Late-Braking MotoGP

See the photographs about this article on Motorcycle.com.

Predicting the outcome of the MotoGP British Grand Prix is about as easy as carrying a piano up a flight of stairs.  The three free practice sessions produced no discernible pattern.  The top three qualifiers included San Carlo Honda’s Alvaro Bautista on pole for the first time and Yamaha’s Ben Spies, who started the race in 11^th place for the season.  But, in the end, it was an all-Alien podium once again.  As they say in France, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The lead-up to today’s race was more interesting than usual.  There was Ducati’s Valentino Rossi topping the chart in a wet FP1. A dry FP2 concluded with Spies, Bautista, Ducati #2 Nicky Hayden and LCR Honda rookie Stefan Bradl occupying spots two through five and Rossi in 11^th.  The only thing fans would remember about FP3 is hometown fave Cal Crutchlow going ragdoll falling off his Tech 3 Yamaha, ending up in the gravel facing Coventry with his dislocated left ankle pointing toward Oxford. While everyone else was out qualifying, Cal was in the hospital having things put back in their rightful places, and it appeared he would miss his second consecutive home race.  But as they say in Chicago, “Not so fast.”

Drama Here, Drama There, Drama Everywhere

To the delight of the fans, Crutchlow today appeared on the grid, albeit in the 20 hole, stiff upper lip firmly in place.  Early on, it was Spies, Repsol ace Casey Stoner, polesitter Bautista and Hayden emerging in the first group, with Lorenzo laying back and Stoner’s Alien teammate Dani Pedrosa uncharacteristically getting caught in traffic.  Crutchlow’s Tech 3 Yamaha teammate Andrea Dovizioso, featured and thoroughly jinxed in this space last week, was unable to break into the top five after starting a surprising eighth.  Dovi would later crash, pit for some minor repairs, and finish a lap down, out of the points.  His team has asked that we kindly ignore him for the rest of the season.

Between laps five and eight, Spies conceded the lead to Stoner, while Lorenzo went through on three riders into second place, and the hoped-for match race was on.  Meanwhile, an anesthetized Crutchlow had dispatched all of the CRT bikes and made his way up to 9^th position.  On Lap 11, the practically invisible Pedrosa snuck past Bautista into third.  At that point, the fans were being entertained by two separate races.  Up front, the three Aliens were slugging it out for the lead, a world championship at stake.  Back in the middle of the pack, Crutchlow, who was too injured to walk, was lining up the laggard prototype bikes, gritting his teeth, and likely thinking how nice a second injection in his ankle would feel at that moment.  The way things turned out, he wouldn’t need it.  As they say in Newark, New Jersey, “Fuggedabouddit.”

The Fans Go Home Happy

The Stoner-Lorenzo duel came to a head on Lap 12, during which the two rivals traded places three or four times, Lorenzo emerging with the lead he would maintain to the finish.  Stoner, Pedrosa and Bautista jousted for the remaining two spots on the rostrum, with the Repsol Hondas prevailing.  Bautista could feel good about his first pole and closest sniff to a premier class podium, and is clearly making progress in his effort to rid himself of the ghost of Marco Simoncelli that seemingly haunts team owner Fausto Gresini.

The ride of the day, however, belonged to Cal Crutchlow, who appeared to smell blood once teammate Dovizioso went down on Lap 10.  On Lap 11 he put a lovely move on rookie Bradl to take over seventh position.  At that point he trailed the sixth place Nicky Hayden by over eight seconds, the equivalent of eight minutes in MotoGP time.  Here are their splits from the end of Lap 12 on:

Lap 13:        6.8 seconds

Lap 14:        5.8 seconds

Lap 15:        4.6 seconds

Lap 16:        3.8 seconds

Lap 17:        2.8 seconds

Lap 18:        1.9 seconds

Lap 19:        0.5 seconds

Finally, on the last lap of the day, the throbbing Crutchlow went through on the Kentucky Kid and sent the hometown faithful into a fit of national pride unseen since the days Silverstone was an undermanned RAF fighter base holding off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.  The crowd expressed its heartfelt sympathy to Hayden with a classic English taunt.  As they say in Northamptonshire, “Hard cheese, you Yank bastard!”

Elsewhere on the Grid

Sure, Ben Spies managed to finish 5^th today, not quite redemptive but a significant improvement over his previous 2012 results.  And sure, Stefan Bradl came in a respectable eighth, doing nothing to harm his Rookie of the Year prospects.  Karel Abraham’s absence today meant that only the last two (rather than the usual three) prototype bikes to finish would be Ducatis, as Rossi crossed the line in front of Hector Barbera and the CRT lot.  Nothing unusual there.

Here’s the amazing statistic to emerge from today’s race, in my humble opinion:  Rossi ended the day trailing teammate and understudy Hayden by a full 21 seconds.  On essentially the same machines, the fading one-time world champion administered a thorough and decisive beatdown to The Doctor.  Our Department of Idle Speculation suggests this is a sign that Rossi, despite his pronouncements to the contrary, is preparing to throw in the towel on the ill-fated Ducati project in favor of what will probably be his own team next year, featuring a rented Yamaha M-1 or Honda RC214V and sponsored by Coca Cola.  It’s hard to explain today’s Marlboro Ducati team result as anything but a lack of effort from Rossi, who will likely attribute it instead to a poor tire choice.  As they say in Indianapolis, “That’s just a big ol’ bunch of #@%$&, Vali!”

The Big Picture

No major changes in the 2012 standings today.  Jorge Lorenzo extended his lead over defending champion Stoner to a full race win.  Crutchlow’s gutty performance enabled him to leap past teammate Dovizioso into fourth place for the year, while Bautista now sits tied with Rossi for sixth.  Ben Spies started and finished the day in 11^th place despite his best outing of the year, a measure of the depths he has plumbed during the first third of the season.  Without a couple of wins between now and Valencia it appears Ben’s factory team days are numbered.

