© Bruce Allen. Exclusive to Motorcycle.com
Marquez wins as racing gods take charge
To the casual observer looking at the final result, the 2016 Argentine Grand Prix would appear to have been just another MotoGP race. Marc Marquez topped the podium, flanked by usual suspects Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes clear that the racing gods were in complete control for the entire weekend. From FP1 to the final turn, it was el mano de Dios calling the shots.
Friday was as hot as the hinges of hell. The Yamahas cowered in the heat; defending world champion and Yamaha icon Jorge Lorenzo finished 12th in the morning, improving to 14th in the afternoon. Rossi managed 6th and 7th on Friday, but was not setting the world on fire, as it were. Riders complained that the track was dirty, that no effort had been made to put it in racing condition since its last use back in December. Turn 1 hosted a weekend-long series of crashes reminiscent of a 1960’s Jan and Dean anthem. Naturally, Dorna responded to the criticism by signing a new three year deal with Termas de Rio Hondo on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon, Octo Pramac Ducati pilot Scott Redding was minding his own business, doing 200 mph down the back straight when he experienced a private deus ex machina, the tread flying off his rear casing like a semi shedding a retread. The impact removed a chunk of his rear fairing and left Redding with a welt on his back that looked like he’d been hit with a 2 X 4. Dorna immediately went into lockdown mode (curiously re-starting the practice session) and, in consultation with a chagrined Michelin, began issuing releases faster than the scribblers could send them home, the last and most coherent of which (on Sunday morning) follows:
The race distance is changed to 20 laps.
IN THE CASE OF THE RACE STARTING IN DRY CONDITIONS:
- Riders must change bikes at the end of their ninth, tenth or 11th Lap.
- If rain starts and Race Direction consider the situation to be dangerous the red flag will be shown and all riders should enter pit lane.
- Teams will be given 15 minutes between the display of the red flag and opening of pit lane to make adjustments to the machines.
- The second part of the race will be for 10 laps. Grid positions will be based on the result of the first part and will be declared a wet race.
IN THE CASE OF THE RACE STARTING IN WET CONDITIONS
- Riders may enter the pits to change machines only from the end of their ninth lap.
- If the wet race is red flagged for other reasons when more than 13 laps have been completed then the result will stand and there will be no restart.
Marquez laid down a blistering first flying lap during Q2 which stood up, maintaining his record of never having not started from the pole in Argentina. Lorenzo and Rossi had regrouped after Friday and traded places several times late in the session, with Rossi ending up second and Lorenzo third. The second row included young phenom Maverick Vinales on the Suzuki, joined by the Dueling Andreas of the factory Ducati team, Dovizioso and Iannone.
A fifth practice session was hastily arranged for Sunday morning to introduce the riders to Michelin’s Fustercluck tire, an emergency compound intended for use only in the event of a Phillip Island 2013-scale disaster, which this was becoming. The session was abandoned when Sunday dawned wet; the Moto3 race was a wet race, the Moto2 affair declared “dry” but far from it. The track was drying quickly, the leaden clouds holding their water, so to speak. After twisting itself into knots trying to determine how to avoid sending the riders out on tires they had never previously tried, Race Direction ended up with a dry race run under the ad hoc rules published above.
As the riders lined up on the grid waiting for the lights to go out, the racing gods, done messing with the weather, were casting lots to determine who would end the day frolicking with the lambs in the “Lucky” column and who would end up with the goats in the “Unlucky” column. They apparently decided to consign one rider to a third category, “Thick as a Brick.”
Seriously, Are You Ever Going to Give Us the Race?
The start was dicey at best. Iannone and Pedrosa made contact in Turn 1, sending the Spaniard way wide and apparently ending his podium bid. The front group emerged late on Lap 1 comprised of Dovizioso, Rossi, Marquez, Vinales and Lorenzo. Goats Cal Crutchlow and Aleix Espargaro slid off simultaneously at Turn 1 (no kidding) of Lap 2, Crutchlow evading Espargaro’s unguided missile by inches. (Both would re-enter and finish the race, for whatever reason.) Yonny Hernandez, suffering the ignominy of starting his “home race” from the back of the grid, crashed out moments later. Goat.
