Category: MotoGP

I’m Watching.. MotoGP

MotoGP 2010 – Malaysian GP

Sepang, Malaysia – Rnd 15 of 18

3 October 2010
BBC coverage

I have a massive backlog of articles but as I’m in the middle of sorting a move to another flat things are a bit delayed.

Front row: Jorge Lorenzo starts on pole, Nicky Hayden 2nd, Andrea ‘Dovi’ Dovizioso 3rd.
Dani Pedrosa is still out with an injury sustained in free practice in Japan.

At the start Lorenzo gets away with a small gap, yet by the end of lap one Dovi had got side by side with him at the last corner – Lorenzo fended him off and the battle continued. Just as they were dropping the Ducatis one of them, Stoner, found himself in the gravel thus enlargening the gap between the leaders and the other Ducati of Hayden, who had about 6 bikes on his tail.

Valentino Rossi had dropped from 6th to 11th at the start and immediately set about re-passing people. After just a couple of laps he was in 6th again, two laps more and he was up to 3rd! Incredible even for him, if you consider he’s still carrying an injury from earlier in the season. We’re told his leg has fully healed, his shoulder has not.

Capirossi parked up and limped away, he’s still carrying an injury from a few races before. A pit report from Matt Roberts later in the race confirms he retired due to an electrical fault on his Suzuki, it wasn’t down to his injury.

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Dovi hassled Lorenzo for lap after lap as Rossi slowly, slowly closed in on them, before Dovizioso was able to make the move on lap 8 with a great pass! Edwards retired from 8th somewhere here.

Rossi passes Lorenzo for 2nd, I don’t think Lorenzo worked TOO hard for it because he wants to secure the title in this race. In the same place one lap later Rossi takes the lead! He dove into the tight left-hander and darted away into the lead, immediately opening a little gap. Simply brilliant.

Hayden slipped to the back of the fairly big pack running in the upper midfield as Spies and Simoncelli fought to head this group. Suddenly on lap 15 Dovizioso seems to come from nowhere to retake the race lead from Rossi! Half a lap later Vale retakes the place in his favourite overtaking spot. This is really fantastic stuff!

Wow, great scrap between Simoncelli, Bautista, Hayden and Ayama. Bautista passed two guys in one move! It continued and Simoncelli and Aoyama bumped and bruised until they run wide (Simoncelli’s fault) allowing Hayden to pass both.
Up front, Rossi and Dovi dropped Lorenzo by a big margin, the trio miles ahead of the rest. That’s how it finished.

Podium: 1. Rossi, 2. Dovizioso, 3. Lorenzo. Jorge Lorenzo confirmed as 2010 MotoGP World Champion!
Some guys dressed as Mario and Luigi meet him on the cooldown lap and he holds up a Game Over sign to the bike’s onboard camera! Massive cheers from the crowd, and it is a big crowd.
Spies finished 4th, Bautista, Hayden, Aoyama, etc.

What a stunning race. After several really boring GPs the series has regained its old form in style, well done to all concerned.

Well done to both race winner Rossi and champion Lorenzo, who’s run of race wins and other podium positions were going to be incredibly hard to beat even if the opposition hadn’t struggled with injury, there’s no false title here as Lorenzo worked for every result.

Points:

Lorenzo 313 (C), Pedrosa 228, Rossi 181, Stoner 180, Dovizioso 179, Spies 152

The next round is Phillip Island, Australia, for which there will be a post up in a few days.

Photo credit:  Andrea Dovizioso leads after passing Jorge Lorenzo, while Valentino Rossi is closing, closing, closing. (c) Getty Images via Picapp.

I’m Watching… MotoGP

I watch racing so you don’t have to. Missed any MotoGP lately? Allow me to briefly recap.

