Marc Marquez has ended the day at the top of the timesheets, taking the 2014 version of the RC213V out for a final run at the end of the day to post a time nearly a quarter of a second faster than Jorge Lorenzo, who had been fastest for most of the day.
Both Honda and Yamaha had brought versions of their 2014 machines, with all four factory riders switching between the two versions, though most were concentrating on improving set up for the remainder of the 2013 season.
True to tradition, Valentino Rossi debuted another unique helmet design for his home crowd at the San Marino GP in Misano, Italy. Themed to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, Rossi has added the last stanza of the song to his livery as well.
“How I wish, how I wish you were here. We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same ground What have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here.”
While we’ll let you decipher the meaning to Rossi’s Pink Floyd reference and how it applies to his time in MotoGP, we have to say that this is one of our favorite designs from Aldo Drudi that Rossi has sported at an Italian round.
So, it should come as no surprise that a bevy of photos are after the jump, for your viewing pleasure — since we know that there are some diehard fans of The Doctor that read the pages of Asphalt & Rubber.
Be forewarned though collectors, we think AGV is going to have a tough time getting the rights to make replicas of this design.
If half a second is a long time around Misano, seven tenths of a second is almost a geological era. Jorge Lorenzo was lacking grip and braking stability on Saturday; on Sunday morning, Ramon Forcada stiffened the front to improve Lorenzo’s braking, and the factory Yamaha man crushed the opposition in the warm up.
Four hours later, the reigning world champion did exactly the same again in the race, destroying his rivals in the first three laps, and holding on for a victory that was both overwhelming and important.
The first three laps? Lorenzo probably won the race in the first 100 meters off the line. Lorenzo had fluffed his practice starts on Saturday, bogging down and not really getting off the line.
On Sunday, he was so fast away off the line that he had two bike lengths before he had even changed up into second gear. By the time he crossed the timing line at the end of the first sector, he was already 0.4 seconds ahead. By the end of the first lap, he was 1.2 seconds ahead. It was already game over.
Half a second at Misano is a very, very long time. At a short track like this, gaps are measured in tenths, not seconds. The gap from 5th to 12th, for example, is 0.505. Yet the gap from Marc Marquez on pole to Jorge Lorenzo, the rider with the second fastest time, was 0.513 seconds. A huge difference.
Despite another one of his fast crashes in free practice, from which he keeps walking away almost unhurt, Marquez stayed calm, posted an impressive fast lap in his first run of Q2, and then followed it up by obliterating Casey Stoner’s 2011 Misano pole lap record by over two tenths of a second.
The lap was stunning – another trademark of Marquez since his switch to MotoGP – and beyond the capability of anyone to follow. The Repsol Honda man looked unstoppable during qualifying.
With so much happening at the front of all three races at Silverstone last Sunday, it is easy to overlook the battles behind. Especially when those battles seem to be falling into a fixed pattern, repeating the results of previous races.
A glance at the results of the MotoGP race Silverstone gives you a sense of déjà vu. While the top three swapped places, positions four to six were identical to their finishes at Brno, places seven to nine differed only in the riders who crashed out, and Aleix Espargaro took tenth spot, as he did in the Czech Republic. A pattern is definitely starting to form here.
If you haven’t heard of Riders for Health, it is the official charity of MotoGP, and also happens to be Asphalt & Rubber‘s favorite cause to support. Last year I had the supreme opportunity to attend Rider’s biggest fundraising event, the Day of Champions, which was held the Thursday before the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. While unfortunately I missed this year’s event (David and Scott got to attend though), I was very pleased to hear that British MotoGP fans raised £216,249 (over $336,000) for the charity.
That money will go towards helping Riders for Health to improve access to healthcare in Africa, where the charity relies on motorcycles to help bring healthcare professionals to remote villages, as well as reliably transporting medical samples, vaccines, etc. to places where four-wheeled drive vehicles cannot reach. I won’t go into a huge spiel about how awesome Riders for Health is, but if you want to read more about the great work these people are doing, you can read about them here.
