Yamaha start MotoGP season with one-two in Qatar

The 2013 Motorcycle Grand Prix season began with the floodlit night race in Qatar where, as in the last four years, there was always likely to be a continuation of the Honda versus Yamaha contest for supremacy in the premier MotoGP class - even in the absence of Casey Stoner.

27-year-old Stoner, a five-time winner at the Losail circuit in Qatar, had opted for retirement after seven years in MotoGP. Racing various 990cc, 800cc and 1000cc four-stroke prototype machines in that period, for Honda and Ducati, the Australian had twice been world champion. Now his place at the Repsol Honda factory team went to 20-year-old Spanish class rookie Marc Márquez, winner of titles in both the 125cc and Moto2 support classes.

2012 championship contender Dani Pedrosa remained with the Repsol squad as team leader, with title winner Jorge Lorenzo also retained by the Yamaha factory team. After two disappointing seasons at Ducati, former multi-champion Valentino Rossi had signed to partner Lorenzo, rejoining the team where he had won the championship in 2004-05 and 2008-09. Rossi’s Ducati slot alongside Nicky Hayden had thus gone to Andrea Dovizioso, former works Honda and satellite Yamaha rider.

The technical regulations for MotoGP in 2013 were largely unchanged, apart from in relation to the allocated number of engines for the season and fuel tank capacity, and the grid was bolstered to 24 bikes with more machines in the CRT category. In addition to Márquez, the new riders to the series were: 27-year-old Lukáš Pešek (joining IodaRacing), a former 125cc contender; Bryan Staring (25, Gresini Honda), a Grand Prix novice except for a single wildcard 125 appearance in 2004; Andrea Iannone (23, Pramac Ducati), a Moto2 contender for the last three years; Bradley Smith (22, Tech 3 Yamaha), a former 125cc winner and also up from Moto2; Claudio Corti (25, Forward Racing), a Moto2 regular with one 1000cc appearance in 2012; and Michael Laverty (31, Bird Motorsport), seven times a British Superbike race winner.

One change saw qualifying split for the first time into two separate sessions, for the slower and the faster runners. Yamaha riders fought over pole position, with Lorenzo fastest and second place on the grid going to Cal Crutchlow on the satellite Tech 3 machine. Rossi was only seventh, with Smith ninth on the fourth of the M1 bikes. All four of the Honda RC213V bikes were within the top eight, with Pedrosa third and Márquez sixth, plus Stefan Bradl in fifth for the LCR team and Álvaro Bautistá in P8 for the Gresini team.

Dovizioso’s first outing on the Ducati Desmosedici saw the Italian starting from fourth, only one place behind the bike’s best grid slot in 2012. Hayden was in eleventh, whilst the Pramac team’s customer bikes were tenth and thirteenth, with Iannone in front of more experienced MotoGP team-mate Ben Spies, as well as the second red works bike. Spies, however, had suffered a crash during practice, which hadn’t helped his progress.

That left the CRT runners, with their production-based Superbike engines, and the ART-mounted Aspar team duo continued their 2012 form to head this group, with Aleix Espargaró ahead of Spies in P12 and Randy de Puniet in P14. The Ioda Suter-BMWs were in P15 and P20, with class newcomer Pešek in front of incumbent Danilo Petrucci. Yonny Hernández had switched to Paul Bird’s outfit, and his ART would start from sixteenth, with Laverty the final man, in P24 on the team’s PBM-ART.

The FTR chassis filled five of the last eight positions, ahead of Laverty and split by Petrucci and the eighteenth placed ART of Karel Abraham, following the Cardion AB team’s switch from Ducati. The first FTR-Kawasaki was in P17, ridden by Hiroshi Aoyama for Avintia Blusens, with team-mate Héctor Barberá five places behind. Forward Racing were using the same machines, with Colin Edwards in P19 and Corti two places back. Staring’s FTR-Honda was the penultimate bike in P23.

The conditions were good for the race, and only Bautistá opted for the softer compound Bridgestone front tyre. Pedrosa is the established fast starter, but on this occasion Lorenzo maintained the advantage over his compatriot into the first right-hander, with Dovizioso third, from Crutchlow, Rossi, Bradl, Bautistá, Márquez, Hayden and Smith. From only seventh on the grid, Rossi was looking to challenge his team-mate at the front, and was quick to pass Crutchlow on the inside for a right-hander; then, where a left flowed into a right, he tried the same on Dovizioso. The move saw Valentino run wide, letting Andrea back into third. Meanwhile, Lorenzo was already beginning to pull out a gap over his pursuers.