The riders and teams will take next weekend off before launching into their three-races-in-three-weeks maelstrom at Assen, the Sachsenring and Mugello.  Closing out the first half of the season in a mini-marathon will test the endurance and focus of everyone involved, including the journalists covering the sport.  I expressed my concern about turning out six coherent articles in 19 days to my Canadian editor, to which he responded, “As we say in Toronto, if you want to run with the big dogs, you’d best be able to handle the tall grass, hey?”

The controversy over the crash on Lap 8 of the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez at Round Two is not, in my mind, a controversy.  I have not viewed any of the press conference video.  I watched the race twice and have given the crash some thought.

For Valentino Rossi, the crash was a small, unexpected dream briefly coming true, in which he sought to bury Stoner and Lorenzo on the mythical Italian Desmosedici.  For a few laps in Jerez, The Doctor felt what it might feel like to dominate the premier class on the GP11.  Until Lap 8. 

Lap 8 was, for Rossi, what will be known as a “Yamaha Moment.”  Probably not the last.

Rossi has spent pretty much every waking moment since Valencia in 2010 working on his shoulder and his bike, with virtually nothing to show for his efforts, until the early laps of the race itself, in which he is suddenly, well,  flying.  He may be forgiven for being transported, momentarily, to his salad days at Jerez, when he wore blue, white and red.  He could actually win the 2011 race as a long shot and silence his critics.  Present company included.

On Lap 1, he dawdled to eighth.  By Lap 7, he was third, and was taking aim at Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, and the lead.  Watching him enter the fateful turn, I see the amazed and amazing Rossi lean into a gap between Stoner and Lorenzo.  It is at this moment that his lizard brain takes over.  No more math.

The lizard has spent the last seven years on the Yamaha YZR-M1. 

The lizard grabbed the gas and aimed for daylight.  In his Yamaha days, Rossi would emerge from the curve in first place running in clean air.  In the Yamaha days, the lizard would be down the road.  History.  Scalded.  Rabbit. 

On the Desmosedici, Rossi discovered that he’s no longer in Kansas, and mimicked so many of Stoner’s lost front ends in 2010.  That he managed to eradicate Stoner in the process is ironic, unfortunate and unintentional.  That he fell at all must have come as a humbling surprise to Rossi.  The unsympathetic lizard has lost interest and slithers away. 

Would Valentino Rossi have attempted that move five years ago?  Would Valentino Rossi have attempted ANY move five years ago he wasn’t virtually certain he could finish?  So, I believe, Rossi’s crash was a complete surprise, which means he really shouldn’t be criticized for taking Stoner out.  He’s freaking Valentino Rossi.  He knows how to time a passing move in a corner. 

After the crash he fell to 15th place but finished fifth, meaning he was turning quick laps after the crash. 

And guys were crashing out in front of him.  

Perhaps Rossi gained something at Jerez.  He has now had the GP11 perform up to expectations once; he knows the podium is at least possible.  He has a month to play with the current bike, waiting for the New and Improved “Vale” bike to arrive from Bologna.  

And the shoulder to improve, too.  Always the shoulder with this guy now, for a year already.  Jeesh.  Shoulder looked okay at Jerez, both before and after the crash.

Ducati pilot Valentino Rossi underwent arthroscopic surgery on his recalcitrant left shoulder on November 14.  The joint, which had been injured in an April training accident, bothered him for most of the 2010 campaign.  He blamed his relative ineffectiveness after coming back from the compound fracture of his leg, suffered in practice at Mugello, on the shoulder injury, while barely complaining at all about his leg.  Rehab is expected to take 90 days, which puts his return to competitive testing in mid-February.

It remains to be seen whether the engineers at Ducati can perform surgery on the bike’s front fork in time for Rossi’s return to racing.  His results from two days of testing at Valencia this month were disappointing, to everyone except perhaps Casey Stoner, who must be thinking to himself, “Alright, DOCTOR, let’s see YOU ride this bitch!”

Stoner must be elated with his decision to defect from Ducati to the Repsol Honda team, as he wasted no time in Valencia becoming the fastest rider on the grid.  Compared to wrestling the Desmosedici, controlling the throttle on the Honda must be a day at the beach.  Spies and Lorenzo have been forewarned.

Barely two days after the close of the 2010 season, the first round of testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo was noteworthy in several ways.

First and foremost were the visuals.  There was newly crowned champion Jorge Lorenzo leading the pack on his factory Yamaha, but sporting the #1 rather than his usual #99.  It’s good to be the king.  There was former Fiat Yamaha icon Valentino Rossi aboard a black Ducati GP11 clad in black leathers trimmed in fluorescent yellow, complete with a jaunty VR46.  There was Casey Stoner in kangaroo red, white and blue looking like he wanted nothing to do with his Repsol Honda teammates.  There was Ben Spies, looking extremely nifty on a black, blue and white factory M1.  And there was Toni Elias on the LCR Honda looking like, well, Randy de Puniet.

Valentino Rossi struggled on his GP11 at the Valencia test.

The real story, however, was in the time sheets, where Casey Stoner stood at the top of the chart, having made a seamless adjustment to his RC212V.  Not unexpectedly, he was followed in close order by Lorenzo and Spies. and thence by sophomore sensation Marco Simoncelli and Pedrosa.  The most dramatic result of two days at Ricardo Tormo, however, was the shockingly dismal performance of Rossi, who ended up in 15th place, dawdling with the likes of Loris Capirossi and, gulp, Karel Abraham, who’s not even a rookie yet.

As my friend David Emmett observes at motomatters.com, it’s going to be a long winter in Bologna.