MOTOGP
MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 9/JULY 13, 2014
SACHSENRING CIRCUIT/SACHSENRING, GERMANY
P72
Aleix Espargaro headed the factory
Yamahas of Jorge Lorenzo and Valen-
tino Rossi.
The big question concerned tires.
The rain had ceased; the track dries
quickly. But parts were still very wet.
Most stuck with their wet bikes. Bradl
took a different gamble; fitting slicks
to his wet bike on the grid. The prob-
lem was the new time limit, and they
ran out of time to get the front fork set
right. Now he had a sort of hybrid, on
slicks but with soft suspension. Even
so, perhaps conditions might play his
way.
Or not. The other way turned out
better. At the end of the warm-up lap,
most of grid dived into the pits to swap
to a fully dry bike. They would start
from pit lane, released when the last
grid starter had passed. But positions
on this new grid went to whoever got
there first, or pushed in hardest, with
five bikes across at the front facing a
narrowing pit lane.
Bradl, of course led away, opening
up on the back-rows gaggle behind,
with Michael Laverty (PBM) having
the unusual experience of holding
second place on lap one, soon lost
to a charging Danilo Petrucci and his
Ioda ART. Hiro Aoyama, Karel Abra-
ham, Colin Edwards, Mike di Meglio
and Hector Barbera and second PBM
rider Broc Parkes filled the rest of the
front positions, for a while.
The unceremonious pit-lane send-
off had been, Marquez said later, "like
a motocross start, with everyone us-
ing their elbows – I enjoyed it." He
