It may have only ever hosted one MotoGP race weekend, but already the Circuit of the Americas has become the scene of one of the most significant moments in Motorcycle Racing history. But while last year all the focus was on Marc Marquez as he became first the youngest pole sitter and then the youngest winner of a MotoGP race, this year all eyes will be on the man who pushed Marquez all the way to the season finale in Valencia in the battle for the World Championship last year: Jorge Lorenzo.
Just over a fortnight ago in Qatar, Lorenzo experienced one of the worst weekends of his career; both in the build up to the race, and after the lights had gone out. All throughout practice, the two times World Champion walked with a posture that seemed to suggest that he had been carrying his Yamaha M1 around the Losail Circuit, rather than the other way around. Having only just scraped directly into Q2 with a late burst at the end of the third practice session, Lorenzo was able to manage just fifth on the grid, behind not only the satellite bikes of Alvaro Bautista and Bradley Smith, but also Andrea Dovizioso’s Open Class Ducati. On race day however, it almost appeared that Lorenzo’s luck had changed, and indeed it had; for about half a lap. As the lights went out Lorenzo showed he still had the starting speed that served him so well in 2013 to get the hole shot and lead coming out of the first corner. With Lorenzo quickly gapping the field, it looked as though he was well on his way to taking a trademark win and completing a hat-trick of victories in Qatar. But nothing about Lorenzo’s weekend up to that point suggested the Spaniard was in race winning form at Qatar, and indeed, Lorenzo’s lead would prove too good to be true, as he low-sided dramatically within the first lap of the race. The crash destroyed the bodywork of his bike, potentially writing off one of just five engines he has available to use throughout the whole of 2014. But perhaps the biggest blow to Lorenzo’s title challenge is that he is already 25 points behind defending champion and early season favourite Marc Marquez. At any stage of the season, 25 points is a significant margin to overhaul, and when that gap is to someone as consistent as Marquez, that challenge becomes even greater. Lorenzo then, has to start closing the gap instantly. The Circuit of the Americas however, will not be an easy hunting ground for Lorenzo, especially since it appears that it is his biggest rival who will once again be the man holding all the cards.
There were two things that happened in Qatar that showed that Marc Marquez is just as much a title defender as he was a title challenger. The first came with the maturity he displayed in the three days prior to the race. In the two days leading up to qualifying, Marquez never finished higher than fifth in any of the free practice sessions. But the Spaniard remained calm, put his head down and came up with yet another “bolt from the blue” lap to take pole position when it came to decision time in qualifying. The second came in the race itself, when for the second time in two seasons in Qatar, the Repsol Honda man engaged in an enthralling dogfight with Valentino Rossi. Twelve months ago, Rossi had come out on top against the then MotoGP debutant. This time however, it was Marquez who won the battle, biding his time until the penultimate lap, where the two switched places twice over, to make the decisive, race winning move that gave Rossi no chance to respond. Now Marquez returns to Texas with the knowledge that even at this very early stage of the season a win would put more than a race’s worth of points between him and his closest rival, Jorge Lorenzo. If Marquez puts in the type of performance that saw him take the flag in Qatar, it’s hard to look past him for the win at a circuit where he dominated for the whole weekend last season, in what was only his second ever MotoGP.
In the absence of Lorenzo, for much of the race in Qatar, the man who pushed Marquez all the way in the battle for the win was Valentino Rossi. It was a performance that saw the legendary veteran heralded as being back to his still brilliant best after that duel with Marquez. It should be remembered however, that the nine times World Champion actually beat Marquez in Qatar last season to again take second position, only to then go on and struggle for the majority of the rest of the season. Those struggles began with a disappointing fifth place here in Texas last year, but Rossi is already more confident about his chances for the rest of this season, and has told Italian TV he is planning on staying in MotoGP for 2015, and possibly beyond. A good performance this weekend would certainly prove Rossi is a contender this year, given his generally notorious dislike for new circuits.
The fourth and final man expected to contend the title this year is Dani Pedrosa, and a pleasing podium coupled with Lorenzo’s no-score at a Losail Circuit of which Pedrosa is not a fan will surely have encouraged the Honda rider further. Texas is a track that both favours and hampers Pedrosa, its long straights play directly into the hands of the fast accelerating Honda, but its long, fast turns make it difficult for the tiny Pedrosa to move his bike around. The objective for Pedrosa will simply be to stay close enough to the rest of the leaders to ensure that the points deficit to his rivals is not so large that it becomes a nigh on impossible task for Pedrosa to overcome once the championship reaches the European circuits where Pedrosa goes best.
