MOTOGP
FIM MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 6 / JUNE 2-4, 2017
MUGELLO CIRCUIT / TUSCANY, ITALY
P88
The MotoGP race, run in sun-
shine after an overcast morning had
threatened an end to the basking
weather of practice, failed to deliver
on the default dream of a crowd of
almost 100,000. Valentino Rossi
didn't win.
But with victory going to all-Italian
Andrea Dovizioso and his equally all-
Italian Ducati Desmosedici, in many
ways it was even better.
Rossi had qualified second, and
Movistar Yamaha teammate Mav-
erick Vinales had escaped injury
in a fast crash on Friday to take
pole. But Dovi was alongside for his
first front row of the season. And it
turned out to be more of an omen
than the fact that he woke up at
4:00 a.m. on race day with all the
symptoms of food poisoning, and
was too enfeebled to do more than
a couple of laps in morning warm-
up.
With yellow smoke bombs cloud-
ing chunks of the swooping 3.25-
mile circuit, Rossi took a flyer off
the line and led Vinales over the first
lap. But the Ducati in third wasn't
Dovi's but Jorge Lorenzo's, last
year's race winner (his fifth MotoGP
victory here) was on fire.
He even took the lead on lap
three, the Desmosedici's power
giving him a surge past the Yama-
has. Rossi got it back through the
Scarperia esses, Vinales following
him through. From there on, Jorge
started to drop back.
Dovi, meanwhile, had survived a
massive, heart-stopping tank slap-
per over the top-speed jump on lap
two at over 215 mph, and now got
ahead of Rossi for the first time on
lap four. They swapped once more
the next time around, but after that
the job was done.
Valentino Rossi (46) got
off to a flyer and sent
the home crowd into
yellow-flare raptures.
