NOT the MotoGP News: Czech please!
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
Well we’ve been here for over a month. Just waiting. Waiting for the boys and girl to come back and do fast.
And boy was it worth the wait? Well……. Yes yes yes it was. Brno is one of those mythical circuits. Yes we know it really does exist, but it actually does more than that; it has soul and heritage and history (unlike Trump). Normally it is so hot at Brno that little children wilt in the sun, and the tarmac blisters. But this year? With climate change on it’s way? It rained for what seemed every day at some point.
But they had packed their satchels, cleaned their shoes and brought a shiny red apple for Carmelo, and verily, we were truly happy.
As Sunday follows Saturday, so Moto3 follows nobody, but sets the agenda all by itself. We had an Argentinean on pole but pole sitters rarely become pole winners. And grey overcast weather with the odd spit of rain was going to ensure this became the truism. The next truism is that an awful lot of Dutch are tall. And Bo’Selecta is that tall man on the KTM riding like he had the best holiday of them all. The same can’t be said for Danilo and Maria Herrera; well they might have had a great time away from racing, but they had a lousy Lap 1 when Danilo fell at Turn 3 and took Maria out. Meantime Guevara went at it with as much gusto as Bo’Selecta and took the lead whilst Pagliani jumped the start and got caught. It’s non-stop in Moto3, like you didn’t know that already. Oban’s finest Saltire McPhee had a ‘mare of a practice and qualifying and started 19th… whoops. And all the time wildcard Timmy Georgi was grinning like Donald Trump in a Russian hotel (enough with the satire – ed). In fact he had plenty to grin about – poo-hot all weekend although he started from 33rd he was slicing through the pack quicker than you can explain that Brno only has one vowel. If we say the rest was made of the usual suspects that kind of misses the point that on any given race some of the usual suspects take the afternoon off and race around towards the back of the pack. But we had Fenati up there and Mir and Guevera so all was happy. McPhee was passed by Georgi and did the right thing in holding onto him and got dragged up towards the melee at the front. As we got the final third of the race we got a dry enough track not to worry about it being wet, and the top four who had made a break closed up – Guevera, Bo’Selecta, Fenati and USSR Space station, Mir. Meanwhile as we looked down the Tower of Truth on the TV we saw Migno and Bulega were riding really strong. So strong they held the majority of the tower up! Oh well, a Sunday off fighting for a win eh? Can-It however was not giving up despite having started from a lowly position he fought tooth and nail and got up to the front as McPhee did. Georgi? Well he looked to have overdone his tyres and ad slipped back as quickly as he slipped up. As it were. Less than four laps to go and Mir detonated his hand grenade and took a commanding lead. Fenati was the only one able to live with the pace and took second. Being named after a 1980s USSR Space Station is weird, but he’s a class act and no mistake.
Moto2 on a drying track with damp patches? Hmmmm and quite literally errrrr…… We did wonder if the Moto2 guys partied harder than the Moto3 guys in the break, or whether being a little more mature they trained harder. Who knows; we just know Moto2 on a track like this is as boring as listening to BSB Admin Manager bang on about whatever…….Mattia Pasini is the only guy bring joy into a desert of blancmange. And he tried his best to entertain, but then the rains came down. Eight laps in and they deployed the red flag, and no bulls ran onto the track, thereby proving that bulls are colour blind. No hang on, they stopped the race because of rain. The re-start was 6 lap (don’t say “sprint” – ed) nut-job (eh? – ed). Timmy Luthi confounded the BT Spurt guys and hit the lead at turn 1 after being pretty much slagged in the non-existent first race. There we go but for the grace of god. Pasini took the opportunity to jump off oat Turn 11 on the first lap and Oliveira took the opportunity to show just how good KTM are at building bike frames. Half-brother of Rossi, Luca Marini, is getting rid of the rock on his shoulders and growing into a decent rider – this much we like. And he continued his improvement by mixing it up in the mad-dash we all called Race 2. Tim Luthi just buggered off into the distance lie Usain Bolt used to do and Alex Marquez rode a lonely second with Oliveira in third. With Marini in fourth there’s time to say that Xavi Vierge on the Tech-3 Mistral was 5th and looks better every time he’s on track this year.
MotoGP was a wet race and a flag-to-flag affair. Oh my….. I bet Lorenzo wishes the first few laps could be replayed forever. He got the best start and best few laps on the Ducati since he last did that. But rain tyres and a very quickly drying track don’t mix so we had the usual chaos of bike changes. Markie Marquez came in after 2 laps and bamboozled the rest of the field. Having a weather app in your noggin seems to be a genius idea and let Marquez basically bugger off at the front for the rest of the race. Spoiler this early? Yep – he won. For a (very) brief moment Scott Redding was in second place; and Rossi and Dovi stayed out too long. Lorenzo seems (if we can make up this rumour) to have pitted and gone for a cup of tea. And then a dry set of leathers. Whilst the pit chaos reigned supreme Aleix Asparagus knocked Crazy Slow Iannone off in the midst of a scene of the most panic in pit-lane since when Ian Wheeler said he was getting a round in. We’ve never had an “unsafe release in the pits” but it sounds like we should.
Meanwhile Mavis Viñales did what only he seems to be able to do and made every pass he made look like the easiest thing ever. With added grace and style. At the same time his much respected teammate, one V Rossi was rolling back the years and riding like a god. Or a goat. You chose which.
Unmentioned Dan Pedrosa came home second to give HRC a big smile and Yamaha got 3rd and 4th.
Was it a good race? Well the expectation of being back and being at Brno may have just raised things too high to be met.
In memory of Ángel Nieto 25 January 1947 – 3 August 2017. RIP