Miguel Oliveira won the first Indonesian Grand Prix in 25 years on Sunday, holding off French challengers “Fabulous” Fabio Quartararo and Johann Zarco. The podium celebration featured a KTM, a Yamaha and a Ducati. Notably absent were representatives from Honda; it looks like it’s going to be another difficult year for the Suzuki and Aprilia contingents.
After two rounds, there are four riders within six points of series leader Enea Bastianini, with another four riders tied at ten points back. Pre-season fave Pecco Bagnaia and his GP22 have accumulated a total of one (1) point; a couple more outings like the first two and his unvarnished optimism is going to get shellacked. And please don’t get me started about Marc Marquez, whose dramatic high-side during the morning warm up came close to cracking his head wide open and led to his being declared unfit for the race.
Practice sessions on Friday and Saturday, appeared to be taking place inside an autoclave. The oppressive heat wreaked havoc with the riders, their machines, and the racing surface itself. Soft tires became the only viable choice for most of the teams, and on Saturday’s qualifying sessions they were going through them like salted nuts
Q1 was the most interesting such session I’ve seen since the qualifying format changed in 2013. A number of high-profile riders, including names such as Bagnaia, M Marquez, P Espargaro and Mir, had failed to pass through to Q2, due in no small part to surprisingly competent practice session from Oliveira and FDG. Exhibit A for the radical competition in Q1 was the fact that Marquez went through a passel of soft tires and crashed twice, subsequently landing in P15. He actually would have started the race in P14 but for the picky sanction applied to Frankie Morbidelli for violating some obscure rule about practice start procedures at the end of FP3.
During Sundays warm-up, Marquez went airborn in the most spectacular high-side I’ve seen since Jorge Lorenzo practically achieved a low earth orbit in China in 2009.
Naturally, Sunday was a frog strangler, with rain holding up the proceedings in the premier class for an hour. It was still wet when the lights went out. Since most of you have access to the results of the race by now (the MotoGP website has an excellent summary) I have virtually nothing to say about the race. The season-to-date standings are something else, though. The Beast added 5 points to the 25 he earned in Lusail (when did Losail become Lusail?) and still sits at the top of the standings, followed in close order by the surprising Brad Binder, a dangerous Quartararo, and today’s race winner Miguel Oliveira. Of particular interest is Marquez sitting down in P12 and, as mentioned above, Pecco Bagnaia resting in P20 with the likes of KTM rookies Raul Fernandez and Remy Gardner. Amazingly, rookie little brother Darryn Binder, enjoying a jump shift (for you bridge players) from Moto3 made his way into the Top 10 today.
Since this post is only for record keeping, that’s it for now. My buddy OldMoron is going to take this post apart in his inimitable style, which is fine with me. And, for the record, somebody named Somkiat Chantra won his first grand prix in Moto2, while Dennis “The Menace” Foggia won the Moto3 tilt in comfortable fashion.
Next stop: Another dirty track in Argentina in two weeks. This season is going to be a blast.
Errata from Canadian correspondent Allison Sullivan. Posted completely without permission of the author.
THAT.HIGHSIDE. was gnarly. You could tell it was so unexpected that Marc basically had no idea what had happened. That he got up and walked away is testament to the technological marvels those suits are, but that has to mess with his already fragile head.
(Speaking of which, is anyone watching MotoGP Unlimited on Amazon? I’ve just finished Ep 3 where Jorge Martin comes back from his broken leg, and he’s matter-of-factly talking about how his suit recorded 26G of force and he should have been dead. O_O)
I’m a fan of the The Beast, but I wouldn’t have picked him to be leading the series after 2 races. Fabio looks strong again this year, the rest of the field can’t afford to be spotting that boy points (cough, cough, Pecco). Style points for this week go to Alex Rins for his very undignified bail of his flaming Suzuki, and the bad luck award goes yet again to Jorge Martin (if that boy didn’t have bad luck, he’d have none).
I’m passing on the main race (rain races are never good watches), but I did watch Moto3 because I have to cheer for Ana Carrasco this season. Foggia and Izan Guevara definitely look to be the class acts of that field this year. Tatsu stayed upright, huzzah. Looks like Pedro is not finding Moto2 to be the cakewalk everyone predicted – it will be interesting to see if he finds form once they get to Europe.
Thank you, Allison.
Marquez on his way to the medical center.
Miguel winning his fourth GP in the premier class.
Late-Braking MotoGP 