NOT the MotoGP News: Oil! It’s all about the oil!
Welcome to NOT The MotoGP News – our blog by Guy Anderson. Oh – and when you’re done, make sure to go follow Guy on Twitter – @SirGuyGuisborne
> Le Mans – it’s in the Loire, not Normandy, BT Sport*
As usual, we start with Moto 3…
Well, excitement comes in spades, and Moto3 is the JCB of spades. As far as Brits go, Kent started in 10th and McPhee in 25th, but all soon to change.
What looked like a nasty, but not unusual for Moto3, accident seemed to have had the sort of consequences no-one could imagine.
These guys are built of madness, rashness and pure desperation to win, so when Norrodin was “involved” with Kornfeil and Lorenzo DeLaSoul, his keenness to get back on board with a hole in his crankcase seems to have been a bit too keen.
Oil. Oil everywhere…. Next lap and the leaders and just about everyone else hit that oil, and went down quicker than a Russian hooker on bonus payments.
The Ed let us nip out of the bunker to hang the washing out. If we’d have been in France he’d have expected the white flag, but we’re no cheese eating surrender monkeys here. No siree. Being predominately British, we hung the washing out instead. Thank you DORMA for letting us get some points back with the wife.
So the re-start was for a 16 lap race. And the race is as the race does; in other words Moto3 never lets us down although Antonelli does his best to be annoying by falling off at the merest sight of tarmac. Irritating eejit!
Of all the pack, Mir looks class this year. Much like Brad Binned-her last year, the cream doesn’t go sour, it rises to the top. With 13 laps to go of a 16 lap race, pole man Martin threw it up the road at La Chapelle. Au revoir mon ami… and au revoir Arenas on the same lap at Turn 6. We suspect nerves – having seen that many go down in the first aborted race the teenage sphincters all got a little sensitive.
And just as we started to write “Fenati and Mir look class” in our note book, Fanni-basher threw it up the road at Turn 7 with 9 laps to go…. Isn’t the little Crutchlow lookalike supposed to be the most experienced rider in Moto3? Hmmmm. That gave the USSR spaceship Mir the kind of lead you can normally only see in a Moto2 race, and he wasn’t going to let that go. The DORMA cameramen thought Mir by himself was boring and rightly so, so they showed us the normal sort of scrap Moto3 seems to auto-generate; 2nd to 8th was brilliant with Can-it going from 2nd to 8th in a few laps and Gianantonnio doing vice versa. This is more like it! Brilliant stuff. Young Binder and Ramirez may have the least number of sponsors on their fairings, but if they keep riding like this those bikes’ll be covered in stickers.
With 4 to go, Antonelli decided one crash a race just isn’t enough, so threw it away at Turn 3. Daft lad. Talking of daft lads, Darren did bin her on the last lap at Turn 7. Damn it.
As we type away with the rubbish and lies, there have been no reports of serious injuries, but as someone said On Sunday night “tomorrow will bring the highest number of bruises the paddock has seen for years”. Ouch.
We had massive worries for Moto2 – time after time it becomes more strung out than an F1 broadcast. But we had no need to worry. Baggy Bagnia is class and a great rider to watch. Him and Morbid-deli kept us interested pretty much most of the race. This is novel to say the least. Actually Tim Luthi and Axle Marquez did the same. See? The world can reverse polarity…!
Bt to be honest, that was about it – less that an hour covered the top 20! Whooppee.
After the Hors d’oeuvre the plat du jour was served hot. Hotter than July, as Stevie Wonder said.
Ze French marvel Zarco went off like a French infantry man retreating from the enemy. To be fair 99% of the build-up had been about him, and he lived up to the expectation. Whilst that was happening Bautista chucked it up the road on the first lap. That’s not what was planned, no doubt.
Yamaha were looking very happy with a 1-2-3 in the opening laps. Perfect. And even Redding was doing good stuff with his line of casual wear, and bike racing – 8th on the second lap! And after yet another lowly start for him Lorenzo was 11th by the third lap. He must wonder how it came to this – having to pass so many in front just to get on TV.
Mavis Vinales didn’t do so well last time out, but at Le Mans, he looked like an alien. And with 22 laps to go he slotted past Zarco like a good ‘un. And the top three were all looking good and all looking like Yamahas – so far so good. Followed by the two Repsols of Marcie Marquez and Dani “DP” Pedrosa (Ed’s note – never Google “DP”). All looking good too as far as ‘Onda were concerned.
But in France there is a saying “Appeler un chat un chat” and put simply Marcie fell off. Pretty much like Miller in practice, he found the last and only remaining bump in all of Le Mans. And that moved Jorge up to 7th…..! Interesting indeed.
Meanwhile Rossi was having one of the really good, steady, smart races. At 38 years old and looking like he needs a good steak and frites, he was riding brilliantly, passing Zarco who, on soft tyres, had run out of enough grip to keep Rossi at bay. With 3 laps to go Rossi made his cunning move and took the lead, but Vinales just kept winding the pressure on. Mavis may look like a school boy, and may look innocent of worldly experience but he is probably more like Rossi than Rossi is these days. That pressure paid off – Rossi ran wide, Mavis re-took the lead, and in chasing for the lead again, Rossi fell off on the last lap. Its good to see a win it or bin attitude, but that doesn’t often win World Championships. He should have settled for second.
Zarco was going to get on the podium, but now he stood on the second step whilst Dani took third. And second in the title race..!!!
(I really struggled to write this rubbish this week. As you know Nicky Hayden passed away on Monday and then 22 innocent people were killed in Manchester, and I lost a lot of humour this week, so sorry if it’s a dry old piece of rubbish this week. “We” will return after Mugello hopefully brighter and smarter if not funnier than this week.)
*How much are they paid, and how many years have they been coming to Le Mans?
