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motoGP 2011 Rd 1 Qatar

Great first race of the season, i was expecting the 2 Repsols to check out, the fact that they didnt kept it interesting!



Stoner was flawless, really has matured which is nice to see

Lorenzo was damn good also, his end of race celebrations were mildly irritating though...

Hope Pedrosa finds some strength as he was pushing Stoner before his pace dropped off the side of a cliff.



Well done to Rossi to, was lapping at a similar pace to the top 3 before his strength went - give or take a tenth or 2 (not including Stoner pulling the pin ofcourse!), i think things are only gonna get better for him.



Well done to Cal also!
 
Tom said:
Having given such praise to Lorenzo for such a decent ride, i think it's worth adding that Yamahas disadvantage is obviously not as great as it seemed in testing. With Sepang and Qatar being two of the tracks with the most significant straight sections, Yamaha and Lorenzo can be optimistic that they might have a fair crack at the title yet.
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Dunno... I thought Lorenzo did as well as he did because his race-craft was so excellent

- that coupled with Pedro getting arm pump 2/3 of the way into the race.

Even though Dani's arm pump was working against him, it took all Lorenzo

could muster to get past him. He said later that he was on the verge of crashing

throughout most of the race. That's why he was so elated post race.
 
corinthian said:
Ah, it's great to have the bikes back with us! Top ride from Stoner, he showed a lot of guile and confidence to hold back like that early on. Not his typical Qatar race at all.



Lorenzo rated that as the best ride of his career in his interview with Spanish TV, better than any of his victories last season. He said it was a miracle he didn't crash, as he started to lose the front on numerous occasions. Jerez could be an awesome race this year.



As for Pedrosa, he must be gutted. The problems with his arm started in warm-up and effectively ruined the race for him. He was on the verge of tears during his interview and no better on the podium. Interestingly, Puig was questioning him in parc fermé and asked Dani about the location of problem, pointing to Dani's left forearm, and Dani just nodded. My gut reaction is lack of fitness due to his break from training. I hope that's all, otherwise this could be a very hard year for him.



Also, well done Marco Simoncelli for not killing anybody. Classy.
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Lebowski said:
Effective summary.



I would only add - was that a front end save by Rossi when pushing real hard (when Spies finally made it stick). If so, that has to (further) undermine confidence.
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If so - he's too much a showman to reveal it.
 
brilliant ride by stoner ,as we all expected casey on a honda will be tough to beat,especially in qatar

glad to see lorenzo fighting hard, i can see why he'd be so happy with that 2nd place, i certainly hope we'll get to see a couple of great lorenzo-stoner battles!

sad to see pedro drop the pace,the poor guy really looked bad after the race....hopefully he hasn't got any major problems with his arm.i really hope he'll be able to challange for the title



@lex :please explain a little further , is pedros speed advantage really down to using more fuel?





not disappointed with spies,he did great in testing and it wasn't like he was nowhere.lets wait for the next couple of races.

rossi , wow , great to see him ride it hard once again
<
after today i'm fairly confident he'll be a podium if not race win challagner later in the season



great to see dovi beat sic, i think those 2 will be rivals this year and i hope dovi comes out on top!



not sure about hayden and aoyama....



but again,what was wrong with elias?crashing at that speed?in that manner? somethigns seriously wrong with him or the bike maybe
 
Great rides by Stoner and Lorenzo.



Rossi finished where most (informed, sane and impartial) people expected. He certainly tried very hard to keep Spies at bay; a great effort considering he was on inferior equipment.



I know it is premature after only one race, but one could say, rather than there being 5-7 aliens this year, there are only two REAL aliens and 3-5 semi-aliens.



I think the battle for the title this year may be realistically be between only these two riders, but the battle could be HUGE.



I am not sure that we have ever seen strong one on one battles between CS and JL to date. Please correct me if I am wrong.



I think the future of MotoGP (next 5 years) will be CS v JL , with Spies possibly/ probably joining the battle. I just don,t see any of the others quite making it.



