MotoGP Blog

It was not a thriller, this Dutch TT, but it was a landmark race for a certain Valentino Rossi. His hundredth win, ridden from the front was uncharacteristic of many of his other victories where he seemed to play cat and mouse with the opposition. Such is the close battle this year that there were no games. It was head down, arse up and ride at 100% for the duration of the race.

A poor start did for Lorenzo. He kept his composure to minimise the damage by fighting his way past determined Hondas and a Ducati, but he was never able to match Rossi for pace. An ill Stoner and disappointed Edwards followed in 3rd and 4th, with a season-best for Vermeulen in 5th.

The Hondas both fell at the same corner, in the same way: a front-end wash-out. The revised chassis available to the Repsol riders seems not to be working with the Bridgestones as yet. It is now 12 months since Honda last won a race, and this is not something that HRC will be happy to tolerate, made worse by the double DNF.

Beyond this, the race was for 6th, with Toseland, Capirossi, de Puniet, Kallio, Hayden and Elias in a race-long joust for the points. Toseland would lead the scrap for most of the race, with Mika gaining a brief advantage occasionally. On the final lap, Kallio would fall, and Capirossi and Elias would make their play for 6th. The final chicane would see Elias run hot into it, forcing his bike and Capirex onto the gravel, allowing JT and de Puniet to pounce and gain the spoils. It was a race-long battle as intriguing as most, with that final chicane again throwing up surprises for the race finish. Happiest of all of these riders will be Nicky Hayden, for once controlling a bike which allowed him to express some portion of his talent.

MotoGPBlog Man of the Weekend: Valentino Rossi, of course. The Centenary Man.

Great news! Enter the Laguna Seca round of the Tipping Contest to have a chance of winning a copy of Ring of Fire, The Inside Story of MotoGP by Rick Broadbent, which I have reviewed previously.

Prizes will be awarded as follows:
Top three scorers for the round (not overall) will win a copy of Ring of Fire.
The most inventive Minella entry in MotoGPBlog’s opinion will also win a copy.

In the event of a tie in scoring for the round, position in the overall championship standings will be used to determine the winners - the higher placed entrant getting the prize.

Get thinking of those Minellas now!

There’s a lot of love for Edwards this weekend in the Assen tipping contest round. Some even suggesting a podium for the Texan. Hmm, could he?

I also need to mention @jeffritter955 with an awesome 21 point Minella, predicting the top ten placings. Brave man. @pintoffuc is also up there as usual with a six-parter, 18 pointer.

Other than that, Dani is conspicuously absent from the picks, with Dovi being the Honda of choice. Speaking of choice, what is your pick? Enter via twitter, and check the rules.

To call this an analysis of the race is a bit rich. I’ll focus on the end game, for that is where the drama lies.

From the off, five riders were in the hunt for the podium: Rossi, Lorenzo, Stoner, Pedrosa and Dovizioso. The speed of Pedrosa was amazing, given the pain and medication he is currently in and on, his tumble in QP not helping his recover at all. His challenge for the front positions was to fade as the race progressed, as tiredness grew and drugs wore off. He would finish a creditable 6th.

Another man suffering was Casey Stoner, starting the day ill with cramps in his legs and back. He would battle race-long with Dovizioso and win out over the young Italian, but pay the price in exhaustion. Barely able to stand in the winners enclosure, his third place was a testament to the Australian’s tough and uncompromising character. He gave his all.

Up at the front, it was all about Rossi and Lorenzo. Laps one to three, Lorenzo lead. Laps four to twelve we Rossi’s, and thirteen to 22 were Lorenzo’s. Whoever was in front pushed hard, evidenced by the dangling legs of both riders on corner entry. When trailing, both riders seemed more composed and able to keep the pace of the leader. As a result, neither could escape and the gap was seldom above a quarter of a second.

Rossi, having watched Lorenzo for nine laps, made his move to break Jorge in the midst of lap 23. It was almost like vintage Rossi, playing with his opponent before executing a carefully planned, devastating overtaking manoeuvre to dispatch his opponent once and for all. Rossi made his pass on the start/finish straight, drafting past Lorenzo and leaving his braking very late. JL kept his head and a tighter line, soon closing the small gap Valentino had opened. He would be in Rossi’s slipstream for the straight, passing him on the inside after the line so the stats. show Rossi leading the lap. Lorenzo then moved back to the racing line in the braking zone for turn 1, only to have Rossi outbrake him right on the outside. So far out to the edge of the track was Rossi that was out on the rumblestrip and had to pull in his knee to get through on Lorenzo, see the first picture in this post. It was a high-risk pass, and he looked to have run wide, but somehow between his Yamaha’s front set-up and the Bridgestone front, he forced the bike around the right-hander. Lorenzo continued to hunt him down, remaining calm and close. Half-way through the lap and Rossi appeared to brake test Lorenzo to unsettle him two corners from the back straight, and gain enough of a lead to prevent the draught-pass. It did not work.

