Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 39 SEPTEMBER 29, 2015 P141 sion. Previously, races were stopped, restarted, then results calculated on aggregate times, so the finishing order was not necessarily the same as the order on the track. Misano added a new twist. It's the first race since the flag-to-flag rules were introduced that has occasioned not just one change to a differently equipped bike, but two changes. A dry-wet-dry race, with a most unexpected podium (winner Marquez excepted), with Britons Bradley Smith and Scott Redding sharing the champers. And just short of 40 dramatic minutes of variety and adventure for a record crowd at the Simoncelli circuit close to the Italian holiday beaches. A crowd that did, admittedly, have the disadvantage of having to sit out in the open in the rain. But hey, it's only water. It was definitely worth it. This time Marquez won after timing his tire changes just right; Rossi came way down in fifth when he too might have won, had he not got his timing all wrong. And Lorenzo crashed out. The result gave another twist to a fascinating championship battle that increasingly looks like it will go to the last round, and might yet become a three- rather than two-man affair. Especially if a bit more rain comes in, to shuffle the results some more. One more crash for Lo- renzo, and Marquez is only 15 points behind him. As long as he wins. He'll need Valentino to non- score at least one more time than that, mind you; and with a 100-percent finish record this year and only one no-score all last year, the old fox doesn't look as though he's going to chuck it all away in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm. Not just yet, anyway. There is a very good chance of rain at both Sepang and Phillip Island. And Motegi. And why not Aragon (this is written before the event) and Valencia as well? Misano has a particularly entertaining rain record. Way back in 1989, when the circuit was very scrubby and patched, race-day rain brought out the worst in the surface, and precipitated the only effective premier-class rider strike since the 1950s. All but one of the factory guys did a single slow lap and retired. The exception was Pier-Francesco Chili, under the threat of (probably) certain death from his Italian sponsors should he fail to take part. He won, and made a sorry picture, weeping tears of shame alongside his once- in-a-lifetime privateer companions. There was another astonish- ing wet race in the same year, in Belgium, when rain stopped it twice. Results were declared on an aggregate of three legs, only for the FIM stewards to declare the third leg illegal. Which was rather bizarre, considering the major risks to life and limb to the riders who took part in it, on a stream- ing wet Spa Francorchamps, which was danger- ous enough in the dry. There have been any number of rainy mayhem races at Assen over the years. And at Silverstone, with a particularly notorious incident in 1978 when lap scorers, unsighted in the mist and spray, miscounted as riders pitted to switch from slicks to wet tires, and wrongly declared Kenny Roberts the winner. At least that's what Barry Sheene insisted, waving his own lap chart, until the day he died. Things are run with a great deal more organiza- tion and control nowadays, and the track sur- faces have, for the most part, improved likewise. Even Misano, eventually. Mainly thanks to an ever-growing book of rules and regulations. The only thing that the cohorts of Dorna can't control is the weather. Which is a pity, because if they did, they would be fools not to make it compulsory for it to rain. CN "THE ONLY THING THAT THE COHORTS OF DORNA CAN'T CONTROL IS THE WEATHER."

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