Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 39 OCTOBER 1, 2013 There's no place like home, there's no place like home. Marquez celebrates in an Aragon gravel trap. "Marc was aggressive and missed his braking point," he said. "He tried to avoid me but he just touched the back of my bike and cut the cable so I had no more traction control. I just touched the gas, and I was falling. When I realized there was a problem, I was already in the air." Invited to blame Marquez, he was guarded. "Things can happen. On many other occasions, there is no problem." But he stopped short of outright condemnation, and suggesting that his teammate should be penalized. "It's not in my hands to judge. The limit is when a guy puts another guy in danger. Many of us could be more aggressive, but we won't do it. I only want to know where the limit is, so I can also play with this limit." Pedrosa had made a bad error knocking teammate Nicky Hayden off in 2006 in Portugal, had been censured, and "I've never done it again," he added. If his birthday celebrations were badly spoiled, he wasn't the only one going home glum. So too Lorenzo, who had marked significant improvements to his Yamaha over and above the new seamless gearbox and missed proving them with pole position by only one hundredth of a second. But a final setting change intended to improve his corner speed succeeded in that respect, but spoiled his crucial strong braking performance. When Marquez regrouped and attacked, he had no defense. And once again his own title challenge suffered the loss of five points. "When I tried to follow him I made a few mistakes… but he was faster than me anyway," Lorenzo admitted. A touch glum also was Valentino Rossi, in spite of a podium third place. He'd had to battle to avoid coming in fourth again, and to be honest if Pedrosa hadn't been out of the race he would have been fourth. As it was he managed to regain his place at the front of a four-strong gang, only very narrowly ahead of Go & Fun Honda's Alvaro Bautista, long-time pursuer Stefan Bradl and the LCR Honda and Monster Energy Tech 3 Yamaha's Cal Crutchlow. Third to sixth was covered by less than two seconds. Rossi had expected much better. Improvements at the postMisano test had been followed by more of the same in practice here. He missed a front row start by .005 of a second and promised he felt good enough at last to be competitive with the three Spaniards ahead of him. Not so. He blamed his choice of a hard front tire, pointing out that Marquez and Lorenzo, almost 15 seconds in front of him, had been the only factory bikes using the soft. "I think it was the right choice," he observed. "I'm a bit disappointed, after my performance in P69 Briefly... one of the Ducatis is also using the last engine… the exception being Ben Spies' satellite bike, now being ridden by Yonny Hernandez. As significant are the numbers of engines that have come to the end and been "withdrawn from allocation." The factory Honda men Marc Marquez and Pedrosa still have all engines available, but all Yamaha riders have lost one, and likewise the Ducatis. CRT bikes are allowed 12 motors, and two of them are already up to number 11: Hiroshi Aoyama's FTR Kawasaki and the Paul Bird ART Aprilia vacated by Yonny Hernandez and now ridden by Damian Cudlin. The number of engines withdrawn is high: Lukas Pesek having lost nine of his BMW motors, currently using his tenth. Several others, including Aoyama, Petrucci and Laverty have discarded eight. Rookie Bryan Staring's CRT Honda, using a race-tuned CBR1000RR motor, is at the other end of the scale. He has used only six, and lost only two of those. It's nowadays slightly less unusual than in the past to see a female racer in the World Championships. At Aragon, there were two. Sixteen-year-old Moto3 regular Ana Carrasco was there as usual; joined in the female changing room by wild card Maria Herrera, the 17 year old fresh from a strong showing in the Spanish National Championship, including a race win. Carrasco has yet to score her first point. Bridgestone's new "hard" rear tire, tested after Misano, won universal approval from riders who find continued on next page

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