As we’ve already alluded to, the weekend just gone was rife with exciting activity at the most recent round of the MotoGP. Notably, early favourite Jorge Lorenzo had a good start but his performance quickly took a nose dive and he found himself joining Turn One club in quite a fashion.
Landing in the gravel after carelessly hitting a wet patch and although he wasn’t harmed, his bike was unfit to continue, forcing him to withdraw from the race. Speaking on the events, Lorenzo said “It was a weekend to forget” but we don’t think we’re going to. After his poor performance in training and the race itself, Lorenzo will have to go to the mattresses to return to the podium.
Marc Marquez was the victor of this weekend, blazing the trail for Honda he won by 7.679 seconds over Yamaha racer Valentino Rossi. Owing his success to his split-second bike change, Marquez even commented that “the second part of the race was key”. After making the necessary change to his bike – as a result of the wet weather – he “opened a gap and after that I just kept the distance”. He’s modest and we like it.
Marquez’s Honda teammate, Dani Pedrosa took third in this race because of other team crashes and referred to his podium finish as “one of the luckiest days of my life”. One of the major talking points of the weekend however, was the crash by team Ducati, which gave Pedrosa ample opportunity to score podium points.
Essentially, Andrea “The Maniac” Iannone took himself and his Ducati team-mate Andrea Dovizioso out of the race and a double podium finish. A bad day for Iannone saw him collide with Dovizioso into the gravel and he was rewarded with a three-place grid penalty for the next round and a penalty point for his efforts.
Sadder still, was that they were just metres from the finish line, which Dovizioso took as inspiration to push his bike over the finish line and take 13th place. Although Iannone apologised to Dovizioso and all seemed well, we wouldn’t have like to have been in the Ducati team debriefing after this malarkey.
Eyes are now fixed on what looks to be a very interesting next round – the Round of the Americas – in Austin, Texas this Sunday, 10th April.
Images: MotoGP
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