MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 51 ISSUE 12 MARCH 25, 2014 P47
screens and made the bike in-
creasingly difficult to ride. At the
end he had dropped right back to
coast over the line, 26 seconds
away but narrowly safe in sixth.
The next pair were the best
of the new production Honda
RCV1000Rs, but the order was
slightly surprising. Class rookie
Scott Redding had been hound-
ing former champion Nicky
Hayden until the American ran
Briefly...
Front-row starter Bradley Smith had
the opposite view. "I don't know what
the other Yamaha riders are com-
plaining about. I accepted on the
first day the new tire didn't work so
well, but we've worked on adjusting
the bike for that."
Fuel is the other heavy new stricture
on the Factory bikes, with the drop in
allocation another problem for Yama-
ha riders. The five-percent drop from
21 to 20 liters has cut deep, spoil-
ing throttle response at small open-
ings and cutting horsepower at large
ones. Valentino Rossi joked that on
the straight the engine felt as if "pow-
ered by air. It is a long time since I
CHUMP OF THE WEEKEND
Sadly, that would have to be
Jorge Lorenzo, crashing out of
the lead on the first lap with a
self-confessed "learner's mistake."
His statement said it all. He had
misjudged the tires and the track
temperature, he admitted. "I made
a mistake… it was a long time ago
that I last did that in a race. We are
not perfect, we are only human."
continued on next page
Jorge Lorenzo's gaffe in the race
was costly.
Nicky Hayden
(69) lost out in
his battle with
fellow Honda
RCV1000 rider
Scott Redding
(45) for seventh.
