~ Auto Buzz ~: MotoGP 2015: Malaysian Grand Prix Wrap-Up Don’t let the erupting feud between Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez take away from a fantastic race by Dani Pedrosa.

Dani Pedrosa leads Jorge Lorenzo race action from Sepang

Okay, okay: Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, fighting for third at the time, touched on lap seven and Marquez went down. Big controversy. After Phillip Island, Rossi accused Marquez of holding him up in ways that would favor his title rival and teammate, Jorge Lorenzo. But before we get into that, I want to wonder out loud why Dani Pedrosa is so wonderful at Sepang, having won not only today, but in 2012 and 2013 as well. Pedrosa and his Honda RC213V, with 5.5 gallons of fuel, is maybe 6 to 7 percent lighter than other riders’ totals, but this should help him at every acceleration track, not just at Sepang. Same with the gradual loss of tire properties: If a lighter rider is an advantage in that respect, we’d expect to see that advantage work for him everywhere. ’Tain’t so. A sure disadvantage at every track is Pedrosa’s small size; his motorcycle outweighs him by 3½ times, while for other riders, the number is more like 2.4 to 2.8. So what does that leave us with? One point often passed over is that Pedrosa is a great rider, and it may be that at the end of 2015 he has fully regained strength and form after his arm-pump operations. “It has been a hard year,” said Pedrosa after the race, but we are now recovering well and we’re in good form.” Another point: Pedrosa’s better surface-to-volume ratio may be an advantage in Sepang’s heat and wilting humidity. This is clearly not just a matter of endurance, because Pedrosa set a new circuit record in qualifying.

Marc Marquez leads Valentino Rossi race action from Sepang

Rossi’s championship lead over Lorenzo is now down to just 7 points, with only Valencia remaining. Race Direction assessed Rossi three penalty points after today’s incident, which, with one point he was already carrying, adds up to his starting from the back of the Valencia grid. Barring miracle or misadventure, there went Rossi’s title hopes. It is clear from the incident videos that both riders had accelerated and lifted after the Turn 13 apex, and were no longer leaned far over. Rossi’s front end looks compressed, indicating that he was braking and slowing. As the two riders near the left side of the track, Rossi releases the brake and his front end rises. Said Rossi: “From the helicopter if you see, in slow motion, it is quite clear that I go wide. I don't want to say I do the normal corner—I wanted to go to him, slow down, and make him [Marquez] lose time. Because it is the only thing that I can do, because in every braking he overtake me, slow down a lot in the corners and for me he didn't open the throttle on the straights. “When I slow down, slow down, slow down and I go to cut his line, we touch. He touched me with the handlebar on my left leg and it is for that reason he crashed, because he opened the handlebar on my leg and he crashed. “ All these points can be seen in the two videos—one from trackside, the other from a helicopter above. Mike Webb, MotoGP Technical Director: “Rossi's evidence is that his foot came off the footpeg as a result of the contact. From all the video evidence, there is no clear shot that definitely shows that his foot slipped off the footpeg because of contact or that he deliberately kicked. I don't have that as a ‘smoking gun’ if you like.”

Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi Sepang race action

In the trackside video, Marquez and Rossi close twice. In the first closing, Marquez lifts a bit as Rossi looks around at him twice. Then Marquez moves forward, evidently having decided to keep his outside line rather than be “pinched off.” Now we see that some part of Marquez, or his bike, disturbs Rossi’s left thigh, but after this Rossi’s knee appears to move left. In the helicopter video, however, this second leg movement is not seen, yet Rossi’s leg is clearly disturbed, moving as if his foot were off the peg. There is no clear foul to be seen. Said Webb: “Valentino maintains he did not deliberately make the maneuver. However, our view of the whole situation—looking at all the evidence—is that he deliberately ran wide and therefore deliberately caused the contact by trying to run Marquez off the track.” That is confirmed by the helicopter video, which shows Rossi on a course that would have taken him right off the left side of the track, forcing him to re-lean his bike into the turn after the contact, to avoid running off himself. Looking at the lap times, we see Pedrosa getting the best start of the four men (Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Marquez, and Rossi). Then, Pedrosa and Lorenzo settle into an early race pace, each reeling off three two-minute laps. Rossi and Marquez begin to cut each other up, each being a full second slower than the two leaders on lap five because of the time they are “investing” not in racing but in each other.

