VOL. 51 ISSUE 32 AUGUST 12, 2014 P43
Aliens" are being forced to watch
with increasing frustration as the
Repsol Honda rider continues to
raise the bar.
If Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and
Dani Pedrosa are aliens… then
where did the young guy come
from? Is it too fanciful to think of it
as the human race fighting back?
The Indianapolis GP marked
the end of a busy summer season
of contract-making and breaking,
and the start of the more inten-
sive second half of the 18-race
season. A crowd of more than
80,000 (dwarfed by the empty
250,000-strong grandstands
of the surrounding banked oval
Brickyard circuit) were poised to
see another few lines in an ever-
growing chapter of Grand Prix
history.
It came after a race of attri-
tion, especially among the lesser
lights, with only 15 finishers, and
championship points for all.
Marquez started from his
eighth pole, but close qualifying
times – 10 big names somewhat
shuffled about within one second
– were the harbinger of a close
race on the revised track, where
the easing of three corner sets
and a full infield resurface had
changed the circuit's speed and
character from stop-and-go to
ebb-and-flow.
The main result was to favor
the Yamahas at what had been
a Honda track, but another sur-
prise beneficiary was Ducati - or
at least Andrea Dovizioso's Marl-
boro Ducati. He'd tailed Marquez
to qualify second, and was in
position to make the most of a
power-up engine supplied (as
at Mugello) for this track's long
straight.
Dovi got away first, with Rossi
and his Movistar Yamaha jumping
through from the second row and
taking the lead before the end
of the first lap. At this point Mar-
quez and Repsol Honda team-
mate Dani Pedrosa were fourth
and fifth, with Andrea Iannone's
Briefly...
(from 1:37.958), with MotoGP's best-
lap average speed up from 99.1 mph
to a respectable 101.5 mph.
Valentino Rossi summed up the
changes: It was "definitely im-
proved… faster and makes it easier
riding the bike. The best and biggest
step in the new surface - a lot more
grip and less bumps." Jorge Lorenzo
added: "The new layout makes the
track more fun." Most also believed
the faster corner entries and exits
would improve overtaking chances.
For the Yamahas, perhaps, but
both factory Honda riders sang a
slightly different tune. This reflected
that their bike thrives at stop-and-go
circuits, exploiting most especially
strong low-end acceleration, where
the Yamaha does better where high
corner speed is more valuable. For
Marc Marquez, "Maybe for our bike
the old layout worked better; the new
corners make the lap a little easier.
There's more corner speed, more
banking, and we stay on the throttle
longer… it's not like before when we
could stop the bike, then pick it up
and go." His teammate Dani Pedrosa
was even more blunt. "I don't like this
new layout as much. It seems less
fun compared with the previous one,
because we have three fewer places
in which to overtake." Sour grapes?
First tests of next year's Honda
RC213V – the last of its generation
of full-factory machine – had riders
Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez
finding it "difficult to improve on the
lap times of the 2014 bike" at Brno
tests in the summer break, accord-
ing to the latter. "It is not the last
step," he said of the revised V-four,
currently dominant in the last years
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