Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 20, 2013 P51 Briefly... Fausto Gresini to ride a production Honda RCV alongside the factory bike of current team rider Alvaro Bautista. Plans were going well, according to Gresini; while Redding was cautious. "It would be good if we can make this, but for the moment I'll just bide my time and concentrate on the Moto2 Championship," he said. RINS WINS A race that started with great variety eventually settled into its usual pattern… with a few subtle changes. Points leader Luis Salom had crashed in qualifying and was down on the third row, with an ankle injury that meant he was unable to walk. The other usual KTM suspects, Alex Rins, Estrella Galicia teammate Alex Marquez and Maverick Vinales took over the front row, and eventually the race, finishing – after plenty of to and fro – in the same order. Rins led away but ran wide on the first right-hander – and it was Arthur Sissis who took over, with Australian countryman Jack Miller on his heels. As ever, Miller was spectacular under braking and in the corners to make up for his Honda's lack of speed and acceleration against the KTMs. All the same he'd been pushed back from third at the end of lap one to a still-close eighth on lap four when he paid the price for what some might think to be overriding – a snap, a high-side, and the Queenslander hit the ground hard, breaking his collarbone. A cruel punishment for trying so hard. The top three in Moto3: (from left to right) Alex Marquez, Alex Rins and Maverick Vinales. By lap six the front three had started to make a break, while Sissis had fallen back into the hands of Jonas Folger closely pursued by Salom and Efren Vazquez. The quartet remained engaged as Zulfahmi Khairuddin tagged on behind, then as Salom moved past Sissis with 10 laps to go, he and Vazquez dropped slightly in a private battle. This ended when the Mahindra emitted a plume of oil smoke and Vazquez slowed. It was an oil-control rather than mechanical problem, and the first race retirement for the new-thisyear Suter-built bike. Folger stayed ahead of Salom to the end; Sissis was five seconds down, sixth his best of the year; Khairuddin a similar distance adrift. Vinales claimed fastest lap, but third cost him points as he closed to within nine of Salom. A victory would have put them equal. Rins is third another seven points down on 167; then Folger with 94 and Marquez with 90. Colin Edwards is hopeful he may stay with his current NGM Mobile Forward team next year, after confirmation of increased support from Yamaha, along with their lease-level M1 engines. Team owner Giovanni Cuzari revealed at Indianapolis that as well as the engine and short chassis already promised by Yamaha, the factory will lease almost a complete motorcycle, including suspension. "We have to take care of the fairing," he told the official Dorna website. An announcement on riders will come in a couple of weeks, he said. Former three-time 500cc World Champion and successful team owner "King Kenny" Roberts revealed he is working on a plan to come back into racing "with something quite big," possibly as soon as 2014, though that project was running short of time. If Jorge Lorenzo has ever heard the fashion dictum: "red and green should never be seen," he clearly thinks it wrong. He arrived at Indy with a new helmet design, imposing a virulent green on his usual red, blue and white livery. The helmet features a strikingly aggressive snakes-head with scary yellow eyes, and on the back the continued on next page

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