World of Sport: Motogp
Since its return to the Motogp calendar in 2016, the Red Bull Ring has been Ducati territory. As a result, it wasn’t a major shock to see one of the Italian manufacturer’s riders triumph in Austria last weekend.
What was a little more surprising, though, was that Jorge Lorenzo made it three different men in red leathers on the top step of the podium in three years, following in the footsteps of 2016 winner Andrea Iannone and last year’s victor
Andrea Dovizioso after getting the better of Marc Marquez in an exhilarating duel.
Motogp has served up plenty of thrillers this season, and in this regard the Austrian Grand Prix was no exception. Although the top three were clearly in a league of their own, the dogfight between Marquez and Lorenzo in the closing stages was up there with anything else seen in 2018. Marquez showcased his intentions to finally nail Austria (the only track on the Motogp calendar, besides new-for-2018 venue Buriram in Thailand, at which he has yet to win) by taking pole position by a scant 0.002 seconds on Saturday from Dovizioso. Lorenzo completed the front row.
Lorenzo briefly grabbed the lead on the opening lap after slithering up the inside of both Marquez and Dovizioso at the uphill Turn 3 right-hander, but Marquez reasserted himself on the next tour at the same corner, and his Honda then began to pull away to the tune of nearly a second.
It seemed at half-distance that Lorenzo was holding up team-mate Dovizioso and allowing Marquez to escape to a relatively straightforward win. But on lap 14 of 28, Lorenzo turned up the heat to cut Marquez’s advantage from 0.8s to 0.5s and then closed right on the rear wheel of his future Honda team-mate.
On lap 19, Lorenzo made his move at Turn 1. Marquez responded at Turn 3, but Lorenzo showed he meant business with a gutsy pass to retake the lead at the plunging downhill Turn 9 right-hander. He hung on to the advantage until the final three laps.
Marquez remained close enough to seize the initiative when Lorenzo ran wide at Turn 3, but once more Lorenzo was able to snap back at Turn 9. On the penultimate lap Marquez muscled his way by at Turn 3 once more, but Lorenzo moved back ahead at Turn 1 next time round. Predictably, Marquez went on the attack at Turn 3 again on the final lap. This time, Lorenzo simply braved it around the outside of the bottom-gear right-hander. Getting better traction than his Honda foe meant he maintained the lead, giving him victory number three of 2018 by 0.130s.
Dovizioso, meanwhile, dropped out of the lead fight after he ran wide at the start of lap 19, and couldn’t bridge the gap thereafter, finishing 1.6s down on the lead duo in third.
Besides the battle for victory, the other major talking point of the Austrian GP weekend was Yamaha’s ongoing failure to provide competitive machinery for Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales.
The Red Bull Ring was always likely to show up Yamaha’s weaknesses; its slow corners and long straights punish the R1’s poor traction. But few would have predicted that neither Rossi nor Vinales would breach the top 10 in qualifying, or that Rossi wouldn’t even make it out of Q1. Such a disastrous showing prompted a public apology from Yamaha project leader Kouji Tsuya in what must rank as one of the most embarrassing moments in the marque’s racing history.
Rossi did well to salvage sixth from his lowly grid slot of 14th, ending up not too far behind LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow and Pramac Ducati rider Danilo Petrucci. But Vinales went the other way, slipping from 11th on the grid to 16th at the start and crossing the finishing line 12th.
Suzuki was also in turmoil, and not just on track. During Saturday Iannone accused the team of favouring Alex Rins, who was using the squad’s one and only new chassis. Rins starred on the first lap, climbing as high as fifth, before eventually slipping to eighth behind the second factory Honda of Dani Pedrosa. Iannone was 13th after running off-track early on.
Aprilia failed to score points at all after a race that moved Scott Redding to describe his RS-GP as a “piece of shit”, while KTM (down to a single bike for its home race with Pol Espargaro and Mika Kallio both injured) managed to bank two points thanks to Bradley Smith coming home 14th.
No such woes over at Ducati, which now has a credible claim to having the best all-round bike on the grid. It’s just a shame the squad decided to let Lorenzo go and join its closest rival for 2019.