VOL. 50 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 20, 2013
P49
Briefly...
iele Romagnoli to move to Ducati
with him, and help ease the transition to a new bike and within an
Italian-speaking team. Romagnoli
is a long-time Yamaha man, moving back to hands-on spanner work
after a spell managing Jorge Lorenzo's factory team as crew chief to
then-factory rider Colin Edwards.
He moved to Tech 3 with the American, then took on Crutchlow when
he joined in 2011. Both the rider
and Italian Romagnoli spoke of the
close, even wordless, communication between them: almost a prerequisite for success.
It is becoming increasingly common for riders to take their crew
chiefs with them, ever since Rossi
enticed Jeremy Burgess (former
crew chief to champions Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner) to move
with him from Honda to Yamaha in
2004, then on to Ducati, now back
to Yamaha. Another famous bikeswitching partnership was Casey
Stoner and Cristian Gabarini, with
him at LCR Honda, Ducati, and
Repsol Honda. Other successful
duos from the past include Freddie Spencer/Erv Kanemoto, Kenny Roberts/Kel Carruthers and
Wayne Rainey/Mike Sinclair.
onds clear, with Pedrosa more
than a second adrift of Lorenzo.
The battle for the lead was
over, and Marquez was quite
comfortable.
"In the end with that gap, I was
able to enjoy the slides," he said,
adding a unique point of view –
that he actually liked the challenge of the track's notorious mix
of three different surfaces. His
pace and confidence never fal-
Stefan Bradl's contract with
LCR Honda has been renewed,
after he blew away doubts about
his potential with pole and second
place at Laguna. Importantly, the
announcement makes clear that
the satellite rider will have "factory
backing." The bike ran in Red Bull
colors at Indy.
The other name in the frame is
Scott Redding, who is in talks
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