Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 25 JUNE 24, 2014 P123 dents, misread their pit signal boards, then run out of gas on the last lap. Others who (to coin a phrase) get away with murder. My favorite example is Valen- tino Rossi. In his years of serial success, all the fates seemed tipped in his favor. And my favorite example of that comes from Brno, when there was a plague of wasps during race weekend. Count- less riders were stung, at least one crashed as the conse- quence of a furious insect in his boot. Loris Capirossi was saved (according to Dr. Claudio Costa) from a life-threatening anaphylactic shock reaction af- ter his particular encounter. Rossi escaped unstung throughout practice, and was leading the race when a wasp flew into his helmet. Nasty. Imagine a sting on the eyelid; or an angry arthropod trapped between your helmet lining and your scalp. So Rossi opened his visor… and the wasp flew out. As I wrote at the time – even the insects are on his side. Of course, Valentino's luck turned when he crashed and broke his leg at Mugello in 2010. Since that first major in- jury, he has added only two wins to his class total of 80, and had to endure two serious- ly dispiriting years at Ducati af- ter ditching Yamaha rather than continue sharing a pit with his nemesis Jorge Lorenzo. That move was entirely his decision, so you can clearly also make your own bad luck. It has taken more than a year of solid hard work plus the icono- clastic dumping of crew chief Jerry Burgess for him to regain at least some of his form. It was elegant and popular that it was Rossi who finished closest to Marquez at Barcelona, but he was not in a challenging posi- tion, and was in fact promoted to second only by the misfor- tune of the perennially luckless Dani Pedrosa. It's also easy to see how Marquez has been making his good luck. In much the same way as Rossi, or any of his pre- decessors: by plenty of hard work, absorbed into a holistic approach that considers every aspect of racing. One example is his approach to qualifying. They get 15 min- utes, and the conventional ap- proach is to take two runs. A rider sticks to his number-one bike, avoiding confusion over different settings or chassis feel. Marquez has another way. At two races this year he's taken three runs at it; switching be- tween bikes to give himself that extra chance. In fact it went bad at Catalunya when he crashed on his third outing, denying him an eighth consecutive pole. But the approach remains sound, and highly original. Same with bike changes mid-race – a rare but important contingency. Not content with introducing the timesaving one- leg pirouette last year in Austra- lia, he's been practicing a fur- ther refinement. Now his feet don't even touch the ground as he pulls one bike up right alongside the other and simply jumps straight over. Another few hundredths of a second saved. And another little detail thought about, experimented with and practiced. There's the same breadth to his riding. He can do runaway wins, he can stalk-and-pounce, and he can certainly fight. At Catalunya he showed that, when fighting doesn't guaran- tee victory, he can also play tactics. Some thought the way he spiked Pedrosa's guns at Cata- lunya – in short changing his corner line and parking in his rival's way – was a professional foul. Others simply applauded a risky but successful race-win- ning tactic. Marquez is not the only thor- ough rider: nobody could be more assiduous than Lorenzo. But he adds real originality of thought. No wonder Jorge is nonplussed. No wonder Marc's luck is so good. CN

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