Dani Pedrosa on the podium with the trophy for Sepang win

I have often commented on how two riders who are very close after the second Daytona gas stop calmly ride lap after fast lap nose-to-tail, and do not get involved with each other. They know that to “thrust and parry” against one another will cost them time, possibly allowing one or more pursuers to catch up and complicate their task. Alone, they stay out of reach, content to make their plays on the crucial last lap. Mike Webb: “Valentino reacted to what he saw as provocation from Marquez and unfortunately his reaction was a maneuver that was against the rules. It's irresponsible riding causing a crash. We believe the contact was deliberate. He says he did not want Marquez to crash, but he did want to run him wide.” Interpretation: Runaway emotion complicates good decision-making. At the start, Pedrosa was first into Turn 1 with Marquez and Rossi next. Lorenzo, starting from the second row as a result of harsh brake operation during qualifying, dropped as low as sixth but soon clicked into “incapable of mistakes” mode, coming under the two Ducatis of Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso (neither of whom finished) in T4, then dispatching Rossi into Turn 1, lap 2. Marquez, still second, was having the common trouble at Sepang: lack of grip on the hot and greasy surface, which is often covered with ripples raised by the braking of heavy racing cars (air temp on the day was 95 degrees F, track temp 117 degrees F). That’s not a good combination for the stiffish suspension Marquez needs for his abrupt, compressed style of turning. When he ran wide at Turn 4, it was Lorenzo’s gain. Now in second, Lorenzo ate into Pedrosa’s lead (almost a full second of which was gained on lap 1) only to discover he could not maintain the necessary pace.

Although Lorenzo closed to just 0.582 second on lap 9, continuing at that pace was increasing his risk faster than he was catching Pedrosa; the championship’s the thing! Said Lorenzo: “Pedrosa’s pace had been unbelievable. He was so quick and consistent and picked up the bike in a perfect way.” Pedrosa does lift and accelerate promptly after apex. A working description of conditions came from Scott Redding: “I was trying to push to stay on the back of the group ahead of me, but I kept closing the front. And if the rear had grip, it was pushing the front as well. I was also struggling to stop the bike in the slower corners because the front was sliding and I lost contact.” Iannone’s Ducati stopped running and Dovizioso fell in an incident with Cal Crutchlow (“I know Cal well and I’m sure he didn’t do it deliberately…”). Iannone’s remarks suggest a stone thrown up by someone’s tire had holed his radiator. What happened to the radiator screens we all used to run to prevent this? Is an ounce of prevention still too heavy?

Andrea Dovizioso race action from Sepang

Crutchlow apologized: “He [Dovizioso] is the last rider on the track I would want to knock off as he is the cleanest rider.” In many races, pace determines the finish and the result becomes largely technical. But sometimes, human intensity erupts like Krakatoa and racing becomes a raw man-to-man struggle. This was one of those days. CHATTER DANI PEDROSA “I am very happy because it was a very nice Grand Prix! We had a good feeling from Friday, we were able to manage the weekend well and above all we had a bike that worked very well during every practice. The setup we used at this circuit in February during testing helped me a lot and I'm very happy to take this win for my team, who has been behind me all the way. I am especially pleased to finish the season very positively, as it has been a hard year but we are now recovering well and we’re in good form. Australia is always the hardest race of the year for me, but that turned out fine and I'm really glad we completed the fly always like this.” MARC MARQUEZ “We were having a good race up until the incident. At the beginning I made a mistake, but then I regained confidence. Valentino overtook me, I followed him for half a lap, and I saw that I could go faster than him, so I tried to overtake him back. We started a fight between us and I always passed without making any contact with him. At Turn 14, he passed me on the inside, I sat the bike up, he kept going straight ahead and I saw him looking at me. I didn’t know what to do. Then he kicked out at me, knocking my brake lever, and I crashed. I will leave the sanction in the hands of Race Direction. All I know is that I scored zero points and ended up in the gravel, but thankfully I'm fine. Both what Valentino said to Race Direction and what he did on the track has made me disappointed. I’ve never seen anything like it: a rider kicking another rider. It might be down to nerves, but I want to try to forget about all this and the important thing is that I'm fine physically. I hope, for the sake of the sport that this ends here.” VALENTINO ROSSI “Marquez knows it wasn’t red mist that caused the incident. It‘s very clear from the helicopter footage that I didn‘t want to make him crash, I just wanted to make him lose time, go outside of the line and slow down, because he was playing his dirty game, even worse than in Australia. When I went wide and slowed down to nearly a stop, I looked at him as if to say ‘what are you doing?’ After that, we touched. He touched with his right underarm on my leg and my foot slipped off the foot peg. If you look at the image from the helicopter it’s clear that when my foot slipped of the foot peg, Marquez had already crashed. I didn‘t want to kick him, especially because, if you give a kick to a MotoGP bike, it won‘t crash, it‘s very heavy. For me the sanction is not fair, because Marquez won his fight. His program is OK because he is making me lose the championship. The sanction is not good, especially for me, because I didn‘t purposefully want to make him crash, I just reacted to his behavior, but I didn‘t kick him. You can‘t say anything in the press conference, maybe it changes something, but to me this was not fair, because I just want to fight for the championship with Jorge and let the better man win, but like this that‘s not happening. Like I said, I didn’t want to make Marquez crash, but I had to do something because at that moment Jorge was already gone. The championship is not over yet, but this sanction cut me off by the legs and made Marquez win.” JORGE LORENZO “It was a very hard race. I gave the maximum to keep Dani’s rear wheel as close as possible, but to be honest his pace had been unbelievable. He was so quick and consistent and picked up the bike in a perfect way, so it was very difficult to overtake him on braking. I could only finish in second place, which is important because we recovered points. When I saw the battle between Marc and Valentino I was really surprised because the action was huge and I have to respect race direction‘s decision.” Results: 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix

