VOL. 52 ISSUE 22 JUNE 2, 2015 P69
could do no wrong, especially
in the eyes of the yellow-tinted
record crowd of almost 90,500.
Except being unable to match
his Movistar Yamaha teammate's
speed.
Rossi had another remark-
able afternoon, recovering from
eighth with handling problems at
the start to come through to fight
for second.
But another Italian hero (also
for a second race running) used
a combination of sheer guts
and Ducati horsepower to keep
him at bay. Andrea Iannone had
discovered a left arm fracture as
a complement to his shoulder
injury after the last race. Finding
the strength who knows where,
he kept aloof from Rossi's final
challenge for a career-best sec-
ond place.
And Marquez? He had come
slicing through to a very close
second at the end of lap three
from 13th on the grid, after a
series of mishaps and handling
problems meant for the first time
he didn't make it into Q1. He set
Briefly...
Aprilia's unobtrusive progress re-
ceived at least a morale boost at the
company's home race, with a raft of
technical upgrades including cru-
cially a seamless-shift gearbox. Rid-
ers Alvaro Bautista and Marco Me-
landri have shared mixed fortunes
on this year's machine: basically a
"lab bike" aimed at developing a full-
on 2016 challenger, after race chief
Romano Albesiano brought the fac-
tory back to Grand Prix racing a year
earlier than planned. While former
125 champion Bautista has scored
points four times, with a best of 14th
in Italy, former 250 champ Melandri
has found himself in worse doldrums
than in his disastrous 2008 with
Ducati. It was similar at Mugello,
where Melandri allowed "the new
gearbox works well;" but explained
that his greater problem was in feel
and handling, and that an expected
chassis redesign could not come
soon enough. The RS-GP is basical-
ly a development of the successful
ART that dominated the now defunct
production-based CRT category,
with pneumatic valve springs. Hopes
are that by the time the bike has
been further developed, next year's
introduction of control electronics for
all will at the same time bring the ri-
vals back within reach.
A safety alteration—replacing As-
troturf on several corner exits with
paved run-off—led to an unprece-
dented number of cancelled laps in
practice, since the red-painted sec-
tions were deemed to offer a faster
corner exit. Anyone who strayed over
the curb onto the red, even inadver-
tently, had his lap time annulled.
By a growing tradition, the Mugello
race is the fancy dress grand prix
of the year. By the same all-Italian
continued on next page
In typical Lorenzo
fashion, he knocked
down the laps and
left his competitors
in his wake.
