Captain America!
Captain America!
RACE WATCH
Spain’s Jorge Lorenzo reveals himself as MotoGP’s shining new star at the second running of the Indianapolis GP
KEVIN CAMERON
AS RACE-WINNER JORGE LORENZO spoke during the press briefing following the second running of the Red Bull Indianapolis GP, it was clear that the newly re-signed-for-2010 Fiat Yamaha rider can work a crowd in his own way. His dry, dead-pan humor had us all laughing again and again.
“To win, you must be at the limit,” he said. “But it is difficult to concentrate for 20 laps because it is boring to have no one to race with. But if you think of another thing... you crash.”
Fellow Spaniard Dani Pedrosa, the early race leader, had set pole a half-second clear of the field on a factory Honda. His decisive movements on the bike seemed beyond the grace of last year’s Indy winner Valentino Rossi-quick and seemingly always right. But Pedrosa crashed out, his bike gradually losing grip at extreme lean in a long right-hander, maybe a victim of the Bridgestone spec tires having more grip than the bikes have cornering clearance. And they have a lot!
Rossi then led. Lorenzo said, “At the beginning, I struggled to stay with Dani and Vale. But then I see that I can win. So, I must try.”
Some struggle! The three riders gapped the pack at a second per lap. As Ducati team manager Livio Suppo has said, there are two races here: one for the top four (Rossi, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, and Casey Stoner-if and when he returns from his self-imposed three-race sabbatical) and another for the rest.
Lorenzo pulled alongside Rossi at the beginning of lap 8 and passed easily into Turn 1. On the next lap, Rossi went wide into 1, and then he went instantly from upright to sliding on the ground on the entry to 2. “I had to brake where I shouldn’t,” the series points-leader later said.
Lorenzo again: “Six laps from the end, I am thinking, I will not be able to make a wheelie. But later, I think I will try-but only for 100 or 200 meters.”
What we saw, however, was not timid. Lifting the front wheel of his YZR-M1 off the last turn, he held it all the way past start/finish, the bike looking as stable as if it were held in place by a metal bracket. Slowed by the wheelie (it cost 3 seconds), Lorenzo won by 9 seconds ahead of satellite Gresini Honda rider Alex De Angelis and a much-improved Nicky Hayden riding the second factory Ducati.
How have Honda and Pedrosa-off the pace for a year-picked up their bed and walked? One clue is that teammate Andrea Dovizioso tested a new Öhlins fork and shock after the previous round at Brno, in the Czech Republic, and will now use the Swedish suspension for the rest of the season. Showa is a Honda company, so loyalty is now less important than performance. Another is that the two frame “spikes” that support the front of the engine are visibly reinforced-as if to better resist the chassis-bending loads of braking. Honda is working on the details. I spoke with HRC VP Shuhei Nakamoto, and he said that this year, “We have worked on many small problems. Next year, new concept.”
This is Honda’s way. Like the legendary racer/builder Albert Gunter, Honda knows that you cannot win using your competitors’ methods; they understand them as well as you do. You need an innovation that is yours alone. But between Big Ideas? You work “on many small problems.” This has been effective, for Pedrosa won Laguna Seca and set pole at Indy.
Pete Benson, now Dovizioso’s crew chief and last year with Hayden, said, “There was a big change of management at the beginning of the year. The focus came more on the technical side, on the things that weren’t working.”
That was surely the coming of Nakamoto, who came from Formula One.
Last year, Honda divided its effort between metal-spring and pneumaticvalve engines while searching for chassis solutions. Now, they again have power-and tighter focus.
The end of the season is like the last five minutes of qualifying: Everyone suddenly rides furiously because the game of musical chairs is now. The goal is to impress the brass. De Angelis pushed hard into second, hoping for a full factory bike next year (at the next race at Misano, in Italy, he ran up the inside of Colin Edwards and Hayden, putting them all on the ground and out-oops!). Hayden was delighted with third at Indianapolis because it is progress in taming the Ducati that many said only Stoner could ride. He has now signed for another year on the red machines.
Fuel cuts continue to be a tool in traction control and engine smoothing. The Ducatis (Mika Kallio sitting in for Stoner) sounded like moto-laryngitis, but the Honda riders dipped into their systems much less, their engines making steady, soft “pup-pup-pup” misfires > as they accelerated, indicating only light fuel-cut action. As at Laguna, the Yamahas of Rossi and Lorenzo (who has again signed with Yamaha after rumors he might accept Ducati euros by the truckload) were smooth almost to the point of looking sleepy. We know that Rossi works on this corner and that corner through practice, putting it all together progressively, but Pedrosa’s precise, decisive movements made it appear he was the only one trying.
