefore, he made the switch from motocross to road racing, hoping to have a successful career and reach the world stage.
In 2002, Ranseder competed in the ADAC Junior Cup, where he finished second. He subsequently moved up to the IDM, the highest level of motorcycle racing in Germany, in the 125cc class. In 2003, as a rookie, he finished sixth in the championship and won the final race of the season at Hockenheim, on the Honda of the Gemini Racing team. For the record, the championship title went to Dario Giuseppetti, while Ranseder finished just a few points from fourth place, which was occupied by an even younger rising star: Sandro Cortese.
The decisive move
The real turning point came in 2004. KTM, which had recently made its debut in the 125cc World Championship, decided to expand his efforts in road racing together with Red Bull and, among other things, created a Junior Team to raise young talents in the IDM. And who were these young talents? Stefan Bradl and, of course, Michael Ranseder.
The combination of Austrian rider, Austrian bike and Austrian sponsor worked extremely well. Ranseder won six out of eight races and became the 2004 German 125cc Champion. Meanwhile, he also had his first wildcard rides in the 125cc World Championship, finishing 16th at Brno and 18th at Valencia.
In 2005, Ranseder remained in the IDM 125cc Championship, again with the Red Bull KTM Junior Team, with the goal of defending his title. But he would not succeed: he won five of eight races, but a poor result at the Sachsenring proved decisive against more consistent teammate Stefan Bradl. Keep in mind the fact that Ranseder finished second in the IDM 125cc in 2005, because it will return later...
As a consolation, however, Ranseder took part in four additional 125cc World Championship races as a wildcard, together with Bradl, and managed to score points on three occasions, finishing 12th in Barcelona, Assen and at the Sachsenring.
125cc World Championship: Growth...
The time had come. Ranseder and Bradl were fast and ready for the world stage, so KTM and Red Bull decided to bring both riders into the 125cc World Championship for the 2006 season. And, very important thing, Ranseder became the first Austrian rider to compete full time in Grand Prix racing almost twenty years after August “Gustl” Auinger (feel free to correct me if this information is not accurate).
Bringing Austria back to the World Championship after so many years and doing it with the support of KTM and Red Bull should have been a source of pride for an Austrian rider like Ranseder. Instead, however, it all turned into a great deal of pressure on him and, as often happens, this impacted the atmosphere inside the garage and his results. The season was particularly difficult for the entire team. Bradl managed to score points at the Czech GP at Brno, but Ranseder never managed to reach the top 15, with a 16th-place finish at Le Mans as his best result.
With KTM focusing exclusively on the factory team (where they would also bring in Stevie Bonsey, a rider whose story I have already told here), Ranseder had to find another seat.
Also thanks to some sponsors, he eventually reached an agreement with the Ajo Motorsport team, which put him on a Derbi machine and paired him with Romanian rider Robert Muresan. Unlike his rookie season, the 2007 campaign of Ranseder was actually good: he frequently scored points and also top-10 finishes, with seventh place in Shanghai representing his best effort. He finished the championship in 12th place, with 73 points in the pocket.
However, this was not enough for Aki Ajo to retain Ranseder. In place of him and Muresan (who, as a side note, finished 2007 without scoring a single point), he signed two names that would give a lot to talk about in the coming years: Mike Di Meglio and Dominique Aegerter.
However, this was no drama for Ranseder, since he received a few offer and reached an agreement with Fiorenzo Caponera's World Wide Race team, then known as I.C. Team.
Struggles in 2008
However, what was supposed to be a season of further progress soon turned into a nightmare.
Riding a private Aprilia, the Austrian rider finished seventh at the Chinese Grand Prix, just as he had in 2007, but apart from that race he was unable to finish in the top 10 again and sometimes he even struggled to score points. As if that were not enough, his season ended prematurely, when Ranseder suffered a frightening crash during free practice at the Australian Grand Prix, even losing consciousness in the first moments. Fortunately, nothing serious happened, but the severe pain caused by the impact kept him out of the Phillip Island race and his 2008 season ended there, with just 22 points and 23rd place in the final standings.
