VOL. 50 ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 12, 2013
P53
Briefly...
Bradley Smith led his
teammate Cal Crutchlow
early on. Crutchlow would
crash and Smith would
finish seventh.
Smith, who soon lost touch, and
the German kept on for a lonely
sixth, his first-ever finish at a
track where he has crashed out
at every previous attempt.
Nicky Hayden closed out five
years on the Marlboro Ducati with
eighth, fighting his way through
after a bad start, and closing on
Smith in seventh.
"I'd cut the three-second gap
in half, but then I had a moment
coming off the last corner and hit
the windscreen. Then he speeded up anyway, so that was it."
Hayden was glad at least to be
Maverick Vinales won
the race and the Moto3
World Championship in
Valencia.
aged to hold on to fourth
by less than a tenth from
a pushing Efren Vazquez;
Alex Masbou had a
remarkable ride to lead
the next close group of
seven after starting from
pit lane.
His teammate Isaac Vinales was
two tenths adrift, with Ana Carrasco
an impressive eighth by inches from
Phillip Oettl.
Carrasco had already become
the first girl racer to score points in
Moto3. Eighth was the best result for
a female since Finn Taru Rinne was
seventh at the Hockenheimring in
1989.
Vinales ended up with 313 points,
Rins 311 and Salom 302 – as in
MotoGP a score of more than 300
apiece. Marquez was fourth on 213.
Dorna's strict Moto3 rules next year,
by supplying factory machines to just
six riders as they hit back against
KTM for having elevated the technical level beyond the planned low
costs and equal machinery. If so,
they risk not only infringing the rule
which says all entries must be prepared to provide identical machines
to 15 riders, but also risk engineclaiming actions by rivals. All machines are supposed to be identical,
but Honda plans to sidestep this by
branding their other bikes FTR, the
chassis manufacturer that furnishes
frames to almost all this year's Hondas. The rule requiring availability
to 15 riders may be more difficult to
circumvent; but the new machine
was confirmed too late, so that most
other teams (including old Honda ally
the Gresini team) had already needed to make other arrangements.
Who would help whom in the final
showdown? The questions went out
to the teammates before the race.
For Dani Pedrosa: "Honda has no
team orders. I think Marc [Marquez]
is anyway capable of doing it. I will
try to win, and that will be best for
the team." For Valentino Rossi: "The
best way [to help Jorge] is to try to arrive in front of Marc. But for me, both
riders deserve the championship."
Before the race there were also
memories of the last time the title fight
came down to the final round. It was
in 2006, between Yamaha-mounted
Valentino Rossi and Honda's Nicky
Hayden. Rossi had taken over the
points lead by eight when Hayden's
Honda teammate Pedrosa knocked
him off at the previous round in Portugal. It looked like a foregone concontinued on next page
