BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
I
f ever there was an argument for introducing randomly timed
trackside sprinklers to liven up the racing, it was heavily under-
lined at Aragon.
The sprinkling was not artificial, nor even unexpected, when
race day dawned so rainy and so misty that morning proceedings
were delayed by an hour; while the weather forecast also predicted
the rain would return in the main race of the day.
VOL. 51 ISSUE 39 SEPTEMBER 30, 2014 P65
Briefly...
Ducati's joy with its new bike (see In
The Wind) was not unalloyed, how-
ever, after an incident in the first free
practice, when returned rider Hector
Barbera's first outing back on a Des-
mosedici ended in a high-speed bar-
becue when the Avintia-backed bike
caught fire. A leak from a failed fuel
QD union was blamed for the spec-
tacular event, which saw the Spanish
rider stop in a hurry and leap off into
the gravel, suffering minor but pain-
ful burns to one arm. Damage was
fortunately minimal, however, and he
was out again in the afternoon; and
the next day made it through from Q1
to the senior (top 12) Q2 qualifying
session for the first time. Barbera's
switch, starting at this race, is a pre-
cursor to the Spanish team's switch
to Ducati next year, from their cur-
rent underwhelming upgraded CRT
bikes, using team-modified Kawa-
saki engines. His bike is an ex-test
mule used by factory tester Michele
Pirro, but running control software.
Marc Marquez had an explanation
for his costly crash at Misano two
weeks ago – his first race crash since
Mugello last year. "I took more risk
because my idea was to try to win
the championship here in Spain at
this race," he said. He would need to
have a 100-point advantage to do so,
and because of his single-point score
in Italy it is no longer possible. He
started the weekend 74 points ahead
of teammate Dani Pedrosa. Even if
he won at Aragon and Pedrosa didn't
finish, he would have had an advan-
tage of 99 points. "Now is maybe the
time to concentrate on the champion-
ship and manage the gap," he said,
at the pre-race conference, but later
expressed a desire to win anyway in
front of his home crowd.
continued on next page
Jorge Lorenzo
(99) and Marc
Marquez (93)
battle at the
front of the
MotoGP pack at
Motorland Aragon
on Sunday.
