Marco Melandri - What a Hero!

The MotoGP visit to Le Mans was wet as usual, and it produced a really interesting race. Cocky Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo won magnificently, staying out on wet tyres until the last possible moment before switching to slicks, and destroying the field in the process. However, the most amazing performance was from Marco Melandri, finishing 2nd on the Hayate Kawasaki.

Last year, Marco seemed to be finished. He just couldn't ride the Ducati. Whereas Casey Stoner chucks the Bologna Bullet into corners and wrestles it out of them, Marco was as terrified as a trainee tiger tamer in his first public performance. The hapless Italian would trundle round in last place, looking like an idiot.

But this year, Marco is back. The nutter who came around the last corner at Phillip Island, with one hand on the bars, smoking up the rear tyre on his way to victory, is back in the paddock. And he's riding the wheels off that awful black-painted Green Machine. Maybe it's fortunate that John Hopkins was fired by Kawasaki, he was terrible on that bike last year and would probably look like a complete monkey next to Melandri this year.

Marco took a thoroughly deserved second position at Le Mans. It was not caused by dozens of people crashing in front of him, it was sheer speed and talent in the impossibly slippy conditions. Even Valentino Rossi panicked, stopped too early for dry tyres, and fell off after about 3 corners on slicks. But he jumped back on the bike, did about 30 more pit stops, and finished the race. Only Kallio managed to rack up a DNF, and only Lorenzo managed to finish in front of Melandri.

It's great to have you back, Marco.

MotoGP Le Mans: Rossi Resurgent

Valentino Rossi is back. All the doubters will have to crawl back into their holes after seeing The Doctor put his opponents out of their misery in the French GP at Le Mans. It was a Yamaha 1-2-3 as Jorge Lorenzo and Colin Edwards filled out the podium.

I think we can safely say that Rossi and his engineer Jeremy Burgess pretty much understand Bridgestone tyres now. The decision to switch from Michelin seemed pretty daft in the first couple of races this season, but in the last couple it has seemed like a work of genius. Former Bridgestone blue-eyed boy Casey Stoner just isn't as quick as Rossi on the same tyres, which was Valentino's plan all along.

In the past, when Rossi was winning all the time, he used to toy with his prey before dispatching them with a display of brilliance, or occasionally violence in the case of Sete Gibernau. With a long winless streak having just ended, Rossi was in no mood for messing around, pulling out a lead of more than 10 seconds before backing off and winning by a mere 5. It was a crushing defeat for the opposition, and it puts Vale back on top of the championship table.

This win equalled Angel Nieto's record of 90 GP wins, second only to Agostini, and to everyone's amazement, the little Spanish 13-time world champion (all on the baby-sized 50cc and 125cc bikes) showed up in a helmet and leathers by the side of the track. Nieto hopped on the Yamaha and rode it back to parc ferme with Rossi on the back carrying a flag that read "90+90" to indicate the number of wins they have between them. Just to add to the number of plus signs, I'll point out that being a good superstitious bike racer, Nieto always claims to have won 12+1 titles, not 13. Rossi's next target is Giacomo Agostini's record of 68 wins in the top GP class.

Hardman Jorge Lorenzo continues to add to his He-Man reputation after breaking his ankles in a hideous highside in China. He can't even walk without crutches, but he fought through the field to 2nd place from about 9th. What can you say about this kid? He's incredible. Two big crashes in practise had led everybody to claim that he was finally showing the pain of his injuries and wouldn't do well in the race. Well, it turns out that slamming his head into the tarmac and slamming his ankles into the gravel didn't do him any harm at all. He's tied for 2nd in the championship race with Dani Pedrosa, the pair of Spaniards having just 3 points less than Rossi.

Professional nearly-man Colin Edwards defied his doubters (me, for instance) by actually staying on the bike and staying on the tarmac. He had been pipped for pole by Pedrosa, and his good start had commentators asking, "Could this be Colin's big day?" and me answering, "No, of course not, you idiots!" Although it was harsh at the time, the Eurosport commentators did manage to live up to my groundless slur by not only failing to spot Colin make an excellent pass on Pedrosa, but also failing to notice the position change for about 3 laps, at which point they suddenly got very excited. C'mon, guys. Let's have at least one of you glancing at the monitor from time to time!

Tiny Pedrosa could only manage 4th, while Casey Stoner looked like he was in with a great chance of a podium when the Ducati suddenly conked out. He managed to get the thing back to the pits and swap bikes, taking advantage of the white flags. (For a while, the French marshals were waving so many white flags that I though the Germans were invading again, then I remembered it means that it's raining so you can swap to a bike with wet tyres on.) It was a horrible weekend for Ducati, with a mechanical failure for the only guy who can ride the bike, and standard rubbish finishes for everyone else. John Hopkins had a breakdown too, when the chain fell off his Kawasaki. Oops. Toseland got a taste of his own medicine when Dovi slammed the door on him and tipped him into a gravel trap. The young Italian can expect to get slammed out of the way by Toseland in the next few races.

