Notes from Moto2

by Clykins021 on June 6th, 2011 at 11:53 pm

10/10: Stefan Bradl: Can he be stopped? With all of his rivals crashing out in Barcelona, the title is now the young Germans to lose. More staggering than his three victories is the fact that he has qualified on pole in every single race this season. For a class in which a half second can be the difference between first and tenth, that is hugely impressive. From the outside, the Kalex seems to be the bike of the year in the intermediate class.

9/10: Aleix Espargaro: It is hard to believe, but his third place was his first ever podium at the world level. To make it even more special, it was in front of his beloved fans. He and brother Pol grew up one city over in Granollers and could actually see the Circuit de Catalunya from their house. It was a shame that Polyccio missed out on the final point by only one position but it was still nice to see them celebrating together in front of their fan club. Brotherly love at its very best.

8/10: Marc Marquez: Without his crashes in the first three races of the season, Marquez would be right in the hunt for the title. The Spanish prodigy is starting to get to grips with his 600cc Suter after quite a bit of testing in between races. He is still crashing once a weekend though, he had another big high-side on Friday that will surely have stayed in his mind throughout the race. He knows he has to finish every race now to have even an outside shot at defeating Bradl.

7/10: Bradley Smith: The British youngster was quick all weekend but in the end didn’t get the result he deserved as he got caught out by Yuki Takahashi’s bike flying at him. The Moriwaki grazed the side of Smith’s leathers and fairing costing him a chance at a podium. Without that incident and a mistake under braking on the last lap, he would have been close or on the podium.

6.5/10: Tito Rabat: There were multiple moments where I thought he was going to crash during the race. He was sliding the bike more than Stoner was in MotoGP. It was the first time in Moto2 that he looked seriously impressive. The Spaniard never quite made his mark in 125cc because of his height but I think Rabat will come good in Moto2 by the end of this season.

6/10: Yonny Hernandez: The wild style of Hernandez seems to have left the Colombian but he is scoring some solid results. He never gets many mentions throughout race weekends but has outscored many riders that were tipped to fight for the championship this season.

3/10: Andrea Iannone: The championship needs Andrea at the front to liven it up but he keeps letting himself down in qualifying. A huge high-side in QP meant he once again started towards the back. He ran into the gravel on the first lap, leaving him in last position once he rejoined. He has a spirited fight back, as he usually does, to finish in 15th. With rumors about that he will be moving to MotoGP next year, the Italian will need to start putting together some solid results to justify the decision. He was my pre-season pick to win the most races but not necessarily the title. He is massively fast each weekend, but the results just aren’t happening for various reasons.

0/10: Kenan Sofuoglu: An ugly incident in which the Turk tarnished his already wild reputation he gained from World Super Sport. Julito Simon was my pre-season pick for the championship but now looks likely to miss the next three races due to a fractured tib and fib he picked up from being rammed by Sofuoglu. Both of them were very lucky not to have career ending injuries as they went tumbling into the crash barrier at quite a rate of speed. It will be interesting to see if Race Direction gives any sort of penalty to Kenan for his crazy maneuverer, once again I’d like to know what the outcome of the penalty would have been if Simoncelli had been the rider involved. I don’t see any clarity in the decision making of the officials at this moment in time.

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Notes from the 125cc race in Montmelo

by Clykins021 on June 6th, 2011 at 11:15 pm

10/10: Nico Terol: Once again the Aspar Aprilia rider proved he was the class of the field throughout practice and qualifying. Seemed to have much more pace than Zarco in the race but had a sloppy last sector of the final lap allowing the Frenchman to shove his way through to the victory. Within the space of the cool down lap, somehow Race Direction gave Zarco a 20 second penalty, moving him down the order to sixth. With no injuries this season, Terol should wrap up the last ever 125cc world championship.

9/10: Johann Zarco: An aggressive final sequence of corners saw the Derbi rider cross the line first, but not without controversy. In the end was penalized 20 seconds for his “pushing” of Terol, dropping him to sixth. I think moving him to second would have been more fitting, as Stoner and Lorenzo both said after the race. Zarco has never been in the hunt on the last lap for a victory, so it was nice to see that he wasn’t afraid to take the fight to Terol. I expect a few more podiums for him this season.

8.5/10: Maverick Vinales: A star of the future no doubt. Had a massive fan club in the grandstands which is rare to see for a rider only in his fifth race at the world championship level. With the pressure of Paris Hilton standing over him on the grid, the 16-year old put in a mature performance, crossing the line safely in third, which quickly became second after the penalty to Zarco. I felt he could have stayed closer to the battle for the lead but realized in doing so he may throw away a podium in his home race with a silly mistake. I see him really challenging Nico every race during the second half of the season.

3/10: Hector Faubel: A move back into the class in which he was runner-up in 2007 was supposed to change the fortune of his career, instead it seems to have hurt his chances of ever progressing back into Moto2. He is consistently being performed by his younger teammate Terol, not to mention a whole host of riders who are quite a bit younger than the 27-year old. He is not the future of MotoGP or even the Aspar squad.

2/10: Sergio Gadea: With Vinales consistently beating him week in and week out, it seems Gadea has fallen into the same trap as Faubel. His move backwards from Moto2 to 125cc has effectively ruined his career it seems to me, unless he can throw together a couple of victories in the next few races. Must be in a state of shock over the absolute raw speed of his 16-year old teammate.

