MotoGP: A look back at the biggest moments so far in 2015 ahead of the Australian Grand Prix
VIDEOS: Not been paying attention to MotoGP this year? Here’s a catch-up ahead of this weekend’s Australian GP at Phillip Island.
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THE MotoGP World Championship has arrived on our doorstep for the 2015 edition of the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, held this weekend at the majestic Phillip Island circuit.
If you haven’t been paying attention to it this year, you’ve been missing out! 2015 has seen some of the greatest racing in recent seasons, as well as a title battle for the ages
Here’s a catch up on the key stats and moments of the 2015 season so far.
CHAMPIONSHIP TOP 10 (after 15 of 18 rounds)
1. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 283 points
2. Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) -18
3. Marc Marquez (Honda) -86
4. Andrea Iannone (Ducati) -111
5. Dani Pedrosa (Honda) -129
6. Bradley Smith (Yamaha) -131
7. Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) -133
8. Cal Crutchlow (Honda) -185
9. Danilo Petrucci (Ducati) -190
10. Pol Espargaro (Yamaha) -195
WINNERS
Rd. 1, Losail: 1-Rossi, 2-Dovizioso, 3-Iannone
Rd. 2, Austin: 1-Marquez, 2-Dovizioso, 3-Rossi
Rd. 3, Rio Hondo: 1-Rossi, 2-Dovizioso, 3-Crutchlow
Rd. 4, Jerez: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Marquez, 3-Rossi
Rd. 5, Le Mans: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Rossi, 3-Dovizioso
Rd. 6, Mugello: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Iannone, 3-Rossi
Rd. 7, Catalunya: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Rossi, 3-Pedrosa
Rd. 8, Assen: 1-Rossi, 2-Marquez, 3-Lorenzo
Rd. 9, Sachsenring: 1-Marquez, 2-Pedrosa, 3-Rossi
Rd. 10, Indy: 1-Marquez, 2-Lorenzo, 3-Rossi
Rd. 11, Brno: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Marquez, 3-Rossi
Rd. 12, Silverstone: 1-Rossi, 2-Petrucci, 3-Dovizioso
Rd. 13, Misano: 1-Marquez, 2-Smith, 3-Redding
Rd. 14, Aragon: 1-Lorenzo, 2-Pedrosa, 3-Rossi
Rd. 15, Motegi: 1-Pedrosa, 2-Rossi, 3-Lorenzo
THE DOCTOR IS BACK!
It was like 2010 all over again. At the end of the opening race of the season, Valentino Rossi was both the race winner and the world championship leader.
He led just two laps, but one of them was the right one. Rossi spent the bulk of the race battling the resurgent Ducati of Andrea Dovizioso, the red bike armed with formidable straight line speed.
So what did Rossi do? He made sure that he was ahead of the Ducati when they peeled into Turn 1 for the final time, before pinning his ears back and going for broke. By the time they came out of the final corner, the red bike was too far back to catch the blue one by the line.
DUCATI’S RENAISSANCE MEN
There was plenty of apprehension surrounding the first on-track testing of Ducati’s new GP15 Desmosedici. An all-new concept, it was the bike that was expected to end the great marque’s winless slump since the days of Casey Stoner.
Its old machine had an inherent characteristic that seemingly could not be eradicated: terminal understeer.
The signs were good from the moment lead rider Andrea Dovizioso returned to the pits after his first laps aboard the new-style Desmosedici. It turned. He and teammate Andrea Iannone now had a bike they could work with.
The pair were threats for victory in the early races, although advances from both Honda and Yamaha have seen the red machinesstruggle to replicate their initial form as the season has rolled on.
PEDROSA UNDER THE PUMP
Less than an hour after crossing the line in sixth place at the Qatar GP, Dani Pedrosa called an impromptu media conference behind the Repsol garage.
To everyone’s shock, he announced he was quitting the sport “indefinitely” so he could get to the root of a serious arm-pump issue.
