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Thursday Summary at Assen: One Crash Can Change a Lot

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Winning a MotoGP championship – in fact, winning any motorcycle racing championship – is very hard indeed. It takes years of training, and a full season of utmost concentration, and hours, days, weeks, and months of hard work to get everything as perfect as possible. Losing a championship is done in seconds, maybe milliseconds. A single, small mistake, and you can throw away everything you have devoted your life to achieving.

Jorge Lorenzo came into Assen on a roll, off two victories in a row, at Mugello and Barcelona. Assen is a track which suits the Yamaha, and at which Lorenzo is outstanding. He was comfortably fastest in the morning session, ahead of Cal Crutchlow on the other Yamaha, and was just starting to get into the swing of things on a soaking track when he hit a patch of water deeper than he was expecting.

In the blink of an eye, he was tossed from his bike and onto his shoulder, suffering a displaced fracture of his left collarbone which will ensure that he will miss the race on Saturday at Assen. The momentum Lorenzo had been amassing in the previous races just hit a brick wall.

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MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo Breaks Collarbone at Assen

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Jorge Lorenzo has fractured his left collarbone during practice at Assen. The factory Yamaha man was thrown from his bike at the Hoge Heide left-right flick, the fastest part of the circuit, and landed right on his shoulder.

He was taken to the medical center, where examination revealed a fractured collarbone. Lorenzo is to fly back to Barcelona tonight, to have surgery on the collarbone. He will not take part in the race in Assen on Saturday.

The injury came at the worst possible time for Lorenzo. Although a fractured collarbone can be fixed quickly with a plate, that still leaves the injury painful and weak. With the Sachsenring in two weeks’ time, followed seven days later by Laguna Seca, Lorenzo faces two tracks consisting mainly of left-hand corners, placing a lot of pressure on the injury.

If Lorenzo is capable of racing at Sachsenring, he will face a very difficult challenge securing strong results. One DNF and the possibility of two further weak results would make it very difficult for Lorenzo to defend his championship. Statements from Yamaha Racing concerning Lorenzo’s injury are after the jump.

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Preview of Assen: Does a Flowing Track & A Final Chicane Make for a Recipe of Thrills?

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Ask anyone what makes a great circuit, and they will tell you that it takes three things: fast corners, great scenery, and lots of elevation changes. So what makes the TT Circuit at Assen so great? It only really has one of the three factors that makes it a great circuit.

If the track has elevation changes, they can be measured in centimeters. The scenery is mostly absent, though that does allow more of a view of the expansive skies the Dutch masters of the 17th Century were so famed for. The only factor which the track still possesses is a collection of really fast corners, testing the mettle of anyone with ambition to take on the circuit.

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Honda vs. Yamaha: Cal Crutchlow Helps Explain Why the First Corner Decides a MotoGP Race

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Jorge Lorenzo has won the last two MotoGP rounds in utterly dominating style. Though his win at Mugello was by a greater margin, the victory at Barcelona was one of the most impressive of his career. Afterwards, both Lorenzo’s team manager Wilco Zeelenberg and Monster Tech 3 rider Cal Crutchlow said of the Barcelona win that it was probably one of the best races he had ever ridden. Lorenzo had made only one mistake, the Spaniard said afterwards, and it was so small it did not even show up on the data.

As he had done at Mugello, Lorenzo ensured that he won the drag race to the first corner, aggressively outbraking Dani Pedrosa to take the lead. From that point, he held the Honda’s at bay until Dani Pedrosa finally broke, the Yamaha man going on to win by nearly two seconds. It was the second race in a row which Lorenzo had led from the start and gone on to win the race.

In fact, all three of Lorenzo’s wins, at Qatar, Mugello and Barcelona, have come in the same manner: Get into the first corner in the lead, push hard in the early laps, and ride as perfectly, and as fast, as possible throughout the entire race. There is simply no one else in the world capable of riding a motorcycle for 25 laps at full speed as well as Jorge Lorenzo at the moment.

As impressive as Lorenzo’s wins have been, the one thing they have lacked is spectacle. There has been no drama, no battles, no need to defend, and the only place Lorenzo has needed to attack has been off the line, an area perhaps aided by the new clutch Yamaha have been using for this year.

Does Lorenzo not enjoy the battle, is he incapable of holding his own in a battle, or is it down to the bike? It is a question which is debated by fans around the world, with an answer apparently hard to give.