[I’ve changed the format of these posts to do one championship at a time, makes it less scattergun, you can pick the ones you’re interested in, and helps me find things in the archive – and yes I am still miles behind, I’ve got loads of these in draft for different series]

MotoGP
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
29 August 2010

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I’m glad MotoGP visits the US twice but both Indianapolis visits prior to this one were pretty unspectacular, the weather intervened with the one and the other was just plain boring. Unfortunately this year’s race was also uninspiring. This is a real shame because the local crowd is enthusiastic, if looking a little lost in the massive stands of Indy. I maintain this date is not helped by having an IndyCar race the previous night in Chicago, much of the local IndyCar media might be expected to cover this race too and they weren’t all able to do so. Got to hurt publicity, etc.

The first half of the race was reasonably good. Pedrosa put in a storming ride to dominate the field, a really excellent performance involving passing three or four other riders – including an impressive Ben Spies (pictured) – in the early running before disappearing into the distance in the second half of the race. For me that was the extent of the action, there were a few changes among the lower positions but after the wholesale change of riders at that end of the grid for this season I don’t really care for any of them. Bring back Vermuelen, Toseland and co, I say.

*

MotoGP
Misano, Italy
5 September 2010

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Again this race featured some great early battling before settling down into a Pedrosa benefit. It is great to see the guy on an upswing in form and taking the fight to Lorenzo because somebody had to, yet #99 still finished 2nd so his points advantage over Dani is remains massive. Rossi finished an amazing 3rd given his injuries, a stellar performance in the circumstances and he must’ve been hurting. That was about it for this race! We’re all hoping the new-for-2011 rules will bring back the great races seen in the top flight of motorcycle racing just a few short years ago, some series can get away with a long string of boring races but I don’t think MotoGP can for much longer, it is renowned for action and right now we aren’t getting it.

Both Indy and Misano races were held under a cloud following the death in Indy of the 13-year old Peter Lenz in the USGPRU support race warm-up, and an in Misano a Moto2 accident involving 19-year old Shoya Tomizawa which led to his eventual passing and was announced just as the main race came to an end. They were both accidents that even the best safety precautions would have struggled to prevent but that doesn’t make them any less sad or tragic. My thoughts are with their families and colleagues.

*

MotoGP
Motorland Aragon, Alcaniz, Spain
19 September 2010

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=MotoGP+Aragon&iid=9812324″ src=”http://view.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/9812324/ducati-motogp-rider-stoner/ducati-motogp-rider-stoner.jpg?size=500&imageId=9812324″ width=”234″ height=”140″ /]

A new venue for MotoGP, this recently constructed circuit in Northern Spain is a Tilke creation with some quite interesting sections, including elevation changes and tight and fairly narrow twisty bits by Tilke’s standards – it is a good design. Unfortunately it all looks a bit bland simply because there is no scenery to speak of, it is a yellow/orange dustbowl.

Lorenzo and Stoner battled hard on the opening lap, with Casey coming off best. He soon disappeared into a handy lead over Pedrosa who’d also passed #99. Pedrosa then made an error and had to recover, this could’ve sunk him but he battled back hard – helped in no small part by his Honda engine on the very long back straight, that engine is the class of the field this year. It still needed to be ridden though and Dani did so brilliantly to recover up to 2nd place and only a second down on Stoner at times, until he had to give best and the Aussie duly took the win.

A tip of the hat to Nicky Hayden for finishing an improved 3rd in spectacular style by sending it up the inside of Lorenzo on the very final lap. They’d been fighting closely for some time, as had Dovisiozo and Spies which went the American’s way when Dovi crashed out, again on the last lap.

*

MotoGP
Twin-Ring Motegi, Japan
3 October 2010

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This round was originally scheduled for April but was postponed due to the volcanic ash cloud over Europe, preventing travel. Drama immediately! No Pedrosa for this race because he crashed badly in free practice with a stuck throttle – he’s flown home to Spain. Lorenzo had his worse qualifying session of the year and starts all the way down in 4th, the first man on the second row – how will he possibly cope? It was really good to see Edwards returning to the front end of the grid in 5th alongside his team-mate Spies 6th.

