Motogp; NASCAR Cup; WTCC; Porsche Supercup; Formula Renault Eurocup
JUST WHEN IT SEEMED MARC MARQUEZ was on the brink of securing Motogp title number four, Andrea Dovizioso scored a sixth race win of the season to ensure that this most unpredictable of championship campaigns goes down to the last race.
It seems only fitting that such a battle between two very different but equally worthy potential champions should be resolved at the Valencia finale, even if the odds remain overwhelmingly stacked in favour of Marquez.
Then again, 11 years ago, the late Nicky Hayden arrived at Valencia facing a seemingly insurmountable deficit to the man widely considered the best rider in the field. But Valentino Rossi succumbed to the pressure and crashed, and the crown was Hayden’s. The biggest difference between those two races is that, even if Marquez fails to score, Dovizioso has to win at Valencia, as he lags 21 points behind the Honda rider, and that is not guaranteed, given Ducati last won there in 2008.
After the disaster of Phillip Island, Dovizioso was expected to make up some ground on Marquez at Sepang. He did win in Malaysia in 2016, while Marquez has never felt fully at ease around the Hermann Tilke-designed circuit. Although Dovizioso was pipped to pole position by Dani Pedrosa and Johann Zarco, he had the clear measure of his opposition in another rain-soaked race.
Not for the first time this year, Tech3’s Zarco – now the official rookie of the year of 2017 – was the early leader, thanks in no small part to being the only rider in the top 10 besides polesitter Pedrosa to opt for the soft compound wet rear tyre. At one stage, the Frenchman – still chasing that first Motogp win – held an advantage of nearly two seconds over the works Ducatis of Jorge Lorenzo and Dovizioso. But it wasn’t long before they began to close in, and on lap nine of 20 both Lorenzo and Dovizioso picked Zarco off and began to edge away.
With a Ducati win looking likely, it was inevitable that team orders would come into play. After several more laps of circulating out front, Lorenzo duly received a coded instruction on his dashboard (‘Suggested Mapping 8’) to let Dovizioso go by. This went unheeded at first, and, when Dovizioso finally got passed Lorenzo at the final hairpin on lap 16, it looked anything but orchestrated, as Lorenzo suffered a major front-end scare and nearly crashed.
Once in front, Dovizioso opened a small gap to Lorenzo, and took the chequered flag for the sixth time this season without coming under any further threat from his team-mate, who could still take solace in having scored his best result for Ducati.
Afterwards, Lorenzo claimed he hadn’t seen the dashboard message, but also said he was aware of the points situation, implying he would have done the honourable thing and given up the win to Dovizioso even if he hadn’t made the error that allowed the Italian past. How Dovizioso must wish that Danilo Petrucci had been gallant in Misano, where the Pramac
Ducati rider chose not to allow his more senior stable-mate through for second…
Completing the first podium in a decade to not feature any works Honda or Yamaha riders was
Zarco, who wound up the best part of 10s down on Dovizioso at the finish, but never came under threat from fourth-placed Marquez.
All things considered, fourth wasn’t a bad return for Marquez, who had crashed on his way to his worst grid slot of the season (seventh) in qualifying. An aggressive opening lap from the Spaniard allowed him to reach third behind
Zarco and Lorenzo, but after Dovizioso went by early on, he decided to take the cautious approach. Had he crashed in pursuit of a podium, it would have blown the title race wide open – and, as he pointed out, it would have made very little difference whether he took a 21 or 24-point lead to Valencia. By contrast, Pedrosa went backwards at the start, but after settling into fifth place he was able to escape his pursuers and bank his best finish of a flyaway swing to forget.
As at Misano and Motegi, the works Yamahas again failed to make an impact in the wet, as Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales struggled to seventh and ninth respectively. Rossi suffered the indignity of being passed by Petrucci for sixth, despite the fact the latter was forced to start from last when his bike ground to a halt on the warm-up lap, while Vinales slumped as low as 13th before finally clawing his way back inside the top 10.
When asked if Yamaha should consider putting Zarco on a current-spec machine to boost development, Rossi joked that the rookie probably wouldn’t be happy about such a ‘promotion’, a remark that neatly sums up the sorry situation Yamaha finds itself in.
At least the manufacturer could take some solace in another strong showing for satellite rider Zarco, as well as a solid debut for World Superbike regular Michael van der Mark – the third different rider to stand in for the unwell Jonas Folger at Tech3 in as many races. The Dutchman was finally given his chance on a Motogp bike after being named as Rossi’s replacement for Aragon, only for the seventime premier class champion to be declared fit to race with a broken leg.
Qualifying didn’t go according to plan for van der Mark, as he crashed in Q1 and condemned himself to last on the grid. But his race pace was more impressive, and he only just missed out on scoring what would have been a very well-deserved point on his debut. With Folger unlikely to be back in time for Valencia, the chances of van der Mark getting a second crack of the whip on the M1, after he completes his World Superbike campaign in Qatar this weekend, are high.
But all eyes in Spain will be on Marquez, as he seeks to join Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and Eddie Lawson in the exclusive club of four-time 500cc/motogp champions. The pressure will be on, as it was for Rossi in 2006, while Dovizioso assumes the plucky underdog role that Hayden played 11 years ago. You wouldn’t be placing any money on the latter, but at the same time you can’t help but admire the fact he’s even made it this far.