guilty. It was too late for a ride-
through; but the 20-second pen-
alty applied seemed somewhat
lenient by comparison.
The penalties to others un-
doubtedly took the pressure of
10th-fastest qualifier Luthi, but
he still won at a faster pace than
last year. "I saw that other riders
had jumped the start, but I knew
I hadn't. I knew I had good pace;
I just made a small mistake in
qualifying. I passed many riders
very early, so I was in a brilliant
situation."
With Morbidelli docked 20
seconds, second went instead
to SAG Kalex rider Luis Salom,
through from 18th on the grid in
his best ride since 2014. He had
passed Cortese and long-time
pursuit leader Simone Corsi
(Speed Up) on the final lap, fin-
ishing five hundredths ahead.
VOL. 53 ISSUE 11 MARCH 22, 2016 P47
rookie Bendsneyder and the fancied
South African Binder had been team
riding for most sessions, using one
another's draft for better lap times,
throughout practice.
Mahindra were the first to exercise
the Moto3 right for one aerodynam-
ic upgrade during the season—for
an unexpected reason. The all-new
MGP3O has a redesigned fairing
intended to make the bikes harder
to slipstream, but when lead Team
Aspar rider Pecco Bagnaia tested
last year's fairing in free practice, it
turned out to be significantly faster
into and through the corners. A hasty
conference with all the Mahindra
teams elicited agreement that the old
fairing should be homologated, even
though only the official Aspar team
had examples at the track. Moto3
rules not only limit the number of
changes allowed during the season
but also insist that they must be avail-
able to all teams.
The weekend was marred by a fatal
accident on Friday, during the Losail
600 Cup support race, when Tuni-
sian rider Taofik Gattouchi (49) was
struck by two other bikes in a multi-
bike pile-up on the 10th of 15 laps.
The race was red-flagged, and the
stricken rider helicoptered to hospi-
tal in Doha but was beyond resusci-
tation.
Australia's only GP rider Jack Mill-
er fell twice during practice, luckily
without causing any damage to his
still-healing right ankle, badly broken
in a motocross crash in January. He
was still having some problems. "It's
Briefly...