Jack Miller, on the Marc VDS Honda, appearing lamb-like, climbed all the way up to 7th position and actually went through on the laboring Lorenzo before crashing out on Lap 3, unlucky as usual. Lorenzo himself, fresh off his win in Qatar, slid off at Turn 1 of Lap 6, his goat horns appearing as little winglets on his helmet.
As the front group began thinking about their mandatory pit stops, Marquez led Rossi by less than a second, followed by Vinales and the two factory Ducatis. Rossi and Marquez went through on each other twice on Lap 9, providing a déjà vu of last year’s race. Vinales, Iannone and Pedrosa, among others, pitted on Lap 9 without incident. On Lap 10, Rossi tailgated Marquez into pit lane. Both made clean swaps, Marquez holding the lead exiting the pits. Along comes Tito Rabat on his Marc VDS Honda, a BFF of Marquez. Somehow (wink wink) Marquez managed to enter the track in front of Rabat, while Rossi was forced to yield. In the next minute, Marquez stretched his lead over Rossi from a few tenths to over two seconds. At the time, it appeared Rabat was helping his buddy; Rossi’s comments after the race dispelled that notion, as his #2 bike wasn’t nearly as sharp as #1 had been.
Marquez puts down a vapor trail, leaving Rossi to duke it out with upstart Vinales, the two Andreas snapping and snarling right behind him (Rabat had checked out, pitting on Lap 11), Pedrosa a mile behind. This went on for a while, with Vinales appearing to be lining Rossi up for a memorable pass. (Farther back in the pack, Redding, in pure goat mode, had climbed all the way up to seventh position before his Ducati stalled, putting the capper on a gruesome weekend for the likeable Brit.)
You could almost hear the gods howling with laughter during the final two laps. Vinales approaches Turn 1 on Lap 18 two feet off the racing line, finds a tiny puddle of water, and goes from lamb to goat in an instant, thoughts of his first premier class podium up in smoke. Rossi, clearly a lamb, is suddenly relieved of one serious threat to his podium hopes, but has two more, the Andreas, to contend with, both of whom seem to have more pace. Still, if you want to go through on Valentino Rossi late on Sunday, you had better pack your lunch, because it’s not gonna be easy.
Lap 20: Rossi is holding off Dovi, with Iannone threatening, in full Maniac mode, in the last three turns. Iannone, desperate for a podium after crashing out of the lead in Qatar, sees a possible opening in the last turn, dives inside, loses the front, and collects Dovizioso on his way into the kitty litter. Boom—game over. Dovi, the blameless lamb, is stuck with the worst luck of the day. Iannone must explain his actions to Race Direction and Gigi Dall’Igna, Thick as a Brick tattooed on his forehead. Pedrosa is shocked to suddenly find himself on the podium. And Eugene Laverty, on the Aspar Ducati, the luckiest lamb of all, finishes the day in fourth position, the leading satellite rider, a full eight spots higher than his previous best MotoGP career finish in Qatar two weeks ago. The only word to describe the look on his face in Parc Fermè is “stunned.”
The Big Picture
Marc Marquez seizes the 2016 championship lead, ahead of Rossi, Pedrosa and Lorenzo. Pedrosa, looking thoroughly downcast after the race, needs to figure out what’s up with his 2016 RC213V. Hector Barbera resides in seventh place for the season, ahead of off-season strivers Vinales and Redding. And The Maniac, who I had tagged as an Alien-in-waiting, having crashed out of five of his last six races, is 0 for 2016 after two rounds.
Next week it’s another Honda-friendly track in Austin. One hopes that the racing gods got their fill today. American racing fans don’t like all that livestock wandering around their racetracks.