Alongside poor results and injuries, the atmosphere in the pits wasn’t the best. His manager Uwe Ebner repeatedly accused the I.C. Team of favouring the other riders at the expense of “Michi”. As a small side note, Ranseder's teammates in that year were Andrea Iannone (who also won the Chinese GP) and Takaaki Nakagami, who would achieve great things in the coming years…
Anyway, whether or not his manager's words were true, Ranseder was left out of Fiorenzo Caponera's team and had to find another opportunity. And after racing with KTM, Derbi and Aprilia, in 2009 Ranseder entered his fourth season in the 125cc World Championship with a fourth different manufacturer: Haojue, a project that will certainly deserve an article on its own in the future…
A messy 2009 campaign
With a motorcycle initially called Maxtra before being renamed (apparently for copyright reasons, being that name already used in Europe), Haojue entered the World Championship with great fanfare and some big names behind the project. Among them were Garry Taylor, Suzuki's team manager in the 500cc World Championship and MotoGP and a premier class champion with Kevin Schwantz and Kenny Roberts Jr., as well as renowned engineers Franco Moro and Jan Witteveen. Michael Ranseder was hired as the leading rider of the project, and his teammate was young rookie Matthew Hoyle.
Despite big ambitions and big names, the bike was a complete failure. The Haojue adventure soon sank among disappointing performance, no-shows, missed qualifications, constant crashes and technical problems, and the departure of Jan Witteveen, blamed by Haojue for designing a motorcycle that was not competitive. In the end, Haojue withdrew before the season was even halfway over.
Ranseder, however, managed to find another seat. CBC Corse (today known as Snipers Team) signed him from the German GP onwards as their third rider, alongside Luca Vitali and Luca Marconi. While the two Italian riders remained consistently at the back of the standings, Ranseder experienced an up-and-down second half of the season, but still managed to bring points to the team at Misano (11th) and Sepang (12th).
A pretty troubled year 2009 came to an end, and so did Michael Ranseder's World Championship career as well. For the 2010 season, the Austrian rider decided to leave the 125cc class and move towards four-stroke.
Back to IDM
In 2010, Michael Ranseder moved to the IDM Supersport Championship, where he raced a Yamaha for the Fritze Tuning team.
The decision to leave the 125cc class for production-based racing proved to be a great move for the Austrian rider, who immediately showed great pace and was able to fight for podiums and wins. In 2010, Ranseder won six out of 12 races, but ultimately finished second in the championship, just four points behind champion Damian Cudlin.
He also returned to the Grand Prix paddock, more precisely in newly created Moto2 World Championship. Ranseder replaced Vladimir Leonov in the Vector Kiefer Racing Team in several races and ended up scoring points on two occasions, with two 14th-place finishes at Misano and Sepang.
In 2011, Ranseder remained in the IDM, but moved to the Superbike class. Now, do you remember when Ranseder finished second in the IDM 125cc in 2005? Well, such thing became a pattern...
After also finishing second in Supersport in 2010, Ranseder spent three seasons as one of the leading riders in the IDM Superbike Championship. But would he finally win the title? No. From 2011 to 2013, the Austrian rider finished second in the championship every single year. Martin Bauer, Erwan Nigon and, in 2013, an unbeatable Markus Reiterberger relegated the Austrian rider to second place every time. The biggest disappointment came in 2012, when he lost the title to Nigon by just eight points. In other words, after returning to the IDM, Ranseder became a sort of “Herr Zweiter Platz” (“Mr. Second Place”).
In 2014, Ranseder remained with the same team as the previous year, which was Honda Holzhauer. But after being one of the leading riders in previous years, things went considerably worse in 2014, with the Austrian rider suffering numerous crashes and failing to bring the expected results. If we consider also the worsening of his relationship with team owner Jens Holzhauer, the picture was complete. And enough was enough: Ranseder was dropped before the end of the season and replaced by young rider Jan Halbich.
And this was not only the end of his 2014 season, but also the end of his career.
What "Michi" is doing now
From that point onwards, Michael Ranseder gradually distanced himself from motorcycle racing. He appeared sometimes on the Austrian television as opinionist, but his main activity became something else: the nursery founded by his family. After becoming the owner when he was still racing in the IDM Superbike Championship, Ranseder put even mor effort on it once he quit racing.
In 2005, when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was amazed to see Ranseder score points in the 125cc World Championship as a wildcard, and I thought that “Michi” could have a great career on the world stage. Instead, the Austrian rider either wasted opportunities, or found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time (as happened with KTM and Haojue). In the end, however, he found his own path by focusing on the family business.
From growing his racing career to growing plants and trees. An “unusual” leap, but one that seems to bring him a lot of satisfaction.
