VOL. 50 ISSUE 37 SEPTEMBER 17, 2013
Lorenzo was perfect in this one
as he quickly opened up a gap
on the two factory Hondas and
maintained it to the finish.
Not just because he had once
again taken fourth place.
On a day when everybody's
nemesis Marc Marquez was
handing out humiliation, the
home hero was his first victim. It
came after the Merciless Repsol
Honda rider had made a couple
of errors early in the race, troubled with the handling with a full
tank, and had run so wide that he
let Rossi through into third, giving
him the chance to chase the stillclose Dani Pedrosa, who was in
turn chasing runaway fast starter
Jorge Lorenzo.
Instead, Rossi found himself,
once again, victim of a hard and
pushy pass, forcing him to sit up
as the Honda slipped inside at
the final hairpin. It was a slap in
the face from which he was unable to recover.
Marquez's next victim was his
teammate Pedrosa, by now a second away up the track. The young
record-breaker hunted him down
remorselessly, then pushed past
with equal vigor. Pedrosa was at
10th of a second with a hard
move on Zarco on the final
lap.
Espargaro is looking
increasingly threatening for
the title, now only 23 points
adrift of Redding, on 202
points to the Spaniard's 179.
Pol Espargaro won the
Moto2 GP.
P41
Briefly...
ellite teams for factory-spec bikes.
With two-strokes, rider Sete Gibernau scored race wins, but since
the arrival of the four-strokes, this
goal has been out of reach. Sources close to the team explained that
the non-Honda KTM Moto3 squad
would be distinctly separate from
Gresini's all-Honda MotoGP and
Moto2 squads.
A dynasty in the making? Certainly all eyes were on 16-year-old
GP first-timer Luca Marini, as he
wheeled his San Carlo FTR-Honda
onto the track for the first time. His
particular burden is to be Valentino
Rossi's half-brother. Marini is contesting the Italian Championship,
and acquitted himself reasonably
well, until the race. He qualified
29th, but didn't make it past the
first corner, tagging another bike at
the back and crashing out.
Bridgestone have a new rear tire
for testing at Misano on the day after the race, aimed not only at addressing complaints about crashhappy warm-up problems but more
at updating the available tires – so
far this year the harder rear option
has barely been used, and the
harder front only seldom. The company has a new front available as
well, but according to a spokesman
it will be held back for the present,
because giving teams two tires to
test rather than just one would be
in danger of confusing the issue
– especially when they had modifications of their own to test. "The
harder rear has hardly been used
this year, mainly because the improved electronic controls make
it unnecessary," he said. The new
tire offered better edge grip, taking
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