Having tested at Losail just weeks ago, the grid had a reasonably good idea what to expect from the standard ECU and Michelin rubber when the lights went out in Doha. Not so at Rio Hondo. Friday will mark the first time the riders have set foot on the Argentine asphalt in 2016. We are reminded of how Repsol Honda star Marc Marquez acquainted himself with the place in 2014 when the track first opened. He strolled around in 14th place during FP1, then cinched everything up, lowered his visor, and topped the charts in FP2, FP3, FP4, Q2, the warm-up practice and, finally, the race itself. Caution will be the order of the day on Friday morning. 
The feng shui (Japanese for “latest fad”) in MotoGP these days are these little wing thingies that have sprouted from the front fairings of just about every bike on the grid over the past few years. According to Matt Oxley, former rider and current paddock layabout, the appendages on the Ducatis are suspected of producing dirty air—read: turbulence—for trailing riders. Many of us are accustomed to hearing this concept applied to racing yachts and fighter jets, but this is a new finding in MotoGP. Matt cites anecdotal evidence that such turbulence came close to unseating Dani Pedrosa in Australia last year.
One rider for whom I had high hopes this season is Danilo Petrucci, Scott Redding’s teammate on the Pramac Ducati team. Despite having averaged 23 points a year during his first three premier class seasons, all of which were spent on execrable machinery, someone at Ducati saw something in him and gave him a ride on a second hand Desmosedici last season. He went from having earned 17 points in 2014 to 113 and a top ten finish last year. With an even stronger bike beneath him, I thought him capable of finishing between sixth and tenth this year.
Qualifying had produced an ethnically-striated grid—Spaniards filling up rows one and three, with an all-Italian second row and an all-British fourth. Lorenzo laid down a fast lap early in the session, as did Marquez a bit later, and both held up despite Maverick Vinales and “Maniac Joe” Iannone taking serious runs at them at session’s end. Vinales missed out on the two hole by 4/1000ths of a second. Iannone could have easily moved up to the front row had he not been momentarily held up by Scott Redding, who appeared to be doing his best to get out of the way. (A track record final lap by Marquez was tossed when it was determined he had started it one second after the checkered flag had waved.)
team, trailed by Valentino Rossi and Marquez. At the start of Lap 2, both Ducatis flew past Lorenzo, Iannone in the lead. Marquez slipped past Rossi on Lap 3 and began dogging Lorenzo on Lap 4. I was just getting comfortable with the idea of Iannone winning his first premier class race when he lowsided out of the lead in Turn 13 of Lap 6, leaving Dovizioso to slug it out with the Aliens. Sure enough, on Lap 9 Lorenzo found his way through on Dovizioso and that was that. Marquez and Dovizioso would trade places a few times over the remaining 14 laps, but no one was able to mount any kind of serious challenge to Lorenzo once he found his rhythm.
Right, so Rossi and Lorenzo were reportedly offered contracts for 2017-18 simultaneously, by email. Rossi signs his immediately. Lorenzo does not. Rossi suggests Lorenzo is shopping Ducati. (Lorenzo is, in fact, shopping Ducati.) Lorenzo fires back that Rossi had no choice because no one else would want him. Boom. Bradley Smith, on the verge of eviction by Tech 3 boss Herve Poncharal, signs a deal with KTM for next year, leaving Yamaha a spot with which to woo Alex Rins.
Factor in the cosmic motion brought on by new ECU and Michelins, and uncharacteristically good performances by names like Barbera and Redding–indeed, much of the Ducati contingent–and you could leave Qatar with three Ducs in the top five. Then move the entire show to the Middle of Nowhere, Argentina-style for the annual Bungle in the Jungle, aka Hot and Hondarific, two weeks later, followed immediately by another Honda clambake the ensuing week in Austin.
Vinales is an Alien waiting to happen, looking for that big contract next season, which might even come from Suzuki. Suzuki needs another two man team and more data; they’re onto something there and they need to wear long pants and do this thing right. They could win the whole thing in a year or two.
Andrea Iannone should have what it takes to be the top Ducati rider in 2016, meaning he should be a top three contender. So Iannone, Redding and Vinales challenge Lorenzo and Marquez each week and Rossi some weeks, with more of Pedrosa or Barbera late in the season.
Late-Braking MotoGP 