Winners
Jorge Martin
Back in April at Portugal Jorge Martin fell off in FP3 and reduced his right hand and ankle to calcium based fragments. It’s looked bad for Martin. Would he even be fit to ride again this season? Worse still before his crash he’d previously suggested that Valentino Rossi was past his prime which caused a flurry of yellow-non-MotoGP-fans to send him hate mail and suggest that his crash was what happens when you badmouth the GOAT (seriously – this is actually what happened!)
But at the Red Bull Ring Jorge was about to prove what he could do.
The Spaniard wasted no time by securing his second MotoGP pole and then went on to win the restarted race after taking the lead from Jack Miller on lap three. From there he never once looked like being beaten.
Joan Mir
Suzuki aren’t a company to rest on their laurels…but they might be one to take a few extra noodle breaks when it comes to development.
Last season Ducati once again led the MotoGP arm’s race with their bizarre ‘shape shifter’ ride-height adjuster that gave them great benefits on acceleration and starts. This ingenious system forced the other teams to scramble feverously to copy Ducati’s idea and claim “we were doing this anyway”. By the end of the season all the other teams had a version in the pipeline – even Aprilia that skilfully incorporated a bit of dental floss wrapped around the swingarm and fastened to a nail on the fuel tank.
MotoGP moves fast and after Ducati’s debuted the system last season all team had this new feature this year…all except Suzuki that is.
This weekend though Japan’s third finest motorcycle company finally came good and delivered their new-for-them technology that their riders had been wanting.
But was it any good? Joan Mir thought so as he was instantly faster – whether it was the placebo effect or the system itself it’s impossible to know but his Suzuki finally looked on-pace with its rivals.
(Note: Alex Rins was told he had the system but didn’t as Suzuki, rightfully, thought it would be another reason for him to fall off)
Maverick Vinales
Our favourite bi-polar star amusingly started the weekend being dissed by Valentino Rossi. Mav had openly said he would like to join Rossi’s newly forming Ducati team next year…only for the outgoing Italian to respond that his team was for greasy Italians only – something we feel is against EU laws?
Dejectedly Vinales secretly then agreed to join Aprilia…although he’s yet to confirm it (like sheepishly admitting you’re dating the ugly girl with the great personality). But a move to Aprilia is a better option than what Andrea ‘let’s sit it out for a while and wait for the lucrative offers to roll in’ Dovizioso did.
Once at the track Top Gun apologised for being so angry at Assen. Very few could actually remember that far back and just about no one, or even less, remembered what happened to Maverick. But it was nice of him to say sorry for whatever he thinks he did.
For the restarted race Vinales was forced to start from the pitlane after a new clutch made him stall on the warm up lap. Funnier still throughout the race the cheeky Spaniard was being spammed on his dashboard with random messages – often about his Amazon Prime account being hacked. Eventually he received so many erroneous ‘pit now’ messages that the Spaniard actually did!
So why is he a winner? Well in the first race, that had to be stopped due to a minor setting fire to stuff, good old Maverick was actually doing really well! He made a great start and was battling away at the front of the race. When was the last time this ever happened?
Losers
Fabio Quartararararo
Up until this race Fabio has been the guy running the championship. Like Marc Marquez did before he started going on about his shoulder. Only Quartararararo’s arm exploding and his zip exploding really stopped him from being even further in front. Easily the class of field…but all that changed this weekend.
Thanks to Suzuki’s improvements over the summer break Joan Mir has come back looking a lot, lot stronger. The current world champion (he is! Check motog.com for yourselves) was easily able to beat Fabio so, given it’s the same track next week, in all likeliness will do again.
The worst part for the Frenchman though is that Last season Fabio cracked under the pressure and ended up looking like a washed up cheese-monkey whereas Joan Mir only got stronger…
Tech 3 KTM riders
It was a depressing weekend for both Iker Lecuona and Danilo Petrucci at Tech 3 as they were simultaneously booted out of their team by KTM during FP4.
Both riders already knew that Remi Gardener was joining the team next season so understood that one of them would need to be thrown on the rubbish pile and sent to the World Superbike retirement home. Petrucci wanted it to be Lecuona whereas Lecuona wanted it to be Petrucci.
Unfortunately though whilst the pairing went about their usual business of setting some more disappointing times in FP4 the sly Austrians at KTM officially signed Moto2 demi-god Raul Fernandez to the MotoGP Tech 3 team – essentially sealing the fait of their current riders.
Lecuona was visibly upset whereas Petrucci locked himself in his motorhome with copious amounts of delicious cake and could only be coaxed out with the promise that the KTM chef had baked copious amounts of even more delicious cake.
It looks like the MotoGP dream is over for the current Tech 3 pairing.
Factory Ducati
What’s more embarrassing than the top Ducati rider in the standings (Johann Zarco) not being in the full factory team? How about a different non-factory rider (Jorge Martin) winning the race whilst the both actual factory riders either fell off or tapered off? Yeah, that should do it.
A nice red face to match their bike.
Lorenzo Savadori
Poor Lorenzo – not only is he a) stuck on a difficult bike b) stuck with a first name that makes everyone instantly not like him but at Austria he was also stuck with terrible bad luck.
Now everyone knows that it’s bad luck to be superstitious, however Aprilia’s b-class rider must have broken 13 mirrors over a black-cat walking backwards under a ladder before this weekend.
It all started off pretty innocently as Lorenzo performed well – even managing to top a wet and tricky FP2. But the race was to be a different matter. As he exited turn three on lap three of the soon-to-be-cancelled race he was suddenly faced with a little bloke setting fire to the track and subsequently piled into his stationary bike.
Firestarter Pedrosa was fine but poor Savadori had to be chipped off the track and thrown onto a stretcher to be bundled off to hospital. After an agonising delay at the hospital (whilst the doctors waited to see if any of the decent riders would need medical help) the Italian was finally wheeled into the x-ray room to reveal he’d smashed up his ankle. Badly.
To add insult to Lorenzo’s injury the microscopic arsonist rider who caused the red flag, Dani Pedrosa, was allowed to restart the race because the officials were keen to see him race and wondered if he could beat the Honda riders. Also a bag of dirty orange cash probably helped.
Lorenzo will miss next week’s race and will be replaced by no-one – who is estimated to score the same as him as he would have.