VOL. 51 ISSUE 43 OCTOBER 28, 2014 P43
Briefly...
The feared aggressor of the previous
weekend's Australian GP, Andrea
Iannone, was visited by negative
karma in Malaysia, three times over.
Firstly, now fit enough to come be-
fore Race Direction, he was handed
a penalty point for crashing into Dani
Pedrosa and putting him out of the
race. He explained the reason was
that he had found neutral instead
of first gear while downshifting for
the hairpin. Then he was slammed
by Pedrosa in a verbal attack in a
Dorna.com interview. "This year,
he has taken down more than one
rider. Maybe he doesn't learn," said
Pedrosa. One such crash was an
understandable mistake, "but every
weekend he rides in the same style.
This is not acceptable."
Then Iannone became innocent vic-
tim of just such a mistake by another
rider, none other than an apologetic
Marc Marquez. The strike, during
wet FP2, was bad enough to put him
out for the rest of the weekend, af-
ter a failed attempt at FP3 the next
morning. Instead he was flying home
that night for treatment in Italy. Mar-
quez escaped without penalty.
Also down, though not quite out –
Pol Espargaro, after a rogue chip
of glass punctured his Monster Tech
3 Yamaha's oil radiator in FP3, trig-
gering a leak that sent him flying to
a very hard landing, as he started a
hot lap in the crucial pre-qualifying
session. The rider had been warned
after following riders noticed spat-
tering oil, first Andrea Dovizioso and
then Scott Redding, both slowing
as they passed and gesturing to the
Spaniard. He peered at his bike, "but
I couldn't see anything wrong, as the
oil leak was so small. The bike felt
continued on next page
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
I
t's been eight weeks and four GPs since Marc Marquez
won a race. We were almost getting used to it. But not real-
ly. In the meantime, he's carried on breaking records, set-
ting pole positions and fastest laps, and claiming the World
Championship. Win number 12 – equaling the record set by
Mick Doohan – really came as no surprise.
12
and ties
wins in a season
Brake much?
Marc Marquez
(93) gets the
back wheel in
the air during
his epic battle
with Valentino
Rossi (46) in
the Malaysian
MotoGP on
Sunday.
