MOTOGP
FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 17 / OCTOBER 25-27, 2019
PHILLIP ISL AND CIRCUIT / PHILLIP ISL AND, AUSTRALIA
P64
rain—for me it had no endurance,"
said Miller. This decision paid him
back.
Valentino Rossi (Monster
Yamaha) celebrated his record
400th race with a tearing start,
seizing the lead with a run round
the outside into the daunting first
corner, and holding it for the first
three laps.
Into the second corner, Danilo
Petrucci was pushed wide and
his Ducati flicked him off hard and
high. Outside of him, Quartararo
had already run wide and slowed.
The inverted rider went piling
spectacularly into the side of the
Petronas Yamaha, and both were
down and out.
It was Crutchlow first chasing
Rossi, and—to the amazement
even of his Aprilia team—also
Andrea Iannone, an impressive
the end, luckily too late to make
any difference.
With everybody short of setup
time, there was some second-
guessing on tires on the grid,
while in the pits wet-shod bikes
were ready in case of a flag-to-
flag bike-swap race. According to
Michelin's tire sheet (admittedly
not necessarily correct), only
Johann Zarco (substituting for
Nakagami on the LCR Idemitsu
Honda) chose the soft front; only
Marquez and Crutchlow the hard.
For the rear, however, Vinales,
both Aprilia riders Iannone and
Espargaro, Rossi and Marquez
joined Zarco in gambling on the
soft, the rest all on hard.
"I watched the guys switching
to the soft, and I thought either
they had much better throttle con-
trol than me, or they're expecting
coming back to me," Miller said.
Third to 10th was covered
by just over two seconds, with
jostling position changes through-
out the race, and the two usually
downbeat Aprilias having by far
their best race of the year, at a
track where rhythm and handling
mean more than acceleration and
power.
After a weekend of disruptive
weather that postponed qualify-
ing from Saturday to Sunday
(Vinales ahead of Quartararo and
Marquez), there was a final twist,
spots of rain spattered down at
Rossi holds off
Andrea Dovisiozo,
Jack Miller,
Francesco Bagnaia,
Alex Rins, Andrea
Iannone, Joan
Mir and Aleix
Espargaro.
