VOL. 51 ISSUE 41 OCTOBER 14, 2014 P45
"Maybe people think this
championship was easy. I was
always smiling, always happy.
But I felt the pressure. It was dif-
ficult to keep the concentration,
and it was important for Honda
to try to get the title here. It was
difficult not to try to go for the
race victory, but Honda's big
bosses are all here..."
Rossi was eventually con-
signed to a close third.
"On one side I am satisfied,"
he said. "The race was at a very
high level, always on the limit,
and I felt good with the bike. On
the other side, I am disappoint-
ed. I hoped to keep the champi-
onship open for one more race."
When Marquez attacked,
Rossi had fought back with spir-
it – they changed places twice
on lap 15, but next time around
the Honda was ahead for good.
"He had a little more than me on
Briefly...
at nine mph. Initial predictions were
that the storm, with winds up to 225
km/h, would hit on Sunday, posing
a real threat to the race. But after
two deceptively fine sunny days of
qualifying weathermen said that the
storm, the biggest so far this year,
was not only losing at least some
intensity, but would probably only
reach Japan on Monday. The risk
of a wet Sunday remained, but the
greater threat was to post-race travel
to Australia for next weekend's Phil-
lip Island GP. There is little slack built
into the freight schedule to transplant
the full GP paddock from north of To-
kyo to south of Melbourne. The pre-
vious weekend, the weaker typhoon
Phanfong caused havoc at the F1
car GP at Suzuka, and was the root
cause of the crash that left Marussia
driver Jules Bianchi with life-threat-
ening head injuries.
The weather also threatened Hon-
da's planned post-race test of Mi-
chelin tires, scheduled to take
place the day after the race.
Who follows who? Valentino Rossi
away in fifth, with Kent on his heels in
sixth.
Romano Fenati led the next group
for seventh, costly to his title chances;
from Enea Bastianini, teammate Nic-
colo Antonelli, Alex Rins and Isaac
Vinales – with seventh to 11th within
just over a second.
It was costly to the title chances of
both Fenati and Rins, who had been
batted off track in the first corner and
had battled through from 20th, but
couldn't escape from the brawl.
Ajo and two Japanese wild cards
crashed out on the first corner, Ferrari
brought down fellow Italian and fellow
Mahindra rider Migno
at the other end of lap
one, with Guevara,
Kornfeil, Navarro and
Masbou swelling the
crash list.
Marquez is now
seriously threatening
to make it a first-time
brother double-act for
the championship, with
231 points to Miller's
206. Rins has 194;
Fenati and Vazquez are
equal on 174.
With his third win of the season, Alex Marquez now
leads the Moto3 World Championship by 25 points
over season-long leader Jack Miller.
When Marquez (93) made this
pass on Rossi (46) it sealed the
World Championship for the young
Spaniard. Rossi would hold on to
finish third.
continued on next page
