Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/855895
VOL. 54 ISSUE 30 AUGUST 1, 2017 P141 So far, in nine of 18 races, the championship has seen four different leaders: Vinales, Rossi, Dovizioso and Marquez. Hard to know exactly why except for reasons of recent history, but the last name seems the most important. And the most likely to be there after another nine races. His Honda is a handful, as the other RCV riders demonstrate. But Marquez has still managed to get the most points, in spite of all his setbacks. Which, let us not forget, include two non-fin- ishes, crashing out in Argentina and France, before he cooled down and started to look more carefully at the main prize. Pre-season predictions were that the year would be between him and Vinales, with many leaning towards the latter. The half-year figures bear the first part out: Marquez 129 points, Vinales 124. The two have a long history, stretching back before either of them came to wider public attention in GP racing. As young early teens, racing in their native Catalunya, they often met on minibikes and local dirt-tracks, and then on tar. Marquez was two years older, which makes much more difference at that age than now, especially when he frequently got beaten by the small but already determined- looking Vinales. Marquez's gilded path through the smaller classes kept him out of Maverick's reach. When the younger Catalan arrived in the big class two years ago, the shortcomings of his Suzuki did the same. This year, on the factory Ya- maha, the solemn-faced gypsy rover is finally head-to-head with the merciless choirboy killer. As we saw, Maverick (named not, as people keep saying, after a film star but a film character) got the better of it in the early stages. But the championship is a long haul, and when things started to go badly for him, his façade began to show some cracks. He too has fallen twice, in Texas and again more recently at Assen, and on each occasion was baffled by the fact. Crashes a rider can under- stand and explain are one thing; giving him something to avoid doing next time. When they take you by surprise, however, they can have a very unsettling effect. In round eight, Vinales tipped off losing the front in the middle of the direction change through Assen's chicane. He'd been through there safely, he said, hundreds of times, nor had he ever crashed like that before anywhere else. The best expla- nation he could find, and it was a lame one, was that his pressure on the handlebars had been too forceful. He would, he smiled ruefully, have to cut down on his strength and fitness training to ride the Yamaha safely. The direct on-track battle has yet to happen, and it is a pros- pect to be relished. But some- thing similar came at the next race, in Germany, before the summer break. When the pair collided during qualifying at the slow turn two, it seemed a fairly easily explained racing incident: two guys using different corner lines and coming into contact. Marquez was slow in, Vinales cut under him to move past, then drifted wide. Marquez, say- ing later he was trying to keep his rhythm and temperature in his tires on a cold, damp sur- face, cut back inside him. They touched. But while Marquez calmly took it upon himself to apologize, Vinales was close to going bal- listic. There was ample head- shaking and arm-waving on the spot, then clear-cut remonstra- tion when the pair stopped at the end of the session for their practice start. There was more to come, as Vinales let loose to the Spanish press, who gleefully report his anger. "It's hard not to do that on purpose," he said. "It was timed. I'll remember it, and when I have to use it, I will. If Marquez is trying to upset me, he won't find anything." Err, perhaps he already has. CN