VOL. 50 ISSUE 28 JULY 16, 2013
end, equaling his best-yet result
in the class.
Rossi had led into the first corner, Bradl past at the end of it,
with Espargaro third, then Marquez and Crutchlow, who later
joked: "I blame Marc. I got my
best-ever MotoGP start, then he
came across me and I had to roll
off - and I was sixth into the first
corner."
Once he got past Rossi,
Crutchlow set sail in an
effort to catch Marquez.
He gained ground on
the leader, but came up
short at the finish.
He did say, however, that
they'd found something to cure
his problem with a full tank in early laps, though "having said that
we run here with one liter less
because it's the least fuel consumption of the year, so maybe
that made a difference."
Crutchlow was up to fifth at the
end of lap one, with both him and
Fun & Go Honda's Alvaro Bau-
P49
Briefly...
were several similar crashes for
the Dunlop-shod Moto2 and Moto3
bikes. The control-tire supplier's
response to the call for an asymmetric dual-compound front was
guarded. "We developed and
tested one before the control-tire
era," said a spokesman. The riders
hadn't liked it, especially because
of the queasy feeling under braking. "With an asymmetric rear it's
not the same, but the rider relies
so much on the sensitive feel of
the front that in the end there were
more cons than pros," he said.
Now the question had arisen again,
and at this stage no decision had
been made. Already for this circuit
they had a special plan. "Normally
the harder and softer options are
just one grade apart: here they are
more widely separated," he said.
In 2010 after several cold-tire
highsides in cool morning sessions, they had added an extra-soft
front to the allocation, especially
for morning sessions. Since then,
the tire design had been changed
again, with a softer-construction
front introduced midway through
last season. Now the issue had
come up again, and no decision
had been reached as yet. "Development of the tire is not the issue.
It's testing and getting the data in
the right environment," he said.
This was a very specific track, with
unique issues. "We have been talking, but we have no definitive answer now," he said.
MotoGP is considering the introduction of "base-line testing"
to tighten up medical controls in
the wake of Jorge Lorenzo's early
return to the track, less than 30
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