Dovisiozo got a good start initially but Stoner came breezing by in the first sequence of corners, then just rode away from the field. Lorenzo passed Rossi for 3rd and Capirossi got from 10th to 6th in the early running, well done Loris. Spies dropped to 8th before clashing with Hayden and both wound up fighting for last, at least until they caught the usual tailenders.

Simoncelli put a good pass on Edwards for 5th, he’s having an impressive season. Meanwhile, the race nearer the front came alive – what a brilliant battle between Lorenzo and Rossi! Vale pushed and harried him until he was able to make the move, and while he does have a newer engine with a later development step he is still carrying that injury. They passed an repassed each other for several laps, and these people are supposed to be teammates!

Back in the field Colin Edwards pulled himself together to attack Simoncelli again, couldn’t quite do it but never gave up and fought all the way, a great comeback after finishing only 12th in Aragon, his 100th start. His team-mate Spies who’d fallen to the back had fought his way through the field into the top eight, while Hayden got up to 12th. After the frenetic action in the middle of the race things were pretty quiet in the top half dozen for a long while, until 3 to go when Lorenzo suddenly launched attack after attack on Rossi for 3rd. He wasn’t able to pull it off. Stoner made it two races in a row, Dovi 2nd and Rossi claimed the final podium spot from Lorenzo. Everyone else was half a minute behind.

*

After these races the top of the standings were:

297 Lorenzo
228 Pedrosa
180 Stoner
159 Dovisiozo
156 Rossi

With no Pedrosa and a commanding lead Lorenzo was now aiming to claim the title at the next round, which was Sepang last week. I’m sure you’ve probably seen the outcome already. Then the circus moves on to Phillip Island this week and then heads back to Portugal and Spain to close the season. I’ll recap all four together in roughly a month from now, and I hope this summary has been useful!

All photos courtesy of PicApp.

I’m Watching… #1

The introduction to my TMR Game posts is often a recap of what I’ve been watching over the weekend just past, but as I was writing the post tonight I wondered if it would be better to write it as a post on its own every Monday/Tuesday. It gets across my thoughts on that week’s racing and cuts the Game posts down to size, which I’ve been pondering how to do for a while. Win-win!

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I stayed up most of Saturday night / Sunday morning to watch the excellent Texas IndyCar race along with the gang at Sidepodcast (and Twitter of course). Really good to get back on the fast ovals with Indy and Texas – I love the road courses but there’s something different about their oval races you just don’t see anywhere else. *cough*  Great to see the Andretti team back up front with a 2-3 finish. It was unfortunate what happened to de Silvestro – I’d planned to expand on that (and also recap Indy) in a dedicated IndyCar blog post but that has been delayed as I’ve been busy.

DTM and MotoGP clashes – as usual – and I watched the MotoGP as that’s usually the more entertaining of the two plus I can get it on my TV and the DTM would require a stream, though I wonder why I bothered because after the Pedrosa/Lorenzo thing was settled it was fairly boring. I’m just not getting excited about the current crop of riders, who the hell are they?

I don’t watch NASCAR Cup races (I’d watch highlights if I could), but I did catch the tag between Harvick and Logano on YouTube. What was that about? Commentary said they were going for the same gap, looked a little more suspect to me, perhaps not deliberate but maybe one didn’t back off when they may have done had it been someone else, apparently these guys have history..

Since I missed last week, what did I think of Turkey? Tense all the way through, the top four were pushing like hell throughout – it may not have come across on the TV screen but following the live timing a different member of the quartet set Fastest Lap with every pass. Then the clash! I jumped out of my seat. I never jump out of my seat. Vettel’s fault, clearly. Then the Maccas tried it! Sane heads prevailed and they took the 1-2.