Turn one is a fairly tight right-hander following the long main straight, and the braking zone saw Rossi try another move on Dovizioso for third, going for it on the inside. This time the Yamaha man couldn’t stop in time to keep on the ideal line, and he ran wide enough to let ‘Dovi’ get back through, followed by Crutchlow, Márquez and Bradl. This put Valentino back to seventh, heading Bautistá, Hayden, Iannone, Smith, Spies, Espargaró, de Puniet, Hernández, Pešek, Barberá, Petrucci, Aoyama, Edwards, Laverty and Corti. Abraham had an early crash, and Staring went missing at about the same time.

Crutchlow looked racy on his 2012-spec Yamaha M1, passing former team-mate Dovizioso on the inside for a left-hander, then looking to attack Pedrosa for second. Meanwhile, Márquez was on the move, soon relegating the Ducati man and then powering ahead of the Englishman on the outside line on the main start-finish straight. With Lorenzo moving further out of reach, this left a three-way contest for second between the Repsol Honda pair and Crutchlow. Rossi was stuck in the next group for quite some time, struggling to get past Bradl even after they’d both dealt with Dovizioso.

Three Spaniards were heading the race and, with Lorenzo about two seconds in front of Pedrosa, Márquez recorded the fastest lap as he settled in behind his team leader, still followed by Crutchlow. Jorge’s advantage was out to over four seconds by half-distance, and meanwhile Rossi had finally passed Bradl, in a right-hander, and begun to pull away from the second group. Stefan managed to go out of the race not long after in a lowside crash, and Smith had already gone down when running in eleventh position.

In sixth and seventh, Bautistá and Dovizioso were now heading Hayden. And behind them, as Spies was getting involved in a battle with the Power Electronics Aspar CRT pairing, Iannone had established himself in a promising ninth position. Two more retirements were not far off, with both Petrucci and Edwards being forced to stop. But at the other end of the field, Rossi was setting a rapid pace as he closed in on the trio ahead. He reached them with several laps still to go, looking to challenge Crutchlow for fourth.

The main straight saw Rossi go to the right of Crutchlow to try and pull ahead, kicking up dust as he edged closer to the limit of the track, and this attack prompted Cal to run out towards the left side as the braking zone began. This caused him to run straight on and then resume in fifth place, having lost time to Rossi, but not enough to be in danger from the next man. Not long before, first-timer Márquez had gone for the inside of Pedrosa on the brakes for turn one, getting through to take over second position.

With four laps to go, leader Lorenzo was comfortably clear out in front, but the next three would battle it out for the remaining podium spots. Rossi got past Pedrosa with a lunging move on the inside at a left-hander, and a lap later he had got inside Márquez for a right-hander to take over in P2. Marc was not about to accept that, going to the outside at turn one where, as Rossi drifted a bit wide, he was then able cut back through to the apex and retake the place. Valentino made one further pass on the youngster, and this time he kept him back to secure second place at the chequered flag - before running out of fuel on the slow down lap.

Pedrosa had lost a bit of ground to his young team-mate by the finish, thereby missing out on the chance of a podium finish, but remaining clear of fifth man Crutchlow. Bautistá was next, then it was Dovizioso, not too far ahead of Hayden, from Iannone and Spies. The CRT runners were headed home by Espargaró, for the tenth time since the class was first introduced a year earlier, and he was followed by de Puniet, Barberá, Hernández, Aoyama, Corti and Laverty, with Pešek fading to finish 18th and last.

The result certainly seemed to show that Yamaha had the edge over Honda for pace, and one wondered how Valentino Rossi would have fared in relation to Jorge Lorenzo had the Italian qualified closer to the front, and indeed not had to battle through the next group of runners. Any doubts as to Rossi’s ultimate pace at this stage of his career, thanks to his less than fully convincing spell with Ducati, were surely banished right from the off. Meanwhile, Dani Pedrosa’s late season form in 2012 did not seem to have run on sufficiently to fend off a highly rated and hungry young team-mate, with Marc Márquez surely justifying his place as Casey Stoner’s replacement. Which of the ‘other three’ will prove to be the main challenger to Lorenzo as the season unfolds?

Standings after one race: Lorenzo 25; Rossi 20; Márquez 16; Pedrosa 13; Crutchlow 11; Bautistá 10; Dovizioso 9; Hayden 8; Iannone 7; Spies 6 ·· CRT leader: Espargaró.
Yamaha 25; Honda 16; Ducati 9; ART 5; FTR-Kawasaki 3.