While many in the MotoGP paddock have given endless amounts of support to Riders for Health, one standout supporter of this great cause is Valentino Rossi. During last Thursday’s rider auction, Rossi helped to raise £13,250 in just 20 minutes with nine items, which included a unique clay hand print, knee sliders, and the baseball hat he wore onto the stage. In total, the auction raised £77,090 for Riders, making Rossi’s star power account for over 17% of the money raised.
Why do we keep watching motorcycle racing? Because sometimes magic happens. Today was one of those days. Two riders took their sport to the known limits in qualifying at Silverstone on Saturday, and then pushed at the edges to see what was beyond.
What happened then took the breath of the crowd away, and left the press room sitting in stunned silence. And shutting the media up takes some doing.
Veteran broadcaster Dennis Noyes described the atmosphere in Parc Ferme after qualifying like being in a church. There was an air of awed reverence, quietness almost, as the teams of all three riders on the front row showed their respect for what they had just seen happen.
Jorge Lorenzo had put on a display of as near perfect riding as it is humanly possible to achieve, destroying the lap record in the process. And then Marc Marquez had gone faster still, with almost effortless ease.
As Lorenzo stopped in Parc Ferme after qualifying, he gave a little shake of his head. He knew what he had just done – afterwards, he would say the lap was one of the best of his career, and that there was really only one sector where he could have found more time – and it had not been enough. It doesn’t really matter what Lorenzo tries, matching Marc Marquez seems to be impossible.
The media duties are one of the more difficult parts of a MotoGP rider’s job. Every day they spend at a racetrack, they have to spend 10 to 15 minutes answering a barrage of questions from the assembled press.
The questions range from stating the obvious, to inane ramblings, to blatant provocation chasing a printable quote, and even, on the odd very rare occasion, to sensible questions provoking subtle and thoughtful answers. In terms of time, the scope of the questions can range from what happened five minutes ago to events of five or ten years ago.
So it is hardly surprising that from time to time, the facts of relatively ancient history get confused. Such was the case at Silverstone, when on Thursday, Nicky Hayden said he would have liked to test the carbon fiber frame he tried at Jerez back in late 2011. On Friday, Hayden made a retraction, or a clarification, or call it what you will.
He explained that what he had actually tested was the aluminium monocoque frame which was the intermediate chassis between the old carbon fiber frame and the aluminium perimeter beam chassis of which the current bike is an iteration.
He had not, he said, called for a return to the carbon fiber frame, he had merely stated he would have liked to give that aluminium frameless front chassis one more try, but he was thwarted when he broke his hand in a first-corner crash with Alvaro Bautista at Valencia, and was forced to miss the test.
It is understandable that Hayden was a little confused over what he had been testing. He had been thrown a question asking about developments he had liked in the period he had been with Ducati, and had quickly run back through his memories to see what had stuck out.
The test at Jerez in 2011 had been one such moment, but as he had had three different bikes to test on that day, it was easy to confuse which chassis he had been riding at a particular moment.
There must be something in the Moravian water. Three races at Brno on Sunday, and all three genuine barnburners. What’s more, the podiums had a good mixture of experience, age, and nationality.
Only five of the nine were Spanish, while in Moto2, there wasn’t a single Spaniard on the podium. And at the end, the championships in all three classes got a little more interesting.
Race of the day? Impossible to say, but the 2013 Czech Grand Prix will surely be remembered for the MotoGP race. After a tense race with a blistering finish last year, the 2013 race was even better.
You could have earned yourself a tidy sum today if you’d correctly predicted the MotoGP front row. Though Cal Crutchlow, Alvaro Bautista and Marc Marquez are all familiar faces on the front row, the combination of the three was quite unexpected. Crutchlow earned his second ever MotoGP pole at Brno, shattering the pole record on his way to doing it.
Bautista was on the front row at Laguna Seca, but his previous front row appearance was pole position at Silverstone over a year ago. And Marquez is a regular patron of the front row, but in four of his eight front row starts, he has had pole. The combination of the three was a surprise, and a testament to the way the new qualifying system this year manages to throw up surprises.