What of the big race of that week, the 500? I LOVED IT. I’ve watched the Indy 500 since 2006 and this was the best yet. That’s not just for the racing but also the atmosphere, which was the most positive and forward-looking I’ve seen in my short tenure as a 500 fan – “unification” and the new management of the series are turning things around already. Many, like Pressdog, complained it was too much like an F1 race. So? It was like a very good F1 race or a very good sportscar endurance race. It had mystery, strategy, balls-out passes into tight corners (despite being an oval, at 230mph those turns are tight and the place only has one effective line), and top it off most of the front-runners hit trouble, so we had some different people in the top ten. Dario and team executed a near-perfect race. That’s fine – we watch this stuff to see the best of the best, this isn’t amateur hour – and if they hadn’t, we would’ve seen a non-Ganassi non-Penske winner. Roll on next year.

Another big one this week – Le Mans! Should be great. Mixed in with the welcome return of the Canadian GP and the stat of the World Cup, we’re in for a hell of a weekend.

[Photo credit:  IZOD IndyCar Series at Texas Motor Speedway, Getty Images, via Picapp]

Thoughts on MotoGP: Qatar

I watched last week’s Qatar Grand Prix live and meant to write a blog post about it during the week, but got distracted with other things.

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=MotoGP+Qatar&iid=8484113″ src=”5/6/f/1/MotoGP_final_at_cd2f.jpg?adImageId=12568869&imageId=8484113″ width=”380″ height=”214″ /]

Races at Losail are usually very boring, I’ve seen MotoGP, GP2 Asia and the old Grand Prix Masters (the refitted Reynards driven by Mansell, Patrese, et al) race there and they were almost all processional affairs, not helped by a strange track surface which seems to cause tyres to completely ignore everything we know about them and to behave completely irrationally.

This race was fun. It started with Stoner taking his customary position up front, as he always does at this track. That’s fine, several series have tracks that are more suited to a particular rider or driver, can’t be helped. We all expected Casey to romp away with the race win and the focus was further down the order, on how well Rossi, Lorenzo and Pedrosa would perform. But… he didn’t. He crashed after only a few short laps! This threw the race wide open.

It was a great fight with lots of passing, yet the most interesting part of it was that compared to last year, the characteristics of each bike relative to the others had radically changed. Where last year the Ducati easily had a power advantage down the straights, at Qatar it was the Honda just as it was a few years ago. Where last year the Honda and Yamaha were more agile but suffered on the straights and the Ducati couldn’t turn to save it’s life but had a warp drive, so this year it seemed the Ducati was the thing to have in the corners.

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This could change the way this season is fought compared to the last few years. It meant Nicky Hayden could actually ride his bike properly and it was brilliant to see him in the top four on merit. Lorenzo fell back several places with his injury yet valiantly fought his way back up to 3rd. And this Spies chap is pretty handy isn’t he? Makes Toseland look a bit like an amateur, which is not easy, and while it would be great to see British involvement in the series you can’t really argue if they replace JT with the quality of Spies.

Whether the back end of the field has such a quality is another matter, I’d wager James is better than quite a few of them so on that basis it is a shame he didn’t change teams. But we’ve only had one race, so let’s give them the same chance he had before we completely write them off, and some had a good race.

In summary, I enjoyed the battle and the change in performance of the bikes, if it had been the same as last year I’d have enjoyed it but perhaps not as much. We now have the added twist of seeing whether those changes carry through at other tracks, I suspect they will, and how will the riders adapt? I really do think this is a more open year than we’ve seen for a while, unless Vale has something to say about it, and he has a points advantage now…

The next race was supposed to be the Japanese GP this coming weekend but the European travel chaos caused by the volcano ash has caused that race to be postponed to October 3rd. This is partly because their gear is still in Europe, and partly because there’s only a one week gap between this weekend and the Jerez GP on May 2nd which is the most-attended race of the season – they don’t want to jeapordise that race. Jerez should be a good one, I’m looking forward to it.