By: The Karr Report – look it up: Karrbon Copy.Â
It’s good stuff and it will be a regular feature right here…
There is no way to effectively summarise this race day in an introductory paragraph.
Best to just read the report, alright?
Moto3:
Beautiful. Glorious. More drama than a badly-dubbed Spanish soapie! This is why we love Moto3.
Veijer couldn’t partake in today’s action, due to his foot being broken after his qualifying tumble. Heh. He qualified for a holiday.
Irresponsible riding during Q2 earned Fenati a spot in the back of the class, as well as a Long Lap Penalty.
Racing commenced. For half the race it was a leading group of – as the commentators noted – everybody. Basically the entire field had a go at the lead, and it was splendid.
During the fifth lap, Farioli and Turn Four came to blows. Turn Four decided he needed a little polishing, and gave the Italian a rock-tumbling session that’d shine up a brick. Unfortunately, this method isn’t really suited for things made of fleshy bits.
To truly appreciate today’s race and its absolute insanity, one had to watch it. But in short, there were more passes made than in a confused soccer match, people were punting one another this way and that, the lead changed more often than a fugitive’s ID, and yet no catastrophic pile-up resulted.
Just when you thought that the action couldn’t get any better, the final lap strolled up and said: ‘Hold my champagne’.
With the battle for top honours still raging, Holgado found himself quite suddenly atop a horizontal motorcycle, twirling it around like some odd ballet couple as a flood of other bikes went around them.
Miraculously, nobody crashed into the duo.
Did everyone see Muñoz’s dodgem streak through the clusterfuck happening ahead of him? It was truly something to behold. He deserves some kind of award for that. I’ll think of a name.
Sadly, all Muñoz’s efforts came to nil when he was punted off the track by some hefty contact with Öncü, within view of the finish line. His motorcycle self-destructed upon gravel-contact, while David M made his thoughts on the incident obvious.
If, by this time, you hadn’t suffered catastrophic heart failure, you’d have witnessed Alonso (the Other David) claiming victory. Masiá took second, and for a while Öncü thought he’d taken third.
To his dismay, he was informed moments later of his Double-Long-Lap-equivalent penalty of six seconds, which resulted in him dropping all the way to twelfth.
Öncü’s demotion promoted his teammate Rueda into his first Moto3 podium spot.
Moto2:
After the Juniors’ bloody brawl, expectations for the Middle Children were carefully reserved. Happily, they responded by brawling even harder.
Gómez had to move back three spots on the grid for riding irresponsibly during Q2. Interesting.
It was rather windy down the straight, as evidenced by the cameraman’s inability to keep the damned camera still while filming the start. People who are prone to motion sickness never saw the pack launching from the grid.
Surra’s bike didn’t even last one lap; he was forced to retire due to the Technical Issue Gremlins attacking his ride.
It is worth noting that these gremlins hopped over onto Bendsneyder’s bike a few laps later, forcing the Dutchman to join Surra.
Replacement rider for the broken Darryn, Agius, was called off by Turn Seven during the eighth lap.
I feel for Canet. I really do. Arón had put everything into that race, even surviving a last-turn high-side which should’ve, logically, seen him spitting out gravel for a week, only to end up in second place. AGAIN. That makes it a dozen seconds, and still zero firsts.
The victory went the way of Dixon, and Arenas took his first Moto2 podium place in the form of third.
MotoGP:
Holy Cow!
What the hell happened? Were we watching MotoGP or a Demolition Derby?
An explanation might be necessary for those who didn’t watch the race (how dare you!). It took all of two corners for the race to turn into a bad moshpit scene, summoning the Red Flag and halting the carnage.
First, a game of first-turn Catalan Bowling was instigated by an invisible bowler, who’d picked the Bastianini-ball as its weapon of choice.Â
Bastianini found himself cornered in the corner, whereafter he fell over, launched Zarco sky high, and the next thing they knew there was a tsunami of motorcycles and riders milling off the track, collecting more as it progressed.
Bastia’s bike tried to maul him in the chaos, which sent him to the Medical Centre for a check-up, and denied him the chance to join in on the restarted race. The other four skittles all managed to scramble off to the pits in time to join the action for a second try.
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But it wasn’t this mayhem that ultimately stopped the race.
What did stop the race was Bagnaia’s Ducati flinging the champ out into the stratosphere as he exited Turn Two, whereafter Pecco crash-landed in the middle of the pack. The dazed Italian turned into a human spinner mid-track, with bikes deflecting in every direction in an attempt to avoid his whirring trajectory.
Meanwhile, having narrowly escaped the Turn One carnage, Brad came around the second turn only to find a Bagnaia-turnstile blocking his path. With no time to avoid, and nowhere to go, Binder went sailing across Pecco’s lower legs and ultimately ended up in the far away gravel, having left a trail of smoke and oil in his wake.
The ambulance materialized as if through a teleportation portal next to Pecco, and minutes later they’d hauled him away to the Medical Centre for some checks. It was obvious that he’d be out of at least this race, and likely one or more of the following weekends as well. But the superhuman being that is a MotoGP racer doesn’t break that easily.
Bagnaia was fully conscious and out of immediate danger.
Later on, he was transferred to a local hospital in order for them to do a CT scan on his leg. Results are all good.Â
We wish you all the best, Pecco!
Meanwhile, the race was Quick Started for a marginally shorter distance of twenty-three laps. Bastianini was served a Long Lap for his involvement as a bowling ball at Turn One, but since he was still being checked out at the Medical Centre and thus didn’t partake in the race, this would be taken to next weekend’s race.
The restarted race delivered no more calamitous crashes, but what it did sport was a suspicious outbreak of Technical Gremlins across the field.
First to succumb to them was Pol Espargaró on the opening lap.
On Lap Four, they’d hopped into Brad’s KTM, forcing him to retire as well.Â
Being Brad, he took this opportunity to scoot straight to the Medical Centre to check on Bagnaia.
Fernández (Raúl, that is) also caught the Gremlins during the tenth lap, when they latched onto his front ride height device and made it stick in the ‘Down’ position.
But it was Aprilia’s day. For quite some time it looked like there was going to be a total podium-lockout for the Noale brand, but in the end that wasn’t to be.
The Factory duo of Aleix and Maverick dueled it out for top honours while leaving the rest behind – and in the end it was Aleix Espargaró who came out the victor, leaving Viñales in a history-making second place.
For the first time ever, we saw Aprilias parked in both the Number One and Number Two spots. We also nearly saw multiple fainting episodes in the Aprilia pits.
It was also Espargaró Senior’s first double win. That’s one way to dispel the demons of a year ago, Aleix.Â
Well done.
Oh. MartÃn took third.
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During their celebratory cooldown lap, the two Aprilia boys swapped bikes, which might have confused a few folks. Their celebrations were delightful to watch, though. Don’t expect anyone at Aprilia (neither the team nor the factory) to be up early Monday morning – the partiesmust have been epic!
*An update on Bagnaia, post-race: initial X-rays showed a ‘small’ injury, but they weren’t sure whether this was new or old, so he was taken for CT scans at the hospital. From the waist up, though, Pecco’s fine.
Which is great news, considering he was a hundred-and-eighty degrees of spin away from absolute disaster.
With that, we wish Bagnaia all the best, and will be sending the Aprilia team some of our best South African home remedies for soothing those crippling hangovers.
Until next time ~ Karr
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