So, the quack is back. No, not Dr Costa, who has become a member of Jorge Lorenzo's entourage. The Doctor, Valentino Rossi. He's looking ominously good. Can Pedrosa challenge him when the air-valve engine eventually appears? Can Lorenzo's ankles hold out long enough for him to take the championship in his first year? Can Stoner return to his boring ways? I mean, winning ways? Let's forget that last year happened, because MotoGP has returned from the dead.

MotoGP Le Mans: Awesome Aussies Again!

Who said MotoGP was becoming predictable? Well, they were wrong!
Our first wet/dry race of the season, and what a race it was.
Colin Edwards had stunned the world by taking pole position with a banzai lap that put him ahead of Stoner, Checa and team-mate Rossi. The Italian looked gutted at the lack of performance from his Yamaha, which is supposed to excel on twisty tracks, and the Michelin tyres which were supposed to be perfect for the French race. Despite his speed in qualifying, Edwards was outside the top 10 on race tyres in the various practise sessions. Things did not look good for Yamaha.
Stoner had amazed many people by qualifying on the front row. The Ducati is clearly not just a missile in a straight line, it goes round corners too.
The race started off dryish.
It didn't stay like that for long. Rain was slowly spitting down from the start, and the track was getting more and more treacherous. With the front runners being careful, it fell to the local boys to put on a show. Kawasaki's Randy de Puniet took the lead, and if that wasn't astonishing enough, Sylvain Guintolli achieved true superhero status when he led his home race fair and square on the second-string Yamaha with its miserable Dunlop tyres. It was a stunning achievement for the young Frenchman, which he topped off by having a terrifying highside right in front of Valentino Rossi. Guintolli was fired miles into the air, frantically flapping his arms but failing to overcome the force of gravity. Rossi almost came to a halt in avoiding the Tech 3 machine as it slid along the track in front of him. To his great credit, Guintolli crawled back to his battered bike, restarted and trundled round to the pits to change bikes.
Everybody else changed bikes at around that time, as the rain was falling ever harder, and the modern rain rules allow for a tyre change by switching to a backup bike with rain tyres already fitted. One of the first in was Australian Chris Vermeulen. The Suzuki rider is a wet weather specialist, having taken a pole position in similar conditions before. Vermeulen came out of the pits behind the front runners but very close to them. His team-mate John Hopkins came out in the lead, but was soon overhauled by Vermeulen.
Rossi was looking good at first on his rain tyres, but things started to go wrong. He was having trouble, often running wide in corners, and letting Stoner cruise past. At one stage The Doctor was well out of the seat in the middle of a chicane, and although he held onto the machine as only he can do, he lost momentum and was swamped by other riders.
Nicky Hayden was in a promising position when he lost the front under braking, dropped the bike and had a spectacular high speed crash which destroyed his Honda, joining other crashers such as de Puniet, Checa and Elias, who had all been caught out by the slippery track.
Up front, Vermeulen was being closed down by the fearless Marco Melandri, but even Marco has his limits, and after several frightening moments he backed off to give the Australian a breath-taking debut victory in MotoGP.
Casey Stoner had an excellent ride in terrible conditions, finishing 3rd and extending his championship points lead over Rossi. Before the race, one motorsports website printed a list of riders who have won at least 3 of the 4 opening races as Stoner has done. The names were: Duke, Surtees, Hocking, Hailwood, Agostini, Sheene, Roberts Senior, Spencer, Lawson, Rainey, Doohan, Rossi. See any familiar names in there? This was an incredibly mature ride to a podium place by the self-confident little Aussie, and showed that he deserves his place on that list.
Dani Pedrosa forgot that he's a terrible wet weather rider, and showed himself to be an excellent wet weather rider to take 4th place. Alex Hofmann will be pinching himself after a well-earned 5th place, 2nd of the 4 Ducatis home. Capirossi could manage just 8th place, and his career looks to be effectively over. In a BBC interview after the race he complained bitterly that Ducati aren't working hard enough to make the bike work for him. Sorry, Loris, but they'd be mad to do that with Stoner on this kind of form.
Valentino Rossi, finished a devastated 6th, his bike trying to throw him at the scenery at least 3 times per lap. This was supposed to be his race, where he would win and Stoner finish 6th or 7th. Can he regain his world title? Hmmm...
All in all, this was a brilliant race. Vermeulen is a sensational wet weather rider, and fully deserved his win. Melandri had a great race after an appalling start to the season, while Stoner's form should have Yamaha bosses waking up screaming in a cold sweat. The Australian isn't going to sit around while Rossi wins at all of the twisty European tracks, so Yamaha had better find some serious horsepower to get closer to the Ducati.