Aside from the battle at the front, the topic that generated the most interest in Qatar was the debut of the Open Class and, almost inevitably, the performance of the man who looks set to fly the Open flag in the same way he has done the CRT flag in the past two years: Aleix Espargaro. Espargaro spent most of the weekend recreating his pre-season form, dominating all of the practice sessions, topping the timesheets ahead of even the factory bikes. Sadly for Aleix, the only blip came in Qualifying, the Forward Yamaha rider crashing not once but twice whilst on laps running under the pole position time. Consequentially the elder of the Espargaro brothers could qualify only ninth on the grid, and as such, his fourth place finish as the top Open Class rider will only serve to reinforce his constantly growing reputation. The two competitors Espargaro will likely have to worry about most in the battle to be top Open Class bike are the Ducati’s of Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow.
For Crutchlow in particular, Qatar was a tough but promising weekend. Going into the race, Crutchlow has said he did not feel 100% ready to ride, a packed pre-season promotional tour having reportedly interfered in Crutchlow’s race preparation. Then, a broken transponder on race-day meant Crutchlow spent the majority of Sunday riding a bike with only default settings, making his eventual sixth place finish hugely admirable. Crutchlow will therefore be hoping that a full two weeks to prepare and a free from fault machine will set him up nicely to challenge at the upper end of the Open Class at the very least.
Expectations shouldn’t be too high though, because while a number of Open Class riders have spoken of their hopes of getting in and among the top factory riders come race-day, it was interesting to note that not a single Open Class bike was able to get close to what was for most of the Qatar race a leading group of five, made up of the prototype bikes of Marquez; Rossi; Pedrosa; Alvaro Bautista and Bradley Smith. It would appear then, that despite all the pre-season talk surrounding the engine and fuel advantages of the Open bikes, when the lights go out, prototype bikes are still the most desirable machines in the world. With MotoGP going completely Open Class from 2016, Dorna will be hoping that will change sooner rather than later. But despite Aleix Espargaro’s claims that he felt he could have challenged the leaders in Qatar were it not for his poor qualifying, that change might not come in Texas, with its long start finish straight playing to the strengths of the prototype bikes that in Qatar, had at least 10kmph higher top speed than even the fastest of the Open bikes.
One Open Class rider who has already achieved his individual target for the season is Gresini’s Scott Redding. A brilliant debut in Qatar saw Redding finish seventh, ahead of fellow Open Class Honda rider Nicky Hayden, the 2006 World Champion who Redding has already admitted is his target to beat this season. In a recent interview with a national newspaper, Redding interestingly conceded that his relationship with the Aspar rider may change as a result of what looks set to become an intriguing season long battle. But as Redding also admitted in the same interview when discussing riding through numerous injuries last year in Moto 2 “the title was the motivation”, and that will be the same when it comes to this season’s battle with Hayden, because beating a man with a reputation as grand as Hayden’s will all but certainly put Redding on course to secure a bike from Honda capable of challenging for the biggest prize of them all.
While Redding’s eyes are set firmly on the title, his fellow countryman Bradley Smith’s hopes for the future are a bit more basic: to simply be riding in MotoGP next year, and while his performance in Qatar suggests that would be a massive underachievement, the ever fascinating yet frustrating political side of motorsport means that sadly, that will not be the case. Smith finds himself riding in Tech 3 alongside Yamaha’s latest Chosen One, Pol Espargaro, and while the younger brother of Aleix is already certain to be riding a Yamaha in MotoGP 2015, Smith finds himself out of contract at the end of the year, and searching for a ride. As such, the Brit has already conceded that this year his performances must be so good that the best teams have no choice but to offer him a contract for next year, and his performance in Qatar fit the bill almost to perfection. A front row start in qualifying (his first ever in MotoGP), was followed by arguably Smith’s best performance of his, as yet, short MotoGP career. The young Brit ran among a leading group of five, more than holding his own for the majority of the race, looking like a genuine podium contender for much of that time. It was not to be this time however for Smith, a crash in the final few laps leaving him disappointed but encouraged by what is to come, especially compared to his albeit injured teammate Espargaro, who retired with a technical issue having spent much of the race running in eighth.
