Michael Scott | October 14, 2017
Valentino Rossi, still healing his broken leg, crashed Saturday at Motegi. (Gold & Goose photo)
DAY TWO NEWS FROM MOTEGI
Valentino Rossi fans (as well as his crew and the rider himself) were much relieved in the morning FP3 session when the heroic injury return victim was quick to his feet after a high-side crash, and strong enough not just to walk away, but to attempt to bump-start his M1 Yamaha.
Rossi broke his right tibia and fibula just over a month ago, and broke injury recovery records when he came back to ride in the Aragon GP 22 days later.
But when he got thrown off at Motegi, he admitted “I was lucky.”
The bike had “rotated below me”, he told press in the paddock. “I have some more pain now, but it’s okay. I didn’t hit the leg a lot.” The worse injury was to a finger.
“It was good, because it was quite a big crash,” he said.
As a result, he lost his preferred bike for qualifying, and had to go through FP4 and the qualifying session with just one bike.
Motegi’s Turn 11, aka 90-Degree Corner, is a notoriously difficult spot, one of the most interesting of the year. But for Moto2’s Alex Marquez, it became doubly so, when his throttle jammed open on the approach.
The corner is a highlight of an otherwise dull circuit. Approached at top speed on a steep downhill, riders must brake hard, teetering on the front wheel, to around 80 km/h.
Marquez, who said later that the moment had been “interesting”, had only a split second to decide what to do. With commendable coolness, he managed to take to the gravel trap and get stopped without hitting the barrier.
Bradley Smith celebrated the salvation of his career by getting through from Q1 to Q2 for only the second time on the ever-improving KTM, joining his usually faster team-mate Pol Espargaro in the move, then outqualifying him in Q1.
In the week before the race, the Red Bull-backed team had finally put to bed speculation that the Briton was due for the chop, after an underperforming season; with a press release confirming that all contracts in place would be honoured, that the race team would continue with Smith and Espargaro, and that Mika Kallio would remain as test rider, with occasional wild card appearances.
Smith took a year’s-best seventh qualifying position, with Espargaro eighth.
Kallio had made no secret of his desire to return to full-time GP riding, and underlined his strength by claiming the Austrian marque’s first dry-weather top-ten finish at the Red Bull Ring in their home GP.
Motegi’s mixed-up weather saw a first for the Ecstar Suzuki factory riders – Andrea Iannone and Alex Rins both directly through to Q2.
The success followed extensive and clearly productive tests at Aragon after the last race, and was marked by the addition of “box-kite” enclosed wings as the factory revealed its permitted “aero body” update.
Both riders praised the improved acceleration stability conferred by the wings, which are similar to those pioneered by Ducati and copied by Aprilia, although lower on the fairing sides than Ducati’s much larger units.
But it was not just wings, said team boss Davide Brivio. :At Aragon we found some small things that give the riders more confidence,” he said.
Thursday’s threats of more severe action to try to stop Moto3 riders from dawdling on track in qualifying became reality for two riders on Saturday, with SKY VR46 KTM’s Andrea Migno and Aspar Mahinda rider Lorenzo Dalla Porta confined to barracks for the first half of Saturday’s 40-minute qualifying.
Migno, winner of the Mugello race, and former Junior World Champion Dalla Porta were fingered as repeat offenders, even in advance of the qualifying session, which is the most usual theatre for this offence.
Notably, there was no such behaviour to be seen in the afternoon session.
Footnote: It was confirmed during the weekend that Dalla Porta has been signed to join the Leopard Honda team next year, in place of current incumbent Livio Loi. Leopard won the title with Danny Kent in 2015, and are poised to repeat the feat this year with Joan Mir.
Bad weather at Motegi’s misty hill-top location evoked dismal memories of 2013, when all of Friday and half of Saturday were lost because of fog, with threats of the similar problems in 2015. The problem was that the medevac helicopter could not fly, and the track’s remote location and primitive local road network meant that in an emergency the nearest hospital was more than an hour away.
But race director Mike Webb promised that even if it was too foggy to fly, arrangements now in place mean that no delays need to be imposed. With police escorts on hand, ambulance transport would now be acceptably quick.