I am massively impressed by Iannone and Marquez has many fans, so perhaps after 3-4 yeras these guys could be joining the battle, or represent the next fast generation in the top category.
 
Bunyip said:
I am massively impressed by Iannone and Marquez has many fans, so perhaps after 3-4 yeras these guys could be joining the battle, or represent the next fast generation in the top category.
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don't forget the race winner
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marquez could very well be on his way to motogp glory and iannone surely is a great rider but so is bradl in my opinion.he's the stoner of the moto2 riders ,at least today
<
 
I haven,t seen much of Bradyl before, so can,t comment. Certainly a dominant ride today, but I don,t think todays race was representative. There were strange tyre issues I believe, and I don,t trust the results when Sofoglu was 18th I think.



But, I have seen many races by Iannone that remind me or a younger Rossi. We,ll see.













PS> Wheres Talpa?
<










I suspect he is watching and rewatching the race, and waiting for the one where Rossi gets his podium.
<
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I'm going to stick my neck out. I like Pedders and would not write him off yet. He will be very, very fast at Jerez. Whether that is enough to beat Stoner and Lorenzo, who knows. Put Puig aside and I can't imagine what it is that makes so many dislike him (apart from knocking Nicky off but surely that was not deliberate and should be forgiven by now - also not his fault Honda chose to develop around him and not Nicky).



He has had some horrendous injuries, raced with them and been fast. He doesn't carry on, comes across as shy but FFS this is racing, not a personality contest. Hope the arm issue gets sorted and it will be 3 way battles at the front.





Wonder what chasis Nicky ran on?
 
Pedders is obviously very good, but somehow never quite gets it done.



He,s the classic "nearly" man.



Perhaps, if he gets fit and healthy again, and remains that way, we will see his real worth.
 
Farck I missed the race! .... Internet recep lost my wireless, and no one HD either!



Anyhow from what's up it looks fairly predictable bar Jorge who seemed to do really well, and spies not as expected. Happy for Ducati and Vr not a complete debarkle. Looking forward to Europe and a new internet provider!!
 
Stoner could have and probably once upon a time would have won that race by 7 - 10 sec. As will be required to win this championship and has been so well demonstrated over the years by Rossi, winning each race as slowly as possible is the key to consistency.



Lorenzo's joy was....well....strange. I think when he watches the race he will see that Stoner was just cruising and he isn't really as close as he thinks he was. Also the Honda handles very nicely so I don't think we will see the Yamaha have any advantage at handling tracks.



Dani. When you get broken mentally all the aches and pains are worse. He lost and dropped back because he has been mentally beaten already. The arm is no more than an excuse and a popular one at that.



Elias needs to go back to Moto2 and finish out his career there. He obviously refuses to or is incapable of changing his style. Give someone who can a go. Bye bye. Oh and take Capirossi with you.



Watching the race all I could think of was how anaemic MotoGP is. With so few bikes on the grid it really is pathetic. They couldn't even give away the last of the points as there weren't enough finishers.
 
me thinks stoner could of ridden 1:55.5 all race, he said he hasnt even had a moment yet with the front, he hasnt even pushed the limits of the bike. all the stars aligning again for another championship.
 
Mental Anarchist said:
Stoner could have and probably once upon a time would have won that race by 7 - 10 sec. As will be required to win this championship and has been so well demonstrated over the years by Rossi, winning each race as slowly as possible is the key to consistency.



Lorenzo's joy was....well....strange. I think when he watches the race he will see that Stoner was just cruising and he isn't really as close as he thinks he was. Also the Honda handles very nicely so I don't think we will see the Yamaha have any advantage at handling tracks.



Dani. When you get broken mentally all the aches and pains are worse. He lost and dropped back because he has been mentally beaten already. The arm is no more than an excuse and a popular one at that.