Suzuki team manager Paul Denning confirmed that MotoGP began with an MSMA/Dorna agreement that all of Japan’s Big Four would compete through 2011. This explains why Suzuki’s participation has often seemed like mere attendance; that’s just what it was. Suzuki, a smaller company, puts its funds where they do the most good-in AMA and World Superbike. Periodically, it has advanced in MotoGP, as when it adopted pneumatic valves, and again this season, when the very experienced Loris Capirossi gave the team insights leading to considerable improvement. Denning said, “The MotoGP bike is so specialized from an engineering point of view that small differentials make a huge difference in the end result.” The high cost of getting those differentials right has held the Suzukis to being “very average.”
Then why compete? Denning’s reply echoed that of American Honda’s Ray Blank, who essentially said that racing makes motorcycling special for all kinds of riders-for all of us. It is not so much winning that achieves a commercially useful result as it is to be there as part of the sparkle.
Chris Vermeulen, whose career is in > the air right now, said of the Suzuki, “Chassis-wise, the bike works very well. We’re trying very hard to be competitive in out-and-out horsepower, and that’s making the bike harder to ride.”
Every manufacturer faces this compromise, but it’s harder for Suzuki, which is still using 50-percent control authority, with the rider and the computer each controlling two throttle butterflies. Aircraft flight-control systems passed through this stage; the attraction is that the pilot can still overrule the computer. But conversely, the computer has only half the power to deliver smoothed response.
Only 17 machines started at Indianapolis and 14 finished. At Laguna, the talk was of padding the grid next season with “second-level” bikes powered by limited-modification lOOOcc production engines. But when at Indianapolis I asked about “Motol,” everyone took it very seriously. Moto2 is the “250 replacement class” beginning next year, to be powered by a spec version of a Honda 600cc inline-Lour in prototype chassis. Moriwaki brought two of its prototype Moto2 bikes, derivative little Superbikes built from the short list of available brakes, suspension and > wheels. Before you fall in love with the idea that this will bring back ELF, Fior and ITossack, reflect that racing is conservative, and its spotlight is on who wins. For Moto2 riders, not winning is not getting to MotoGP. Insiders were saying, “Okay, say eight shops build chassis. One turns out to be good, everybody has to buy it and then what?”
And Motol? Some think it inevitable, given the killing cost of prototype racing, few able constructors and a poor economy. Ducati estimated in 2002 that it would cost $32 million to get into MotoGP. And now? Spare any change, buddy?
Marco Melandri got the lame-duck Kawasaki up into a creditable seventh before crashing out spectacularly on lap 25. The Suzukis finished seventh and 11th. Edwards was fifth on the Tech3 Yamaha, with teammate James Toseland sixth. Hayden had to work hard for his third. Dovizioso was right up his tailpipe, as close as 0.1 second behind on the last lap.
“I was on my limit,” Hayden said afterward. “That’s all I had. He was coming-I could hear him. I was telling myself, ‘Dovi is a fighter. Don’t give it to him! ’”
Hayden’s winning smile and pressroom charm don’t reveal the serious work he and his team have done to adapt the difficult Ducati to a rider who is not Stoner. All praise to them! The engines are strong, but that makes them harder for the electronics to smooth enough to be ridden. Where is the sweet spot?
Carlo Merlini of the Gresini Honda team had two interesting things to say. First, he made the point that the greatest single expense for satellite teams is not travel and hotels. It is the cost of the leased machines. Second, when I asked about the team’s reputation for reviving careers that are on the rocks (Melandri, for example), he replied, “Ah, that would be Fausto Gresini.
He was a rider himself, and he understands how riders think.”
To paraphrase Merlini, in past seasons, Melandri, who will ride once again for Gresini in 2010, was told, “You rode motorcycles because it was fun, and you were fast. Now, it is difficult for you because MotoGP is serious business. We will give you a bike to ride at the track, and you can ride as you like until it is fun again. Then you will also be fast. You will see.”
In Friday’s pouring rain, we slogged to Lorenzo’s motorhome for conversation. “My style is to do laps and laps to
get my body ready for the race,” he said. “I have the ability to be faster every lap. Only Valentino and I have this ability. He is the only rider who can think on the bike and make this speed. I go the same speed as him, but maybe I cannot think the same as him.”
Lorenzo went on to say that when Rossi was racing 500cc two-strokes in the world championship, he was 13 years old and riding in the 125cc Spanish championship. “But then pass a lot of time, and we are like this,” Lorenzo said, using his hands to indicate the two riders’ present closeness at the front. He has time to learn more.
On and on it goes. Racing adopts new forms, motorcycles gain new capabilities, and I can’t take my eyes off the process.
