Tag

Marc Márquez

Browsing

The first day of the first Sepang MotoGP test is always a revealing of secrets. It’s not that the factories tell the media everything they are doing, but with everyone on the track, there is nowhere left to hide. The timesheets tell the tale.

The story of the second day is always a little more complex. Initial impressions from the first day are absorbed, the data examined and analyzed, and engineers and mechanics come up with new ideas.

That means that riders are working on different ideas and in different directions, some changes work, others don’t. Times become much more difficult to assess.

So what did we learn today? A lot. Not so much from the lap times – Jorge Lorenzo is fastest, and looking as good as ever, Andrea Dovizioso is incredibly quick, especially on a new soft tire, and the Hondas have chosen a direction to follow – but more about the underlying state of play.

It was a fascinating day, despite the fact that the standing barely changed much after noon.

There is something about the sound of a MotoGP bike that stirs the blood once again. After a long winter, in which one reflects on the many negatives of following motorcycle racing – hard work for little money, endless trips through faceless airports to faceless hotels, and long periods away from home.

A few milliseconds of the sound of a MotoGP bike being warmed up is enough to make you forget all that, and melt away the misery of business travel on the cheap under the fierce heat of passion for the sport. There is nothing that excites like motorcycle racing.

It was an intriguing first day back, with highs and lows, strong performers and real disappointments. The finishing order is not completely indicative of the real strength of the field, but it offers some sound clues as to who stands where.

The 2015 MotoGP season kicks off tomorrow. On Wednesday, the riders take to the track once again at Sepang to continue the development on the bikes they will be racing this year, and to test out the new updates the engineers have been working on during the winter break.

And yet the two most important and interesting developments won’t even be at the first Sepang test.

Ducati’s much-anticipated Desmosedici GP15 is not quite ready for primetime, and so will not make its public debut until 19th February at the launch in Bologna, and not make its first laps in public until the second Sepang test at the end of this month.

Yamaha’s fully seamless gearbox – allowing both clutchless upshifts and downshifts – will also wait until Sepang 2 before Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo get their hands on the bike.

The official reasons given for the delay are that the GP15 and Yamaha’s gearbox are almost ready, but not quite, still needing a few last checks by the engineers before they are ready to be handed over to the factory riders.

Those of a cynical – or perhaps even paranoid – bent may be tempted to speculate that the delays are more to do with the media than the engineering. The first Sepang test this week is well-attended by journalists and photographers alike, the MotoGP press just as eager as the riders and the fans for the winter to be over.

The second Sepang test sees only a very few journalists attend, with few publications willing to spend the money to cover the expenses for what is often just more of the same.

Perhaps the factories have caught on to this, and are taking advantage of the opportunity to test important new parts with a little less media attention. Or perhaps it really is just a case of not being quite ready in time.

Despite the absence of the really big news, there will still be plenty to see. So who will be testing what, and what are the key factors to keep an eye on?

I’m going to start the 2nd and final part of my 2014 photo retrospective with the image above of Marc Marquez. Taken at Woodcote during Sunday mornings warm up for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Woodcote was one of the most exhilarating sections of track I shot last year. The sensation of speed as the riders came past, back wheel sliding, only feet away was indescribable.

HRC unveiled its factory MotoGP team this weekend in Bali, Indonesia — giving us our first glimpse of the Repsol Honda livery for the 2015 season.

Both Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa were in attendance, which is no surprise considering how important the Indonesian market is for Honda.

The Indonesian unveil also helps the two GP riders to have only a short hop now to Malaysia, to start the MotoGP season with the first official test a Sepang International Circuit.

As for the 2015-spec RC213V, things remain mostly the same to the layman’s eye. Red Bull’s sponsoring and support of both Pedrosa and Marquez, as well as the Repsol Honda team, is more prominent, and displayed on the belly pan fairing of the bike.

We’ll let you play spot the differences in the photos after the jump, they are super-sized high-resolution shots, so they might take a minute to load. Enjoy!

As the countdown to the new season gathers momentum I thought I’d have a look back at some of my favourite photographs from 2014.

The image above of Scott Redding was taken as he came in for a tire change during qualifying at Le Mans. Sometimes the riders will disappear to the back of the garage during qualifying.

If you’re lucky they will stay on the bike while the crew get to work. If they do, it provides a great opportunity for a portrait as was the case here.

As 2014 draws to a close and 2015 approaches, it is time to take a look back at the 2014 season. Over the next few days, we’ll be reviewing the performances of the top 10 riders in the 2014 MotoGP championship, commenting on notable riders outside the top 10, and discussing the cream of Moto2 and Moto3. First, the top 10 MotoGP men, starting with with the 2014 champion:

1st – 362 points – Marc Márquez

By the end of 2013, Marc Márquez had convinced just about everyone that he was the real deal. The doubters who remained held on to a single argument: first, let’s see if he can repeat.

Winning a championship may be incredibly hard, defending it is doubly so. In the past twenty years, on Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi have done so.

Things started inauspiciously, Márquez breaking a leg while training at the dirt track oval in Rufea, near where he lives. With five weeks to recover before the first race at Qatar, and forced to miss testing at Sepang and Phillip Island, this was far from ideal preparation.

It did not matter, though: Márquez held off a resurgent Valentino Rossi while others crashed out, and won an exciting first race of the season. As his injured leg recovered, so Márquez got better, winning by comfortable margins at Austin, Argentina, Jerez and Le Mans.

The fans and media talked of records, by Doohan and Agostini, and the prospect of a perfect season – winning all eighteen races – started to be discussed.

With last year’s Superprestigio winner Brad Baker suffering a concussion to the head during qualifying, the hopes of American race fans in Barcelona rested squarely on the shoulders of 2014 AMA Pro Flat Track Champion Jared Mees.

The 28-year-old Mees faced a tough entry though, as some of the great names from a bevy of motorcycling disciplines had entered this year’s event — especially last year’s runner-up, a certain Marc Marquez.

As expected, the 12-lap Superfinal race was hotly contested, and featured some good handlebar-bashing action. Thankfully the riders had plenty of on-board cameras with them, and the promoter DTX Barcelona is savvy when it comes to letting participants and media sharing that footage.

As such, we have the battle for the top podium spot, for you, straight from the perspective of America’s top entry. Enjoy!

Marc Marquez has ended the year on a win, beating the reigning AMA Flat Track champion Jared Mees in a thrilling final. The two men got caught up in traffic when Thomas Chareyre, who got the jump at the start, forced them wide.

That gave the lead to Kenny Noyes and Gerard Ribalta, but Marquez and Mees soon chased the two down, passing Bailo with ease, Noyes with difficulty. Marquez had gained enough of a cushion to keep Mees at bay, finally getting revenge for his loss to Brad Baker in January this year, at the inaugural event.

Noyes went on to score a respectable 3rd, ahead of Bailo and Ribalta. The 16-year-old British rider Oliver Brindley gave an outstanding account of himself, finishing in 6th, ahead of Bradley Smith, who got caught up in the first lap incident, and Chareyre, who caused it.