DUCATI WINNING MOTOGPS WAR TYRE CIVIL
This was a race but not as we know it; the 2017 Catalan GP was more of an exercise in tyre management. The pace was steady throughout, riders avoiding grip from falling off the edge of a cliff by careful riding, stressing the front and rear tyres as little as they could without getting eaten up by their rivals.
For most of the 25 laps it was a threehorse race: Pedrosa inches ahead of Dovizioso, Marquez a few yards further back and, for a while at least, Folger closing in on the trio with the fastest lap of the race but ultimately failing to get in amongst them.
Dovizioso looked the most comfortable of them all; so comfy indeed that he was rolling off the throttle on the main straight to cool his rear tyre and avoid taking the lead: he wanted Pedrosa to do the hard work. Finally, his tactics weren’t dissimilar to Mugello. He waited until there were nine laps left, then eased ahead and stayed there, gradually putting Pedrosa out of reach, while Marquez realised he didn’t want a sixth crash, so settled for third. It certainly wasn’t the most exciting race of the year.
“I decided to stay behind Dani who was riding very well and saving the rear tyre,” said the Italian. “I saved my rear tyre in the same way, but I was also able to save front tyre in a better way because my acceleration was better so I made sure I never braked really hard. I just pushed without stressing the tyres. It was strange because I won without pushing 100 per cent and this has never happened to me before.”
The result moved Dovizioso into second overall, just seven points behind the stricken Viñales who limped home in 10th place, running a second a lap slower than the winner. “To think about the championship is impossible because every weekend is a different story,” added Dovizioso, after winning as many MotoGP races in eight days as the previous nine
seasons. “Nobody can understand the future, especially this year. Our bike is the same bike we used at Le Mans, where we finished 11 seconds behind the winner, but now we have won the last two races.”
Marquez was simply delighted to see the chequered flag. “I still wanted to take risks and if I hadn’t already crashes so many times I would’ve crashed in the race!” he smiled. “It’s better to crash in practice and stay inside the limit in the race. I did try, but what we lost on the straights we couldn’t gain in the corners because the limit was the tyres.”
Lorenzo was the surprise. He led the early laps for the second consecutive race and then dropped like a stone, from first to seventh by lap 10. But during the second half he rallied himself and passed Johann Zarco, Alvaro Bautista, Folger and Petrucci, who slid off with two laps to go, having used up his rear tyre. “Right now I am doing good races but not exceptional races,” said the three-time MotoGP champion. “The other good thing is that I am learning some things about riding that I would never learn if I’d stayed in the same team for this year.”
Rossi came in eighth, four seconds down on Bautista, with Hector Barbera and Viñales behind completing the top 10. “We are very, very sad,” said Rossi. “The main problem was understeer, then the problem became very big for the rear tyre. I was in very much trouble because it was impossible to exit fast from the corners, especially the rights.”