VOL. 52 ISSUE 13 MARCH 31, 2015 P51
was better not to crash." He ran
across the Astroturf onto the
paved run-off, and rejoined last.
His fight back through was
typically impressive, and he was
up to sixth by lap eight of 22;
then ahead of his teammate Pe-
drosa just after half distance. But
long before this, the leaders had
escaped, some five seconds
clear.
There was a strong element of
Briefly...
Turn up the color on your HD screen,
and you might be able to decipher
Bridgestone's new color-coding
for tires, including the new-this-year
extra-hard rear and asymmetric front.
The extra-hard (rear only) has a yel-
low stripe, easy enough to see, but
the asymmetric front's bright blue
is very similar to the extra-soft's tur-
quoise. The rest are as before: hard
is red; medium has no color and soft
is white.
There were a couple of surprises in
the first qualifying session of the sea-
son. The first was that Marc Marquez
was out-qualified by teammate Dani
Pedrosa, with the latter in a calm and
confident mood as he embarked on
his tenth season on the factory Hon-
da. More trenchant was what hap-
pened in the closing minutes, when
Andrea Dovizioso took full advantage
of the improved Ducati and his soft
tire to claim pole by two tenths ahead
of the Honda pair. "It feels good af-
ter struggling for two years, and it
shows how much the new bike has
improved," Dovizioso said. "But the
race is what is important. We have to
work more, but the basics are good,
it gives a good feeling, and you can
push hard with the soft tire. Last year
we sometimes went well in qualifying,
but not in the race. I believe we can do
that now, but we still have to prove it."
Dovizioso snatched a pole at Motegi
last year. The last before that for the
red bikes was in 2010, when Casey
Stoner took it at Valencia, his last race
for the team. Here there were three
Ducatis in the top six, with Andrea Ian-
none and Yonny Hernandez ahead of
Jorge Lorenzo's top Yamaha on row
two. Valentino Rossi qualified eighth.
continued on next page