0/10: Race Control: I can understand the fact that Zarco received a penalty, just barely though. My question is, where does this figure of 20 seconds come from? What if Simoncelli had done that to another rider in MotoGP, would his penalty have been 20 seconds? The decision was made in the amount of time it took the riders to do their cool down lap which in my estimation is under five minutes. 125cc racing has always been ruthless and aggressive but it seems those days are going to be over if penalties continue to be handed out on a completely random basis.

 

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My View of the Rossi/Stoner Saga

by Clykins021 on April 6th, 2011 at 4:54 pm

Top level sport needs drama and that is exactly what we got on the eighth lap of the Spanish Grand Prix. For the first time in Rossi’s brief Ducati career, it seemed the bike was actually working to his liking. A podium or even a victory seemed possible, a bet that no one in the paddock would have taken after Saturday’s qualifying practice. As he went down the pit straight, Rossi tried to brake as late as possible, something that had never seemed too difficult for him while riding his ex-lover, the Yamaha M1. The GP11 Ducati, however, is not that smooth, gentle Yamaha and even in the hands of a nine-time world champion the front end folded going into turn one. What happened after that will be talked about for days, months and years to come.

Casey Stoner could hear the sound of Rossi’s GP11 through his Nolan helmet. He duly moved off line to let Rossi throw it up the inside; being overtaken by Vale was of no worry to him, the Aussie knowing that he had the pace to bide his time and wait for others to make mistakes. It happened though, another Ducati front end crash, and with it Valentino Rossi low sided and took out Stoner – merely a racing incident no doubt. Clearly Rossi is not purposely taking out other riders one race and eight laps into a season.

Now this is where the drama begins, with the corner workers who had been busy all day due to the damp conditions and resulting number of crashes in both the 125cc and Moto2 race. This time though, it wasn’t Sergio Gadea, Sandro Cortese, Efren Vazquez, Hector Faubel, Aleix Espargaro or any of the other great riders who had fallen foul from pushing too hard on a slick surface. It was the legend himself, Valentino Rossi, who was sliding across the ground in front of them. Rossi, Lorenzo and Pedrosa are the fan favorites of MotoGP in Spain, of that there is no question. Casey Stoner is not included on that list but considering the circumstances, it didn’t matter. When the corner workers got to the crash seconds later, Rossi was closest to them while Stoner already had the factory RC212V picked up and was obviously uninjured. Rossi on the other hand was lodged underneath his Marlboro Ducati, still holding the clutch lever and in need of assistance to get the bike picked up.

I thought Casey would easily get the bike going; it looked in fine shape and given the fact that he was on it while Rossi was still on the ground, it was no wonder that they helped Rossi first. As it turns out, Stoner hit the Honda’s kill switch when he was sliding across the wet asphalt. The corner workers got Valentino moving – his Ducati hadn’t stalled, due to him holding onto it for dear life, much like Marc Marquez in Estoril last season – and out of the corner of their eyes they noticed that Stoner needed help getting his bike fired up. They quickly went to him and started pushing the 2007 world champion, but the Honda’s new clutch system seems to need quite a push to get going – as Marco Simoncelli found out a couple of laps later in the same corner. The world feed then cut out to show the replay and as it came back to the scene of the accident Stoner was out of the race and over the safety fence giving the corner workers an earful of colorful Aussie language.

After the race, Casey made the whole world think that the Jerez corner workers gave him no help, even going so far as to open an investigation into their actions with the FIM. Amateur video (seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYNe6VzhNo0)  that has since been circulating on YouTube, however, paints a very different picture. A group of workers did push Stoner; one of them fell trying and after a respectable effort to get him back in the race, a couple of others gave up. One person stayed with Casey until the very end, even as this is all happening on the racing line of an incredibly slick corner that had caught out numerous riders throughout the day. Enough was enough for this marshal and he too finally called it quits, opting for safety over a last-ditch attempt to salvage what seemed to be a lost cause.

Casey had a double whammy against him. He wasn’t Valentino Rossi and his motor wasn’t running, two things that The Doctor had going for him in this situation. After telling the corners to politely fuck off, Stoner then proceeded to stand on the side of the track clapping as Valentino went by one lap later. In one way it was funny and good for the gossip columns of the world press, but in another way it was amateurish, something that I wouldn’t even expect from the youngest of the 125 guys. The last time I can vividly remember somebody doing this was when Mattia Pasini was taken down at over 125mph by Hector Barbera during the 2008 250cc race in Misano, Pasini’s home grand prix (seen here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhDjYjCCps&feature=related).

After the race, Rossi went over to the Repsol garage to apologize to Stoner. Whether or not he should have done this behind closed doors is another story, but an apology is an apology. Ever since the Laguna Seca corkscrew incident of 2008, the Italian and Australian’s relationship has been non-existent, resulting in low blows dealt out through various comments to the press. Since Casey took his Ducati crew to Honda and Rossi brought his from Yamaha to Ducati, it actually seems to have intensified. After hearing out Rossi’s apology, Casey quickly responded to Vale. For all the world to hear he said smirking, “Your ambition outweighs your talent.” This is something you would expect Stoner to say to rookie Karel Abraham, not to a 125cc, 250cc, 500cc, 990cc and 800cc World Champion. Valentino took it in stride and walked away without further confrontation.

With a month break before Estoril, there is no doubt that the comments made by Stoner in the Repsol garage will be the headline story, even if Dani Pedrosa is undergoing a career-changing surgery as this is being written. Speaking of Estoril, I seem to remember a certain over-exuberant rookie Australian taking out Sete Gibernau in 2006 at the Portuguese circuit (seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWHakVZdDuM). I don’t believe there was too much of an apology after that crash, but maybe I am mistaken.

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