VOL. 51 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 19, 2014 P63
DANI PEDROSA PUTS AN END TO
MARQUEZ'S PERFECT SEASON
Briefly...
Marc Marquez has denied "play-
ing with his rivals" at Indianapolis,
where a close battle for the lead in
the first half of the race was brought
to an end when he simply moved
away ahead. "You don't play," he
said. "It's maybe true that I was
faster. The difference was that I was
managing my tires."
Marc Marquez has all but ruled
out the chance of him undertak-
ing a two-class attack at the last
round in Valencia, in response to a
light-hearted challenge from double
500cc/250cc champion Fred-
die Spencer (1985). "I heard some
rumors too," he said. "I was sur-
prised… but no. Well, 95 percent
no. It would be very difficult to be
competitive for just one race. The
bikes have changed a lot," he said.
Jack Miller is still playing ca-
gey about his future, but paddock
sources tell a different story … that
the Australian teenager has already
been signed up to ride alongside Cal
Crutchlow in the LCR Honda team –
and possibly on a factory rather than
an Open-class machine. While rid-
ers who have been through Moto2
on the way to MotoGP – including
Marquez and Redding – insist that
the jump from Moto3 is just too big,
Miller himself is not so sure. "I don't
see why not," he said at Brno. "I'm
still waiting to see what will happen,
but I'm not nervous about riding in
MotoGP, on a good enough bike."
Valentino Rossi had his second
crash of the year in the fourth free
practice session … and it was a so-
bering incident that could easily have
ended much more badly than merely
continued on next page
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
T
here were almost 140,000 people at Brno. What they saw
was history in the unmaking. The spell broken. The unbeat-
able beaten.
It took another Repsol Honda to break Marc Marquez's run of
wins, and Dani Pedrosa's first win since the Malaysian Grand Prix,
was a landmark achievement. Yet it was strangely deflating, in an
inexplicable way.
When Marquez won every race, it remained exciting. When Pe-
drosa won one race, fending off a persistent Jorge Lorenzo's Movis-
tar Yamaha, it somehow wasn't. Even with the ever-popular second
factory Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi defeating Marquez for third.
STREAK
BUSTER