Elias needs to go back to Moto2 and finish out his career there. He obviously refuses to or is incapable of changing his style. Give someone who can a go. Bye bye. Oh and take Capirossi with you.



Watching the race all I could think of was how anaemic MotoGP is. With so few bikes on the grid it really is pathetic. They couldn't even give away the last of the points as there weren't enough finishers.
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I agree with you on this. I thought Stoner didn't ride as hard as he could have. The only time he did was when he opened up after passing Dani and quickly realised he didn't need to go that quick. If he does that this year, he'll get the championship and not come close to crashing.



Lorenzo was far too happy in my opinion - the only reason he beat Pedrosa was Pedrosa had his body let go and the only reason he was so close to both Stoner and Pedrosa was because they didn't go as quickly as they could have.



Dani - I'm not knocking or questioning his injury. I genuinely wish him to succeed this year. In an earlier post I was merely questioning whether he would cop the same line of argument - i.e. that he blames his shoulder when he doesn't get the job done. I do respect Dani for the fact that there has been minimal mention of his shoulder however I don't think it has affected him the same. Everyone could argue for months about this.



I would like to know what's going on for Hayden. He is being less vocal and looks unhappy at the moment. Don't want the speculation, would like to know the facts.
 
Dani is gonna be scary fast on the tracks he's good at. Hope he's arm gets better soon. Sucks cause this one was gonna go to the line. Stoner was amazing as usual and. I think Lorenzo is scared of the Gondas. But he had a great ride in to second. Rossi did better than I thought. Hope he keeps improving. I thought would have more for leronzo, Hopefully next race.
 
Mental Anarchist said:
Dani. When you get broken mentally all the aches and pains are worse. He lost and dropped back because he has been mentally beaten already. The arm is no more than an excuse and a popular one at that.
Click to expand...

If you are not a stoner fan (
<
) you perhaps have greater latitude, but as someone who was a stoner fan in 2008 and 2009 I am not going to call anyone as mentally broken or as using an arm injury for an excuse. Dani has been well reported to have mutiple fractures of his clavicle requiring surgery and a nerve injury, and it is entirely feasible he has not yet got normal muscle strength back in his arm; he has a strong record of stoicism with his many previous injuries as well. However as has been said he is often injured, and this fragility has imo in most years excluded him as a serious contender for the championship, restricting him to meritorious placings.



The honda has seemed to fade late in races in dani's hands , and lex's theory that his set-up causes fuel economy problems is an interesting one; fuel economy may be marginal overall with the honda, I can remember nicky running dry in the early days of the pneumatic engine. If the sort of pace the honda is running now involves it being set up a bit less smoothly this will help stoner as he if not much bigger is I think when healthy considerably stronger than dani; dani was complaining about the power delivery early in pre-season testing.
 
Bunyip said:
Great rides by Stoner and Lorenzo.



Rossi finished where most (informed, sane and impartial) people expected. He certainly tried very hard to keep Spies at bay; a great effort considering he was on inferior equipment.



I know it is premature after only one race, but one could say, rather than there being 5-7 aliens this year, there are only two REAL aliens and 3-5 semi-aliens.



I think the battle for the title this year may be realistically be between only these two riders, but the battle could be HUGE.



I am not sure that we have ever seen strong one on one battles between CS and JL to date. Please correct me if I am wrong.



I think the future of MotoGP (next 5 years) will be CS v JL , with Spies possibly/ probably joining the battle. I just don,t see any of the others quite making it.



I am massively impressed by Iannone and Marquez has many fans, so perhaps after 3-4 yeras these guys could be joining the battle, or represent the next fast generation in the top category.
Click to expand...





Who writes this rubbish!
<




Plainly Pedrosa and Rossi were hampered by either injury or injury plus a crappy bike. Put them all on the same bike, and you would see how good all four are.
 
Does anyone else get the feeling that the few times that Stoner wasn't the top time setter during testing and practice is because he did it intentionally to get into rival's minds? The guy knows he's an alien above all the other aliens.
 

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