Whats up boys? Been a bit busy this week.
First of all, having a season opener BBQ across two continents was probably a first. A few PS members met up in the UK while simultaneously a few met up in the US; we texted and shared vids and pics while the event was ongoing. We had a great time and we were in each other's company in spirit. The power of friendship.
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So regarding the racing...
Congrats to Lorenzo for a masterful and hard fought win. He won because he didn't give up, and that says a lot about his character and the growth of maturity in the class. Being passed on the straights at will could have been demoralizing, but he kept plugging away. He should be proud.
Pedro did well, but I suppose with his talent its probably a normal place for him being on the best bike on the grid. Despite having legal issues, he did well to keep his head in the race. He also looked to scrap a bit with Lorenzo, and that was nice to see. Congrats to him. However, once Honda finally dump him for Marquez, we may begin to see what he’s really made of, though I’m not holding my breath. Given the political connections of Alberto Puig, I think Dani, for as long as hes in MotoGP, will always have a well sorted seat. There may be a Spanish champion this year, despite again being on the top kit in the championship, he will not deliver.
Stoner had a good race going and looked to be the winner once again. Watching in real time it looked as if Lorenzo had managed the tires better; however, in the post race interview we learned the cause of his problems. Arm pump! It must have been very frustrating. Nothing is worse than having the will to push and your body not respond. The good new for him is that its treatable. We also learned that his bike was technically sound and his tires were not an issue (his own words). After qual, it seems there was a tide of peeps saying the Honda (and before this the tires) had gone bad. But Stoner debunked that theory (unless we are to selectively believe him when he speaks). He is till the favorite for the title, however, we learned Lorenzo has a greater fighting chance than we had previously estimated.
Cal made good on his preseason form, and it looks like the Brits will have somebody to cheer for this season who will deliver. What has changed? Obviously the formula. Gone from gay bikes to man bikes, which given his propensity for raw riding (as oppose to finesse riding) it seems Cal was placed into GP at the right time. But this is race one, and I fully expect Dovi to be there all season. Good for us.
Dovi, basically performed as well as Cal. In a way I'm glad he has somebody to scrap with, as I think this will help motivate him (as if he needed more motivation). I say this, because losing Marco Simonchelli, a man he scrapped with his entire life, was in my estimation a unique loss to him that most of use probably cannot comprehend. I think having Cal to scrap with will sharpen him as well as Cal. Again, good for us. Btw, the bikes look cool.
Nicky Hayden. Still the most underrated top 5 rider in the world. Ducati GP is a spirit killer, but it has yet to break this man. It sent Melandri packing to another series, almost killed Capirossi, and is now in the throws of making what was just a short time ago, one of the greatest this sport has seen, look ordinary and frustrated. We continue to see this term "alien" thrown around, while ignoring the very obvious parity of machines in the sport. It’s such a ........ term, a lazy term! We basically have four bikes that are competitive in this series, period. I seriously doubt Pedro or Lorenzo, as good as they are, would be capable of doing much more with the Ducati package. The only man who proved he could ride it was Stoner. I've said before, if anybody deserves this ........ word used as a shorthand to say he is a cut above, it would be him; YET, we saw this weekend that in fact, the man is human. The image that I remember most from this event (me being a Hayden fan) is the camera shot of Nicky post race where he looked to be fuming with exasperation and anger. You could see the others around him wanting to congratulate him for giving all he had in that race, but he was not going to accept that accolade. Why? Because he put in a tremendous performance in terms of effort, notwithstanding, it was only good enough for 6th place in a world championship. As a fan, I'm proud of his performance. But as a follower of the sport, the parity is grossly lacking among the factories (really its just two), yet we continue to ignore it and pronounce the top finishers as the true "aliens". What we have in MotoGP is a four bike cup. Two of those four riders are slightly better than their teammates. Nicky has had a unique existence in GP--the worst treatment of him was certainly at Honda under Pedro. Then he became a DucatiGP rider.
Bautista is lucky Randy DePuniet is not riding his bike. He is aboard one of the best machines in the paddock, on a team that is perhaps the best satellite outfit, why he's not running with Dovi and Cal says to me he is overrated.
Bradl, he had a decent ride but certainly not the “great” ride that I’m reading. Not any better or worse than Toesland or Spies on their debut at Qatar. He is on a Honda, so I'm not sure where to gauge him in respect to other riders. Its his first race, and so I think we need more events to judge. However, the comparison I've read in the racing community between his success compared to Elias is ignorant at best. Its a completely different formula and different tires.
Barbera is deserving to be in this class, but I'll quote Cal Crutchlow when asked about him "I don't like him". He managed to run Rossi off track and almost ran Nicky off track, doing what he does best, catching a tow.
Rossi had a bad event. I honestly thought he would have a better race than he qualified but I was wrong. But he also had bad luck in the race. That 10[sup]th[/sup] place looks a lot worse that it was considering that he was about 5 seconds adrift of Nicky at the finish and combining the fact that he had an off track incident which undoubted lost him more or less those 5 seconds (which didn’t look to be his fault) his race might have looked a bit better. I suspect if Rossi would have finished ahead of Nicky (that is, only 3 positions from Stoner) we would be talking technically another reality, though I think the hate for him would have been just as vehement. Question: which hate is better, the hate on Stoner or the hate on Rossi? The human experiment that is PS is quite amazing to see it unfold, as the crop of neo-boppers have taken their hate to the same level as their predecessors (in some cases worse). Yet while doing the debating, they claimed they were above it and better. Its pretty funny. I’m also a bit disgusted with once card-caring boppers (I’ve been here a long time, in the hey days of Rossi) to see some of his staunch supporters turn their back on him. To say Rossi has lost the “sacred fire” (WTF) indicates to me that some people really do ‘worship’ riders. That’s really scary and hilarious at the same time. This of course says nothing about the rider in question, it does however say much about us, the fans.
Spies had a bad event. It should be rather obvious that he had a problem in the race of some technical sort. He dropped back rather spectacularly. And given that the other Yamahas did well, gives us circumstantial evidence that something was not right. Again, it’s hilarious to see the ridiculous comments by some peeps that he’s lost it. Reminds me of the closing qual thread when Stoner didn’t nab pole and the sky seemed to be falling all of a sudden. Get a grip gentz these guys are humans. Race one of eighteen. Spies should have been a dry two-race winner last year, but he got nipped to the line by a more powerful bike (that’s when power counts, not all these other ........ extrapolations). So he is surely a deserving factory rider and has shown it during preseason, practice, and qual. He crashed during a ‘pole-setting pace’ (imagine that) with the added freak luck of getting his hand stuck on the lever. Maybe he was understandably spooked, or maybe he actually had bike issues during the race.
Edwards did better than I thought, as I had picked DePuniet to beat him. Congrats to him. Had he caught up to Spies, I would have loved to be a fly in their motorhome later own when Colin would have been giving him some friendly banter over it. I wonder if the tequila shot bet they had going when they were teammates might be revived.
Depuniet is a better rider than we think.
Hernandez, first Columbian rider to score championship points. Congrats to him.
