Last weekend’s Austrian GP pretty much summed up the first half of the 2017 season. With seven races to go, the battle for the title is as tight as at any time so far with at least four contenders still in with a show and a couple more in with a mathematical chance at least. The wins have been shared around and the silly season pretty much complete as you would expect by this stage. Marquez leads by just 16 points from Dovi with the Yamaha pair of Vinales and Rossi 24 and 33 points behind in 3rd and 4th respectively. Of the rest, Pedrosa and Zarco are “possibles” rather than “probables”
As usual there have been plenty of stories,some of hard luck and disaster and some of out-of-left-field performances. Of the latter the performance of Dovi on the Ducati is most notable. The only rider so far to win 3 races, Ducati’s decision to keep him in preference to Iannone now seems totally justified. Ducati now have a more “all round” bike than it ever has been and they are capable of winning on the non-horsepower tracks as well (though it does require some villainous riding). Dovi is flying the Bologna flag solo at this stage for, while the bike is much improved, Jorge Lorenzo still seems utterly unable to make it a winner (in his hands, at least)
Honda’s test session after Brno was hugely profitable with major advances being made in both chassis tuning and electronics, the Austrian race proving that they can now match Ducati for horsepower and acceleration for the first time in 18 months. And, with Marquez continuing to show maturity in how he manages the bike, the others are still right to be concerned that he is leading the title chase. His pace on all the different types of compound tyres is scary and his ability to string together long runs at near record pace means that he will be hard to beat when the crunch comes. Pedrosa is not out of it but is still suffering from the perpetual problem of being unable to push the bike hard enough to get decent temperature into the tyres.
The major losers so far have been Yamaha who started out the season so promisingly with Maverick punching out the early and effortless wins. Since then the wheels have sort of fallen off (sorry) with chassis and tyre problems leaving them floundering at the pointy end of the race and neither rider being able to contest for the win as tyre degradation becomes a factor. They are the best of the rest, as they should be, but they are a long way away from BEING the best right now and, with each round that goes by, the troubled looks from Lin Jarvis and the other Yamaha execs become more and more pronounced.
On the other side of the Yamaha “garage” the Tech III team’s decision to hire two “rookies” at the same time seems now to have been an inspired one. With Zarco regularly showing up the “works” bikes, how much longer will it be before room is found at the top team for him?
With no-one going anywhere at the top, only a few seats need now to be decided in the “minor” teams and these will require serious amounts of money to be shown before they will be liberated (1 mill is the rumour).
Next weekend is Silverstone then it’s a frantic rush of events closely packed together and, while we normally have time to take in the impact and implications of each race before the next one, we could easily find ourselves wondering just where the time went to in just a few weeks’ time. One thing is certain, come Phillip Island, things could be very frantic indeed. My tip? I think MM93 is in the box seat as long as he continues to ride the way he is at the moment. He just needs to stay cool and rack up the points, a points lead is always a luxury and the others will have to work very hard to take those points from him. Can Dovi win the title on Ducati? Of course he can! Lots of late nights in front of the screen coming up!
Lastly, a word about Jack Miller. Sadly he has lost his “works-supported” ride at Mark VDS but he hasn’t helped his cause. Team managers aren’t impressed with how clever your tweets are, they are impressed by results and Jack’s larrikin ways, no matter how attractive they are to the fans, are not so attractive to team managers tying to balance a budget and show sponsors that they are spending their money wisely.
Oh, and I don’t think I’ve published this link before, but, hey, even if I have, it’s worth another look!
