MotoGP: 2009 Le Mans Results

By Lap 4 the track was getting pretty dry, and the weird “second race” got underway. Unlike auto racing, it takes awhile, hours apparently, to change the tires on a motorcycle. Unlike auto racing, it is perfectly okay in MotoGP to come into the pits, jump off your bike, jump on to a second bike with different tires, and resume racing. And unlike auto racing, there is no communication between the pits and the riders, which leaves the pilots completely in charge of deciding if and when to pit. However, as with auto racing, once riders start making pit stops, any semblance of order breaks down. The procession gets totally cobbled up, the only people who seem to know what’s going on at all are the announcers, and they have trouble keeping up.

In chronological order, he almost immediately executed a thrilling lowside crash, returned to the pits, traded his fractured dry tire bike for his original wet tire bike, got flagged for speeding on pit row, did his penalty bong, broke into a quick impression of Robert Benigni (for whom he is a dead ringer), took a few relatively slow laps, pitted again, traded back his wet tire bike for his now-repaired dry tire bike, returned to the track, and finished 16th. He might as well have gone to Baltimore to watch the Preakness.

One by one, all the riders traded bikes, even Marco Melandri, whose team, I thought, owned only one. The last to make the switch was Lorenzo, on Lap 13, by which point he led everyone by a country mile. He was in first place when he entered the pits and remained in the lead when he exited, well within the posted speed limit. But between Lap 4 when Rossi pitted and Lap 13 when Lorenzo did so, weirdness prevailed at Le Mans, as evidenced by the following splits:

Toni Elias in 2nd place. Nicky Hayden in 5th. In 2009? Yuki Takahashi running in 7th. Niccolo Canepa NOT last.

Welcome to Bizarro World.

Once the pit stops were complete, the third race got underway. It was another of your basic MotoGP parades, with several notable exceptions. The first and most enjoyable was Marco Melandri finishing second for Hayate Racing, Kawasaki’s first podium since 2006. There was Monster Yamaha Tech 3’s Colin Edwards, running briefly in 16th place early before finally locating his shift lever, viciously passing teammate James Toseland on Lap 21.

There was the classic stalking and last lap pass by Dani Pedrosa of HIS teammate Andrea Dovizioso, robbing Dovi of his first podium of the season. And, of course, there was the seething Valentino Rossi, finishing two full laps behind the leaders, with his home circuit Mugello on the horizon.

Each 45 minute sprint of the MotoGP series gives us just a brief glimpse of reality; it’s difficult to draw solid conclusions from such short events. The Grand Prix de France, however, put the World Championship completely up for grabs, as nine points now separate first and fourth places. Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo announced his intention to take his teammate’s crown away from him. Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa’s late pass of Dovizioso made it clear that he cares more about points than he does team spirit. Spain has been putting a beatdown on Italy lately.

Casey Stoner has proven himself the only one of the five Ducati riders capable of handling the Desmosedici, as the big red bikes now occupy four of the bottom five slots in the championship standings. Marco Melandri has proven that he deserves a factory ride with someone next season. And LCR Honda’s Randy de Puniet has proven that public relations won’t win races, that if you put lipstick on a gorilla, it’s still a gorilla.

To me, the funniest aspect of MotoGP is the ongoing misuse of the word “team.” MotoGP teammates need walls built in their garages to keep them from one another. MotoGP riders will never ride harder than when they have an opportunity to pass a teammate. The final thought this week is that “MotoGP teams” ought to join “military intelligence”, “sanitary landfill”, and “jumbo shrimp” among the great oxymorons of the English language.