Cycle News

ROAD RACE FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 17 / OCTOBER 30, 2016 SEPANG INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT / SEPANG, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA P74 ers were skinned and bruised in a scooter crash at Sepang. The victims (miscreants?) were CIP-Mahindra teammates Tatsuki Suzuki and Fa- bio Spiranelli, the latter at the con- trols as they joined the parade of riders familiarizing themselves with the slightly changed layout. Neither of the Moto3 teammates was badly hurt, but merely having crashed was enough for IRTA to cry "enough." Among those affected are Moto3 and next year Moto2 riders under Rossi's umbrella. He had been in the habit of taking them around to give them tips. Brembo's information on braking statistics, issued before every race, confirmed that Sepang is second only to Motegi as a punishing circuit— and the Italian firm chose some col- orful zoological references to con- firm the fact. Some 30 percent of the lap time is spent on the brakes, with the hardest zones being for the first and last corners. At the first, MotoGP bikes drop from 331 km/h to just 67, after braking for six seconds over a distance of 289 metres. This, said Brembo, is "equivalent of the length of 120 Malayan tigers placed end to end." No wonder they're endan- gered. More colorfully still, Brembo revealed that over the course of a race, riders will have exerted a force of almost 1.1 metric tons on the brake levers. This, as if you didn't know, is equivalent to the weight of about 100 macaque monkeys. For a second successive race, bad weather played a major role in prac- tice and qualifying, but the tropical downpours were more predictable than Phillip Island's sudden squalls, and riders were more ready for it. A monsoon-style cloudburst brought out the red flags in Moto3 qualifying, disrupting timing for the rest of Sat- urday's sessions, but the reworking of the circuit had improved drainage, and the standing water dissipated in time for a full session to be restarted. For MotoGP, dry mornings were fol- lowed by damp afternoons, although only more or less, because it wasn't necessarily raining to be wet. The new surface (praised for terrific lev- els of grip both wet and dry) proved very slow to dry completely in the humid conditions. Furthermore, in a comment by Dovizioso echoed by many others, "the asphalt is dark and very difficult to see if it is wet or dry." It remained damp enough for all to use wet tires in both Q1 and Q2, and for many riders to abandon the usual two-exit strategy, because the wets took time to get to optimum tempera- ture. One who stopped was Andrea Dovizioso, who set fastest time on a soft rear then pitted for a harder rear to go faster still, for his second pole of the season on the factory Duca- ti. "I pitted too late—I didn't use the short-cut," he said. "I only got two laps on the second tire, and I could have gone faster." Rossi stayed out and got quicker at the end, to slot into second, knocking Movistar Ya- maha teammate Jorge Lorenzo to third by five hundredths. After quali- fying 15th in Australia, he was happy to report "that I feel very comfortable in wet or dry, because we made an improvement for FP4." Lorenzo was likewise happy with the front row, and eager to refute suggestions that he was a bad wet-weather rider. "I have had many good results in the rain, but this year it has been difficult for me to get confidence in the front [Mi- chelin] tire. But this track has good grip, it is smooth and it is warm, and our bike works very well here." Mar- quez had been fastest in FP1 and dodged wet FP2 to recuperate from a dose of stomach trouble—gastroen- teritis. "I feel a bit better today," he said, after heading wet FP4 and plac- ing a close fourth to head row two. Alongside him, Australian GP winner Cal Crutchlow, after a heroic day (his 31st birthday). A crash in FP3 ruled him out of the top 10 and left him with painful left hand injuries, but he made it through into Q2 only to crash again while placed last. Pick- ing up his battered LCR Honda, the handlebar bent and "the brake lever pointing to the ground," he forced through to fifth in the dying moments, pushing returned injury victim Andrea Iannone (Ducati) to sixth. "It was a little dangerous, but I couldn't start from 12th," he said. Maverick Vinales (Ecstar Suzuki) had led dry FP3, but never got going in the wet, qualify- ing eighth, between teammate Aleix Espargaro and Alvaro Bautista on the much-improved Aprilia. Dani Pedrosa resorted to Twitter to squash persistent rumors that he had decided to retire, after yet another in- jury at the Japanese GP. The rumors, he said, were "groundless. I can't wait to be back." Officially, he hopes to be fit for the final round in Valencia in a fortnight. Andrea Iannone also confounded rumors that he would be staying away for the rest of the season, by turning up at Sepang for his last two races with Ducati before moving to Suzuki next year. Briefly...

• Cover