It should be remembered that Smith is not the only satellite rider under pressure this year, both satellite Honda riders: Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista, find themselves in a similar position to Smith, and like the Brit, both had promising races that were ended prematurely in Qatar. Both will however once again be among the favourites to throw the cat among the pigeons in Texas this weekend.
While the stakes may not be high, the action at the other end of the MotoGP grid is just as entertaining, and one man set to be right in the thick of that action is Paul Bird Motorsport’s Michael Laverty. The Irishman put in an extremely impressive performance in Qatar, to finish just one place and less than 30 seconds off the points, despite having to take a ride through penalty for a jump start. The man who took that final point scoring position was Laverty’s teammate Broc Parkes. The Australian has never raced in Texas, and Laverty will look to use his experience from last year’s race to get one back in the PBM Ashes. Laverty’s overall target however should be Hector Barbera, the most experienced of the group of five riders (also made up of Laverty and Parkes, along with IODA’s Danilo Petrucci and Barbera’s Avintia Bluesens teammate Mike Di Meglio) riding Open Class bikes not supplied by any of the three main factories – Honda; Yamaha or Ducati.
While MotoGP delivered both the expected and unexpected on track, Moto 2’s on track action followed the form guide completely, only for that to be altered by events off track. After pre-season favourite Esteve “Tito” Rabat took the win ahead of Takaaki Nakagami – the man most likely to challenge Rabat for the title, it then emerged that Nakagami was to be disqualified for the use of an illegal air filter on his bike’s exhaust, and despite an appeal from the team, Nakagami’s ride to second was all for nothing. With the third favourite for the title- Rabat’s Marc VDS teammate Mika Kallio promoted to second as a result, Nakagami now finds himself in a similar position to that of Jorge Lorenzo – facing a significant margin of points to overhaul in order to catch the leaders.
Another rider to benefit from Nakagami’s disqualification was debutant Sam Lowes, who was promoted from seventh to sixth courtesy of Nakagami’s exclusion. Even prior to those events, Lowes had put in a considerably impressive performance in finishing seventh on track, keeping his head even when Dominique Aegerter’s engine blew up directly in front of him. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Gino Rea, who was taken out early on by an oil leak from his bike. With neither Lowes nor Rea having ridden at the Circuit of the Americas before, a steady, incident free weekend should be the objective for the British duo.
Moto 3 went down to the very last corner in 2013, and already looks set to run in a similarly fantastic fashion this time around, if Qatar is anything to go by. In Qatar, it was Australian rider Jack Miller who took his first GP win (and podium for that matter), leading home a trail of four riders from the Iberian Peninsula by just half a second. Among those four were Miller’s likely challengers for the championship; including Marc Marquez’s supposedly (according to Marc himself) faster younger brother Alex, and last season’s Moto 3 Championship runner up Alex Rins. It was interesting to note that, after a winter of significant work on its Moto 3 project, the Honda that had restricted Miller so much with its speed deficit last year, was this year able to keep Rins and Marquez in touch with Miller. Ironically Miller now sits on board the KTM that locked out the top 4 positions in last season’s Moto 3 standings with a quartet that included, you guessed it: Rins and Marquez. As a result, the long drag race down the start finish straight at the COTA will be even harder to call than Qatar. While Miller’s victory extended KTM’s Moto 3 unbroken race win streak to an incredible 23 victories, the performance of the Honda’s would imply that that run could be coming to an end sooner rather than later.
Like Honda, the British contingent in Moto 3 made up of Danny Kent and John McPhee has plenty of positives with which to build on. Both had good qualifying performances and fast starts on race-day that saw them challenging for the podium, only for both to drop away and finish in the lower echelons of the points scoring positions. With both beginning to find (or rediscover in the case of Danny Kent) their feet in Moto 3, the future looks just as good for Britain in the lightweight class as it does in the other two classes of Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing.
So as the bikes start to rev once more and the eyes of the world turn to Texas, Jorge Lorenzo has it all to do to stop the Championship from getting away from him before it has even started. But with Marc Marquez already in top form and about to return to the scene of one of his greatest triumphs, for Jorge Lorenzo, the pressure is well and truly on.
By Toby Wilding