The Last Lap
It will probably be the lap of the season. It will be long remembered as a classic, clean contest between two riders at the top of their game.

Lorenzo passed Rossi on the straight, again after the start-finish line and this time did not allow Rossi the room for his cheeky knee-in move. They were side-by-side through turn 1, Rossi trying to hold position for the inside of turn 2. Lorenzo reads this and slams the door shut, forcing Rossi to back off and gaining a valuable tenth. Through turn 3 now, and Lorenzo remains composed, although his body language on the bike shows the effort he is putting in. Hanging off the bike so much his head is level and almost below his throttle hand on the right-hander, there is not doubt he is at 100%.

Turn 4 and Rossi stuffs it up the inside in a classic block-pass manoeuvre, but success is short-lived. Before the corner is over, VR has run wide and Lorenzo needs no second invite to swing back inside to regain the lead.

Lorenzo makes his Yamaha as wide as he can, and through turns 5 to 9 there is nothing Rossi can do. Now onto the short back straight to turn 10 and Lorenzo takes a very defensive inside line into the achingly long turn 10. Rossi is forced wide and again has to concede the corner to Lorenzo.

The lap is fast reaching it’s conclusion, with just turns 11, 12 and 13 remaining. Lorenzo holds his line in 11 and 12, and leads onto the minuscule straight joining 12 to 13. He maintains the racing line, brakes and tips it in. “Nobody passes here,” he must have said to himself “I have this won” only to have Rossi fly past on the inside in a crazy move that was, to all intents and purposes, win it or bin it. That Yamaha front end worked again well, for although Rossi’s corner speed was slower than Lorenzo, who almost collided with Rossi at the apex, he was baulked sufficiently to cause a momentary hesitation and win the race by less than a 1/100th of a second.

Fantastic racing, fantastic skill, and a fantastic spectacle. Rossi has a challenger in Lorenzo who will not be easily cowed and has comparable skill and machinery. A statistic bandied about before the race was that Rossi has been beaten by his team mate 12 times in the MotoGP class. Six of these have been by Lorenzo. True, for many of Rossi’s races his team mate was Edwards, who you could say was fairly unlikely to challenge Valentino in this way. With Lorenzo, Yamaha have a second, strong championship challenger who is not there to make Valentino look good. Ducati must be very jealous.

Jorge unveils a new livery for Catalunya, celebrating his club’s Champion’s League victory.

Special Correspondent Dave Minella covers Mugello for MotoGPBlog this week. You can contact Dave on Twitter (@DaveMinella) and also on his blog, Cranial Ooze. Thanks very much Dave, and over to you…

As if to help silence the critics who’ve begun to cast off Grand Prix motorcycle racing as a boring spectacle, Mother Nature has decided to step in this season to add a little bit of excitement to the grid. The rain-drenched first race at Losail was a harbinger of what the weather was to bring to the other tracks at least during the first half of the MotoGP season, and the Le Mans debacle gave us a reason to scratch our heads at the lack of options the teams were given from the back of the Bridgestone truck. Although, for many teams and riders, the French Grand Prix was a demonstration of what not to do during a changing-condition, flag-to-flag race, it seems to have served as a valuable lesson in how to race in wet-to-dry conditions. The entire field seems to have brought those lessons with them to Mugello, and this stop on the MotoGP calendar was anything but boring.

Jorge Lorenzo was the first near-casualty of the early portion of the race as he went down in turn two of the sighting lap. He barely had time to switch bikes, and when he took his position on the grid, he was still covered in fresh dirt. New bike, new tires and a few bumps and bruises all contributed to a horrible start, and he was unable to gain traction when the red lights went off, quickly going backwards from pole position. In what would be another of the afternoon’s surprises, Randy De Puniet briefly took the hole shot before being passed by several riders, including Rizla Suzuki’s Chris Vermeulen who charged from the 11th spot to take the lead. The Repsol Hondas fought hard for second, as Lorenzo found himself way back in the pack, trying to play catch up.

Marco Melandri was once again out to prove he could ride the Hayate as he quickly began to move up from 15th. After four laps in front, Vermeulen couldn’t hang on as the track began to dry and lost positions to both Casey Stoner and Andrea Dovizioso. With 20 laps remaining, Lorenzo found the throttle as he set the fastest lap with Melandri all over his rear tire. On the same lap, Stoner lost the battle for the lead to a hard-charging Dovizioso.

