VOL. 50 ISSUE 22 JUNE 4, 2013
P71
Briefly...
Jorge Lorenzo (99)
controlled the Italian
MotoGP from start to
finish. He allowed Dani
Pedrosa (26) and Marc
Marquez (93) to stay with
him early on, but once he
dropped the hammer they
couldn't keep pace.
on points, but Lorenzo is on the
way back.
But let's start with the big one:
the potential changeover in racing eras between Valentino Rossi
and Marc Marquez. That went
back and forth: very turbulent waters, with a non-finish apiece, but
a dead loss for Rossi and the lap
record and a potential podium for
the youngster.
For Rossi, Mugello is the spe-
Marc Marquez continues to set records. The latest is unenviable - the
fastest- ever Grand Prix motorcycle
crash. The Repsol Honda rider recorded the fastest speed of all in
second free practice at Mugello at
almost 214 mph, and on his next
run had a freak fall at top speed at
the end of the Italian track's long
and superfast straight. The run of
1.1 km ends in a blind brow, where
a MotoGP bike lifts the front wheel.
As it touches down riders must
brake heavily for the first corner,
taken at about 75 mph. Marquez
lost control still at almost top speed
as the front wheel locked. Data
showed it as just over 209.9 mph.
Seen from an on-board camera,
Marquez jinks to the left as he recovers from the lock-up, and runs
onto the grass. He speeds alongside the concrete wall at an oblique
angle, and is about to hit it when he
bails out. "I tried to save it," he said
through a team statement, "but the
bike was pulling me towards the
wall, so I jumped from the bike to
avoid hitting it." The rookie superstar was lucky to emerge battered
but basically unscathed. The most
obvious injury was a scraped and
swollen chin; but he was out again
the next morning.
The previous record-speed crash
was also at Mugello, in 2004, when
Kawasaki rider Shinya Nakano's
rear Bridgestone disintegrated as
he ran past the end of the pits. He
was travelling only a little slower, at
almost 200 mph, and also escaped
serious injury.
How does one decide to jump off
a motorcycle at 200 mph? It's possible, according to Marquez, when
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