It looked pretty convincing. There was Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo, riding his precise big lines smoothly, versus Honda’s Marc Marquez, 0.488 seconds behind in Qualifying 2, slithering and sliding amazingly, back end sliding out, then mysteriously recovering. One style looked economical, fast, and efficient. The other, for all its brilliant control, looked wasteful and, by comparison, slow. It hasn’t often been this way. In races, Lorenzo’s leaned-over-forever style has consumed the tire, allowing Marquez, whose time at full lean is much less in a given corner, to have enough tire left at the end to push past for the win. Sometimes this difference has been so striking that outsiders like myself wonder if Yamaha might have to take a fresh direction. Then comes a day like this, with its 1:30.011 record pole time. Lorenzo said, “Best lap in all my life. If I rode a hundred or two hundred laps, I could never do another one so good.” Marquez, asked about his qualifying, said he made “a few mistakes.” Everyone, it should be noted, faces this same problem: Every tire consumed in the practices and qualifying becomes unavailable as a choice for the race, so good tire planning and tire strategy are vital. Valentino Rossi, who under penalty from Sepang must start tomorrow from last place, rode Q2 as a practice but low-sided into the gravel. An on-bike camera showed him mysteriously lifting off as if pulled by an invisible parachute, after which the visual field is obscured by a hail of smooth gravel. He was in Q2 but never near the top. Remember, Rossi has surprised us all before. He is what Lorenzo calls “a Sunday man,” a rider who can be very fast in the race after an undistinguished weekend. 
THAT LEG OFF THE PEG? During the last five years, we have seen top riders take the inside foot off the peg to trail that leg during the last part of braking. When I initially asked Valentino Rossi about this, he said that no advantage could be seen on the computer. “It feels right,” he said. Watching the Valencia practices, I am thinking riders are most often doing this just as the braking-lightened rear wheel is swinging outward at the beginning of corner insertion. Could the leg out on the inside be acting as a counterweight against the outward swing of the back wheel? The danger in lifting the back wheel during braking is this: As the back wheel swings outward, the force tending to swing it further rapidly increases. Sticking that leg out on the inside might offer the rider a controllable counterweight against this. Throughout the history of motorcycling, there have been vocal opponents of any and every such “deviation” from a neat, with-the-bike style. Today, tire grip has risen so high that staying with the bike would just grind its parts on the ground. Today’s very gymnastic riding, by placing the rider as low as possible in the corner, holds the bike more upright than would otherwise be possible. This keeps grip high by staying as much as possible off the edges of the tires, and it keeps parts clear of the ground. Dragging a leg may be more of the same—riders doing what they have to do to remain fast and in control. 
SLIPPIN’ AND A’ SLIDIN’ We’ve seen a lot of controlled back-end-out sliding in MotoGP this year. This may be the result of riders pushing hard in qualifying, but it could also involve the assistance of a yaw-control system. With on-board GPS, plus one or two inertial Measuring Units (IMUs), modern MotoGP bikes now know which way is up and can easily measure their rate of rotation around the vertical axis and their yaw angle with respect to the corner line. Shouldn’t be too hard, then, to electronically recover a slide that looks like getting out of hand. And here at Valencia, Marc Marquez was really hangin’ it out in Q2. Big slides that looked like “bye, bye” for sure, but which were smoothly recovered. It could perfectly well be Marc himself doing that. Or some safety net that acts when necessary. Production cars have had such yaw-control systems for years, but for bikes this was for a long time not possible. The coming of IMUs has been the enabling factor. I well remember how such episodes so often ended in the past—the back end lets go and, bam, the rider is down, sliding or tumbling. Tires got better, suspensions got better, and each advance added a measure of control so you could get away with a bit more sliding. For those among us who want a manly contest of unassisted human action, remember this; riders don’t like being bammed. I saw one bike today slide out so far—without being high-sided—that it just stopped in mid corner, like a Supermoto whose rider got too fancy with the thumb brake. Less control is easy, if anyone’s interested! Hard tires, short travel, stiffly sprung shocks, and a bendy “wind up and let go” chassis have come and gone, but their “technology” is easy to achieve. Please yourselves! I find myself attracted to the general trend, which is more control and fewer “bams.” 
QUALIFYING RESULTS: GRAN PREMIO DE LA COMUNITAT VALENCIANA
| FRONT ROW | |||||
| 1. | Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) | Movistar Yamaha MotoGP | 1'30.011 | ||
| 2. | Marc Marquez (SPA) | Repsol Honda Team | 1'30.499 | ||
| 3. | Dani Pedrosa (SPA) | Repsol Honda Team | 1'30.516 | ||
| SECOND ROW | |||||
| 4. | Aleix Espargarò (SPA) | Team Suzuki Ecstar | 1'30.917 | ||
| 5. | Cal Crutchlow (GBR) | CWM LCR Honda | 1'30.948 | ||
| 6. | Bradley Smith (GBR) | Monster Yamaha Tech3 | 1'31.012 | ||
| THIRD ROW | |||||
| 7. | Andrea Iannone (ITA) | Ducati Team | 1'31.056 | ||
| 8. | Pol Espargarò (SPA) | Monster Yamaha Tech3 | 1'31.080 | ||
| 9. | Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) | Ducati Team | 1'31.245 | ||
| FOURTH ROW | |||||
| 10. | Danilo Petrucci (ITA) | Octo Pramac Racing | 1'31.292 | ||
| 11. | Maverick Viñales (SPA) | Team Suzuki Ecstar | 1'31.340 | ||
| 12. | Valentino Rossi (ITA) | Movistar Yamaha MotoGP | 1'31.471 | ||
| FIFTH ROW | |||||
| 13. | Michele Pirro (ITA) | Ducati Team | 1'31.780 | ||
| 14. | Stefan Bradl (GER) | Aprilia Racing Team Gresini | 1'31.824 | ||
| 15. | Hector Barbera (SPA) | Avintia Racing | 1'31.851 | ||
| SIXTH ROW | |||||
| 16. | Loris Baz (FRA) | Forward Racing | 1'31.856 | ||
| 17. | Nicky Hayden (USA) | Aspar MotoGP Team | 1'32.083 | ||
| 18. | Yonny Hernandez (COL) | Octo Pramac Racing | 1'32.142 | ||
| SEVENTH ROW | |||||
| 19. | Alvaro Bautista (SPA) | Aprilia Racing Team Gresini | 1'32.282 | ||
| 20. | Scott Redding (GBR) | Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS | 1'32.448 | ||
| 21. | Jack Miller (AUS) | CWM LCR Honda | 1'32.564 | ||
| EIGHTH ROW | |||||
| 22. | Mike Di Meglio (FRA) | Avintia Racing | 1'32.716 | ||
| 23. | Anthony West (AUS) | AB Motoracing | 1'33.049 | ||
| 24. | Eugene Laverty (IRL) | Aspar MotoGP Team | 1'33.066 | ||
| NINTH ROW | |||||
| 25. | Toni Elias (SPA) | Forward Racing | 1'33.092 | ||
| 26. | Broc Parkes (AUS) | E-Motion IodaRacing Team | 1'33.577 | ||
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