OFF ROAD
MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 12/OCTOBER 10, 2015
TWIN RING MOTEGI/MOTEGI, JAPAN
P64
Pedrosa lined him up out of the
hairpin and rode cleanly past on
the final downhill plunge to take
a lead that would grow to 8.5
seconds at the flag. It was his
second straight defeat of Rossi.
Rossi picked up a bit of a
tow from the Honda, though he
couldn't really keep up, while his
tires were not as badly affected
as Lorenzo's. It took two more
laps for him to pass his fast-
fading teammate, who was in
turn almost four seconds away at
the flag.
"It was a long race," said
Rossi. "So difficult, and so easy
to make a mistake. I needed to
take points, so it was a good
pass with great assurance be-
fore they'd completed the 16th.
The gap to Lorenzo was still
2.7 seconds, but there was time
enough. And by the end of that
lap it was down to 0.8 seconds,
and the outcome inevitable.
Dorna's cameras focused on
Lorenzo's front wheel, where the
tire was clearly starting to shred.
But Pedrosa's focus was on
Rossi, and on the 15th lap he
took better than a second out of
him to close up on his tail, and
Scott Redding was flying late in
the race and had he got a good
start could have challenged for a
top-six position.
Hayden pulled it together
for 13
th
in his final
Japanese MotoGP.