Pos.	Rider	Num	Nation	Points	Team	Time/Gap
1	PEDROSA Dani	26	SPA	25	Repsol Honda Team	40'37.691
2	LORENZO Jorge	99	SPA	20	Movistar Yamaha MotoGP	+3.612
3	ROSSI Valentino	46	ITA	16	Movistar Yamaha MotoGP	+13.724
4	SMITH Bradley	38	GBR	13	Monster Yamaha Tech 3	+23.995
5	CRUTCHLOW Cal	35	GBR	11	LCR Honda	+28.721
6	PETRUCCI Danilo	9	ITA	10	Pramac Racing	+36.372
7	ESPARGARO Aleix	41	SPA	9	Team Suzuki Ecstar	+39.290
8	VINALES Maverick	25	SPA	8	Team Suzuki Ecstar	+39.436
9	ESPARGARO Pol	44	SPA	7	Monster Yamaha Tech 3	+42.462
10	BRADL Stefan	6	GER	6	Aprilia Racing Team Gresini	+44.601
11	REDDING Scott	45	GBR	5	Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS	+47.690
12	HERNANDEZ Yonny	68	COL	4	Pramac Racing	+52.112
13	BARBERA Hector	8	SPA	3	Avintia Racing	+52.360
14	ELIAS Toni	24	SPA	2	Athina Forward Racing	+53.619
15	BAUTISTA Alvaro	19	SPA	1	Aprilia Racing Team Gresini	+53.631
16	HAYDEN Nicky	69	USA	0	Aspar MotoGP Team	+1'01.431
17	MILLER Jack	43	AUS	0	LCR Honda	+1'02.828
18	DI MEGLIO Mike	63	FRA	0	Avintia Racing	+1'05.075
19	LAVERTY Eugene	50	IRE

Rider Standings

Pos.	Rider	Num	Nation	Points	Team
1	ROSSI Valentino	46	ITA	312	Movistar Yamaha MotoGP
2	LORENZO Jorge	99	SPA	305	Movistar Yamaha MotoGP
3	MARQUEZ Marc	93	SPA	222	Repsol Honda Team
4	PEDROSA Dani	26	SPA	190	Repsol Honda Team
5	IANNONE Andrea	29	ITA	188	Ducati Team
6	SMITH Bradley	38	GBR	171	Monster Yamaha Tech 3
7	DOVIZIOSO Andrea	4	ITA	153	Ducati Team
8	CRUTCHLOW Cal	35	GBR	118	LCR Honda
9	PETRUCCI Danilo	9	ITA	107	Pramac Racing
10	ESPARGARO Pol	44	SPA	103	Monster Yamaha Tech 3
11	ESPARGARO Aleix	41	SPA	97	Team Suzuki Ecstar
12	VINALES Maverick	25	SPA	92	Team Suzuki Ecstar
13	REDDING Scott	45	GBR	83	Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS
14	HERNANDEZ Yonny	68	COL	53	Pramac Racing
15	BARBERA Hector	8	SPA	33	Avintia Racing
16	BAUTISTA Alvaro	19	SPA	29	Aprilia Racing Team Gresini
17	BAZ Loris	76	FRA	28	Athina Forward Racing
18	BRADL Stefan	6	GER	17	Aprilia Racing Team Gresini
19	MILLER Jack	43	AUS	17	LCR Honda
20	HAYDEN Nicky	69	USA	16	Aspar MotoGP Team
21	LAVERTY Eugene	50	IRE	9	Aspar MotoGP Team
22	PIRRO Michele	51	ITA	8	Ducati Team
23	NAKASUGA Katsuyuki	21	JPN	8	Yamaha Factory Racing Team
24	DI MEGLIO Mike	63	FRA	8	Avintia Racing
25	AOYAMA Hiroshi	7	JPN	5	AB Motoracing
26	TAKAHASHI Takumi	72	JPN	4	Team HRC with NISSIN
27	ELIAS Toni	24	SPA	2	Athina Forward Racing
28	DE ANGELIS Alex	15	RSM	2	E-Motion IodaRacing Team