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Analyzing MotoGP’s Game of Thrones at the Catalan Test

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Pity poor Jorge Lorenzo. Once again he comes to a test and tops the timesheets, and everyone is talking about someone else. This time, though, he will probably not mind, as he was not really out for glory at the test, just to work on settings before heading to the next test at Aragon on Wednesday. If it isn’t rained off that is.

Lorenzo chose to skip the morning session, preferring to rest after an impressive win on Sunday, but once underway he was quickly up to speed hitting the top three after just a couple of laps, and ending the day on top.

The Factory Yamaha man had been working on setup, but had also tested a new fuel tank. The new tank does not change the weight balance from the current version used by the factory riders, but it does have a slightly different shape to fit under the seat more comfortably and allow Lorenzo to position himself better on the bike.

On the other side of the garage, Valentino Rossi was once again pursuing weight distribution changes to improve his feel with the bike, especially to help him in braking. A more radical change was planned for the afternoon, but a fast crash at Turn 3 left the bike damaged, meaning that plan had to be abandoned.

Rossi returned to the track at the end of the day to test the new rear tire Bridgestone had brought, and was positive about the feel of the tire. The new construction hard rear tire was a clear improvement, Rossi said, and it was good for the hard rear to once again be an option.

So far this year, the only tire that has worked at most tracks has been the softer option, leaving the riders with a de facto rear allocation of just seven rears for a weekend.

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MotoGP: Catalunya Post-Race Test Times – Lorenzo Edges Hayden, Suzuki up to Speed

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Jorge Lorenzo has topped the timesheets at the end of the Barcelona MotoGP test, but the talking point of the test was Suzuki. On its first public run out, Randy de Puniet clocked a time of 1’42.676, just over three quarters of a second off the time set by Lorenzo, an impressive debut.

Nicky Hayden set the second fastest time, close behind Lorenzo and ahead of Stefan Bradl. Both Hayden and Dovizioso ran back-to-back tests with the existing Ducati GP13 and the lab bike, but neither man was convinced that the lab bike was a step forward.

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Sunday Summary at Catalunya: Of Boring Perfect, Weird Strength, & Yamaha’s Fuel Tank

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Jorge Lorenzo ran a perfect race at Barcelona. Well, not quite perfect — he told veteran US journalist Dennis Noyes that he made just a single mistake. “Luckily nobody saw it, and you cannot see it on the data,” Lorenzo said.

After a difficult qualifying session, Lorenzo put the hammer down from the start, attacking Dani Pedrosa aggressively into Turn 1 once again, just like in Mugello, and then pushing hard all race long, despite a front tire that kept threatening to let go.

So how did he do it? How did he pull off a win when most people were convinced that Pedrosa had the win in the bag? Two factors: his own mental strength, and a radical and inspired set up change during warm-up, in preparation for a hot race with no grip.

Wilco Zeelenberg, Lorenzo’s team manager, explained to me exactly what they had done. “We created a lot less pressure on the front of the bike,” the Dutchman explained. “That’s not what you would normally do, but because you know you won’t be able to do 1:42’s all race, you know you don’t need the best set up.”

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Saturday Summary at Catalunya: Pedrosa’s Scorcher, Lorenzo’s Engines, & Vinales’s Penalties

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Cal Crutchlow called it right on Friday. “We know the Hondas take a little bit longer to set up, but when they come out Saturday morning, they normally take a second off.”

It was more like half a second on Saturday morning, but by the afternoon, Dani Pedrosa took nearly 1.6 seconds off his best time on Friday, smashing the pole record which had stood since 2008.

That was a lap set on the supersoft qualifying tires still used at the time, which had Nicky Hayden happily reminiscing about the fun to be had on the sticky one-lap rubber.

It was an extraordinary lap by Pedrosa, though the Honda man himself was not overly impressed. When asked if it was his best lap ever, Pedrosa acknowledged that it was good, perhaps one of his best, but still not as good as his lap at Valencia at the end of last year.

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Engine Trouble Looming For Yamaha in MotoGP – Rossi & Lorenzo Burning Through Their Allocations

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The defense of Jorge Lorenzo’s MotoGP championship faces a further obstacle. In addition to having to fend off an unleashed Dani Pedrosa, and the rookie sensation that is Marc Marquez, the Yamaha Factory Racing rider now has to deal with a looming engine shortage as well.

Just six race weekends into the 2013 MotoGP season, and the factory Yamaha riders are already using the fourth of the five engines that they have for the entire season. With two thirds of the season left to go, the Yamaha men will face a serious challenge in making their engines last until the end of the season.

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