Lap five would find the first rider in the pits as James Toseland came in for a tire change. The early switch would pay off as JT heated the new slicks up quickly and began to make his way back up through the field. Melandri wouldn’t let the Spaniard on the Fiat Yamaha go without a fight, as #33 and #99 knocked each other around the corners. With 18 to go, Vermeulen’s shimmer of glory in what may very well be his last season in MotoGP began to fade just as Valentino Rossi began to make his move. By lap six, Rossi had moved into the second spot while Melandri found himself in sixth position and would soon make quick work of Casey Stoner to move into third behind the #46 and #4 machines. Pramac Ducati’s Nicolo Canepa was the second rider to switch bikes as he came in on lap seven. Hayden & De Puniet followed suit on lap eight.

With 16 to go, the top three were Rossi, Dovizioso and Melandri. Melandri passed Dovi on the next lap, and the Repsol rider subsequently peeled off for a bike change. Pedrosa, Capirossi, Edwards and De Angelis came in as well on lap nine. With 14 to go, Alex De Angelis put his Honda down in the gravel as Melandri took the lead from Rossi. One lap later, Melandri, Rossi, Lorenzo, Stoner and Elias came in putting an end to Melandri hopes for a victory and even a podium finish.

Once back on the track, the #33 Hayate began to fade fast just as Toseland was setting the field’s fastest lap times. Dovi took the lead on lap 11, and at the halfway point, Melandri was already back to the sixth spot. Yuki Takahashi took this opportunity to exit the race as he also decided to introduce the shiny side of his Honda to the asphalt. With 11 to go, Dani Pedrosa went down hard as Stoner and then Capirossi edged out Dovi for the one and two spots. Two laps later, Capirex took the lead from the Australian and held it for the next two trips around the circuit, but it just wasn’t to be as the Italian veteran lost a spot to Stoner, then Lorenzo, then Rossi and, finally, a last-lap pass by fellow Italian, Andrea Dovizioso, knocked the Suzuki off the podium. Ducati rider Casey Stoner led Lorenzo and Rossi past the checkered flag giving Ducati its first Mugello win in the 800cc era and giving Valentino Rossi his first loss at the track since he crashed out with two laps remaining in 2001.

The final results for Mugello are as follows:

1 27 Casey Stoner, Ducati
2 99 Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha
3 46 Valentino Rossi, Yamaha
4 4 Andrea Dovizioso, Honda
5 65 Loris Capirossi, Suzuki
6 5 Colin Edwards, Yamaha
7 52 James Toseland, Yamaha
8 14 Randy De Puniet, Honda
9 88 Nicolo Canepa, Ducati
10 7 Chris Vermeulen, Suzuki
11 33 Marco Melandri, Hayate (Kawasaki)
12 69 Nicky Hayden Ducati
13 36 Mika Kallio, Ducati
14 24 Toni Elias, Honda
15 15 Alex De Angeles, Honda
Not Classified
3 Dani Pedrosa, Honda
72 Yuki Takahashi, Honda

It’s difficult to judge who was deserving of the rider of the weekend honors, as there were more than a few moments of glory from riders on every type of machine. Of course, Loris Capirossi showed that he still has some fight left in him as he brilliantly held off charges from the series leaders. Perhaps age or perhaps the under-performing Suzuki is to blame for his late-race fade to fifth. James Toseland deserves a nod for his run from 15th to seventh, and even Randy De Puniet’s eight place finish should be looked at as the Frenchman seems to have forgotten how to crash this season, and currently finds himself in the top 10 in points. Melandri’s charge to the front was spectacular, and had the conditions remained wet, there’s no telling what would have happened with him as well as with Vermeulen. But, the MotoGPBlog Man of the Weekend award for Mugello goes to Jorge Lorenzo who came back from a sighting-lap crash and a horrible launch to regain second place. My black eye for the weekend goes to Ducati, which managed to take away Rossi’s Mugello crown, but once again only barely managed to keep another machine in the top 10.

Next up is Catalunya, where Dani Pedrosa shined last year. Casey Stoner, Loris Capirossi and Valentino Rossi have both stood atop the GP podium, but Jorge Lorenzo, Marco Melandri, Randy De Puniet and Andrea Dovizioso have won there on 250s. The weather shouldn’t play a role in Northern Spain, but with the way this season has started out, nothing is guaranteed.

Contest results for the Mugello round are now in, and it was another lean month for tipsters. Only two Minellas came good, @ScottFriday (Capirossi 5th) and @NomadRip (Pedrosa crashes) - well done to both.

Our current top two (@DaveMinella and @rumblestrip) scored a big, fat zero so the gap has closed at the top of the overall standings to just 8 points, 3rd to 6th putting pressure on the leaders.

Picks for Catalunya are being accepted from the 7th June, so start your research now! We’re going to have some prizes for round winners in July - watch this space for more news.