Poor Pedrosa has been suffering in silence for close to 18 months. The condition, where the blood vessels in a riders forearms fill up with blood and squeeze the nerve endings until their arms and hands go numb, had plagued him since a collarbone operation a couple of seasons ago.
It left Pedrosa — one of the greatest riders yet to win a world championship — in purgatory, unable to ride at the level he knew he was capable of.
Mercifully, he appears to have finally found the answer. He missed just three races after undergoing a radical surgery just after the Losail event. Steadily he has been regaining confidence and speed.
By Aragon he finally looked like his old self, putting in a swashbuckling ride to beat Rossi into second place. One race later in Motegi, Pedrosa notched up his first win since Brno last year and his 50th overall at world championship level.
MARQUEZ THE MARVEL
Qualifying laps are the ultimate expression of the art of riding a MotoGP bike on the limit.
They are a time when the rider is sent towards the pit exit with the expressed mission of finding every single fraction of a second they can find on a lap and ensuring they don’t find their way onto the stopwatch. Often they must do so on their very first flying lap out of the pits, barely enough time to warm up tyres and bike, never mind brain.
Marc Marquez’s pole position lap in Austin was the Mona Lisa of qualifying laps. Enigmatic and impossibly beautiful.
For 2 minutes and 02.135 seconds, Marquez muscled his Honda around the sweeping and demanding Circuit of the Americas, bullying it to his command and demanding more than it was willing to give.
Yet, by rights, he should never even have been on the lap in the first place. You see, his original bike broke down just as he began what was supposed to be his final flyer.
Undaunted, Marquez parked it at the end of pit lane and ran the 100 metres or so back to the Repsol HRC garage for his No. 2 machine.
Flying out of the pit lane, he got back to the start finish time with just moments to spare to start his sixth, final, and pole-setting lap.
What’s more, it was faster than the next quickest rider by over three tenths of a second.
He would win the race in a canter, but it was the qualifying lap that preceded it that was the main attraction.
ON FOR YOUNG AND OLD, ROUND 1
Fast forward to the next round in Argentina and Marquez initially appeared to be on fast-forward compared to the rest of the field, checking out to a sizeable lead.
But his pace was an illusion. Marquez had opted for softer rubber in a hope to build a big lead that he could manage all the way to the chequered flag.
And it would have worked, too, but for one thing: Valentino Rossi.
Playing the tortoise to Marquez’s hare, Rossi began to chip away at the Honda rider’s lead. Those chips soon turned into large chunks as the Spaniard’s tyres began to fade, Rossi finally catching his prey with two laps to go.
He struck immediately, stuffing himself past Marquez at the end of the back straight. Marquez tried to respond but put his front wheel on the exact same piece of tarmac as Rossi was placing his rear wheel.
The inevitable contact sent the Honda rider tumbling out of the race, while Rossi tasted the champagne of his second victory in three races.
WHICH WAY DID JORGE GO?
The first column of the lap chart contained just one number across the four races that followed Argentina: 99.
Jorge Lorenzo hit a purple patch of form, leading every lap at Jerez, Le Mans, Mugello and Catalunya.
The way he did so was deeply impressive. He would assume the lead on the opening lap, unleash a hellish pace that none of his rivals could match, and simply grind the field into submission.
By the time his streak was done, he had reset the record for most consecutive MotoGP race laps led — 103 — but had also rode himself to within one point of Rossi’s title-leading tally of points.
Even Marquez could do nothing to stop Lorenzo’s rout — and he crashed plenty of times trying — but he had greater problems to deal with.
THE CREATION OF HONDA’S FRANKENBIKE
As 2014 was good for Honda, 2015 was nightmarish.
Along with Pedrosa benching himself after just one race, their reigning world champion seemed unable to repeat his imperious form from just 12 months earlier.
There was just something about the 2015 Honda that prevented it and Marc Marquez from getting along. Masked by an opening-lap excursion at Qatar and his dominant win in Austin, all was clearly not well when Marquez felt he had to gamble on soft rubber in Argentina.
