MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 51 ISSUE 15 APRIL 15, 2014 P51
DOMINATION
Last year, Marc Marquez became
the youngest-ever pole qualifier at
the inaugural Red Bull Grand Prix of
the Amercas. This year, he under-
scored the achievement with the
panache acquired with 12 months
more MotoGP experience.
He not only dominated every
session, but did it with a display of
sustained on-the-limit riding – skit-
tering over curbs and saving at least
one front-end crash with his knee,
and finally reinforcing pole with two
record-speed laps in succession. It
was more for the fun of it than out of
any need. There was nobody threat-
ening his supremacy.
With his leg "not as painful as in
Qatar" he reveled in the changes
of direction, stealing time there as
well as everywhere else. His riding,
said a wondering Valentino Rossi, is
"beautiful."
His advantage was seldom much
less than a second, until teammate
Dani Pedrosa came within a tenth in
the final session. That was before
Marquez had given it everything, and
by the end he'd regained a comfort
zone of almost three tenths.
Stefan Bradl was strong through-
out, and completed the front row,
his third time up there and reflecting
newfound consistency.
Jorge Lorenzo had a second
worrying race in succession. On a
glum day one it looked like he might
not even make the top 10. By day
two he'd speeded up so much, even
heading the sheets in qualifying, that
some thought he'd been sandbag-
ging. "The progression from two
seconds behind to half-a-second
has been big," he agreed, adding:
"I expect to be fighting for third or
fourth place tomorrow." More sand-
bagging?
But he was still not fastest Ya-
maha. The hero of Qatar qualifying,
Aleix Espargaro, had missed the top
10 but came through from Q1, only
to linger at the back until the very
end, with a flier that put him fourth,
heading an all-Yamaha row two from
Lorenzo and Rossi.
Of course, he was using the
soft tire not available to the fac-
tory riders. So too Cal Crutchlow,
who came out top Ducati, in spite
of electronic problems on day one
and a low-speed spill in qualifying.
He headed row three from Bradley
Smith (hard tire) and Andrea Iannone
(soft). Andrea Dovizioso, fighting flu,
was 10th to head Pol Espargaro and
Alvaro Bautista, who was struggling
after also having to come through
from Q1.
Impressive class rookie Scott
Redding was best of the rest on the
top Open Honda, missing the Q1 cut
by less than a tenth and outranking
similarly mounted Nicky Hayden by
more than four tenths. Yonny Her-
nandez completed row five; Hiroshi
Aoyama led the sixth, and Michel di
Meglio was the last of 23 qualifiers.