An injury again masked the issue at Jerez, but in Le Mans it was plain for all to see. The Honda didn’t like turning into corners and acted skittish under braking for them, problems that not even the talent of Marquez could circumvent.
A slew of Hondas experienced front-end crashes in France. Marquez wasn’t one of them, but was spooked enough by a couple of near-falls that he elected to ride to relatively sedate fourth — his thrilling scrap with Andrea Iannone notwithstanding.
The same could not be said of the next two races. Trying to wrangle speed from an unwilling steed, the machine bucked him off, first at Mugello, then at Catalunya.
The day after the Spanish race, Honda did something very un-Honda-like. It took a backwards technological step, wheeling out a bitsa machine comprising the 2014 frame with the 2015 swingarm and engine package.
The Frankenbike wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would allow Marquez to get back into the fight.
ON FOR YOUNG AND OLD, ROUND 2
The 2015 Dutch TT was one for the ages. A battle between irrepressible youth against sage experience.
It was a race between two, Rossi and Marquez trading punches in a battle that looked set to be decided in a last-lap showdown at Assen’s iconic final corner chicane.
As they charged into the braking area for the final time, the orange Honda ranged up alongside the blue Yamaha in a last-ditch attempt at passing for the lead, bumping into the side of the No. 46 machine.
But on this day at the cathedral of speed, it would be the veteran delivering the sermon.
Rossi judged Marquez’s arrival perfectly. As they made contact, Rossi simply pointed his bike across the sand trap, gassed it up to pick up the front wheel to stop it from digging in the gravel trap, and raced out the other side towards victory.
Was Rossi’s off-road effort a purely instinctive response, or a calculated plan to turn Marquez’s known aggression against him?
VR MM post race analysis pic.twitter.com/HLBu3Px1nQ
— Stuart Higgs (@stuarthiggs) June 27, 2015The stewards cleared either rider of ill-doing in the incident.
Either way, the record will only show the winning rider, and that rider was Valentino Rossi.
MILLER’S BRIEF MOMENT IN THE SUN, IN THE RAIN
It’s been a tough season learning the ropes for MotoGP rookie Jack Miller, but the prospect of wet weather — a leveller of machinery — at the British GP allowed his skills to shine through.
Miller charged at the start, leaping from his lowly grid spot to be in the thick of the battle for the Top 5.
Unfortunately, it all turned to dust a few moments later.
As Lorenzo and Cal Crutchlow squabbled for third ahead of him, Miller was caught out by their early braking. When Crutchlow turned into the Vale corner, Miller was already committed to putting his bike on the exact same piece of track occupied by that of his teammate.
The inevitable crash was low speed but had devastating consequences for the LCR squad, both its bikes taken out of the race in one fell swoop.
LORENZO’S WET WEATHER BLUES
But for the intervention of mother nature, Jorge Lorenzo may have had this championship already in his pocket.
On three occasions he has utterly dominated the lead-up to a race weekend only for changeable conditions to present themselves on race day.
Many say wet weather riding is Lorenzo’s Achilles’ heel, pointing to his unsteady ride at Assen in 2014 as a sign of weakness.
There is ample evidence to the contrary: Lorenzo was fast in very wet weather at Silverstone, in increasingly damp conditions at Misano, and again in the wet at Motegi.
Yet on each occasion he has come up short — or worse.
At Silverstone, he was blown away by Rossi. At Misano, he looked poised for a podium until he waited too long to switch back to slicks before crashing out when he pushed too hard too soon on them. Then at Motegi he roared away from all his rivals early but wore out his front tyre, leaving him easy pray at the points-paying end of the race.
WATCH THE AUSTRALIAN MOTOGP WITH FOX SPORTS
TV: Watch all the MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 practice, qualifying and race action from the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix LIVE in HD and AD-FREE on FOX SPORTS Australia this weekend.
Online: Head to FOX SPORTS’ MotoGP Race Centre for live timing and live video streams of all the MotoGP action from Phillip Island this weekend, or follow our live blog below.
Originally published as MotoGP: A look back at the biggest moments so far in 2015 ahead of the Australian Grand Prix
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