By Dan Moakes
July 26 2013

Injury had not substantially derailed Jorge Lorenzo’s championship hopes for the 2013 FIM MotoGP World Championship, after the Spaniard managed to finish fifth at Assen and therefore keep Dani Pedrosa well in sight; but would Dani add to his run of past wins in Germany?

Round eight of the series was taking place at the modern Sachsenring, where Pedrosa has won six Grands Prix in total, and where his rookie team-mate in the Repsol Honda squad, Marc Márquez, has also won three times. Assen winner Valentino Rossi, Lorenzo’s works Yamaha team-mate, also has five wins on his CV; whereas Jorge has not been a winner at the venue. On this occasion, the track proved uncomfortable for a number of riders, with as many as sixteen crashes happening during the various practice sessions.

Márquez and Rossi both avoided incident, qualifying first and third respectively - Rossi back on the front row after a reasonably long absence. But the two men at the top of the championship were not so lucky. Lorenzo’s crash on Friday caused a re-occurrence of his collarbone injury from Assen. He was out for the weekend, and it was thought he would miss the next race, seven days later. Pedrosa should have made the most of this, but instead suffered his own collarbone fracture on Saturday. He was initially cleared as fit enough to race, and would have started twelfth, but in the end he was forced to withdraw.

Other crashes befell the likes of Bryan Staring, the Gresini FTR-Honda man; and also Cal Crutchlow, with the Tech 3 Yamaha man injuring his hand. Despite this, Cal still recorded the second fastest time, for his fourth front row start of the season. Local man Stefan Bradl had also been fast on the LCR Honda, but his own qualifying crash restricted him to ‘only’ fourth on the grid, one place behind his Assen position.

Back in 2002, in the first year of the 990cc four-stroke MotoGP machinery, the nature of the track at the Sachsenring had allowed three riders on the old 500cc two-stroke bikes to qualify in the top four. Similarly, in 2013 the best performance to date for one of the CRT bikes saw Aleix Espargaró start from fifth position with his ART and its production-based Aprilia engine. The Aspar team rider had four of the prototype racing machines immediately behind him on the grid. Team-mate Randy de Puniet was back in P12 in the absence of Pedrosa.

The leading Ducati was piloted by their most established works rider, with Nicky Hayden sixth. On the other red bike, Andrea Dovizioso was ninth. Between them were Bradley Smith, for Tech 3 Yamaha, and Álvaro Bautistá, for Gresini Honda. More CRT riders running very well were Claudio Corti, tenth for Forward Racing, and Danilo Petrucci, in P11 for IodaRacing. Behind de Puniet there followed Héctor Barberá, Michele Pirro, Michael Laverty, Yonny Hernández, Colin Edwards, Karel Abraham, Hiroshi Aoyama, Lukáš Pešek and Bryan Staring. Pirro’s Pramac Ducati team-mate, Andrea Iannone, would have started last but had also been injured in a crash.

In dry and bright conditions, the start of the race saw Rossi get away in the lead, heading Bradl, and with the remarkable Espargaró passing Márquez for third. Crutchlow was fifth, from Bautistá, Smith, Hayden, Dovizioso and Corti. The Sachsenkurve is one of many left-handers at this venue, which requires heavy braking and follows a downhill plunge after a fast right-hander, turn eleven. That was the place where Bradl took the lead of his home race, on the inside of Rossi on lap one.

A few moments later at turn one, the right-handed Coca Cola Curve, Espargaró was looking to get round the outside of Rossi, as both men defended from Márquez behind. The order did not change, but Bautistá was now through to fifth, with Crutchlow, Smith, Hayden, Dovizioso and Corti followed by Pirro, Petrucci, Edwards, de Puniet, Barberá, Abraham, Aoyama, Laverty, Staring, Pešek and Hernández - although the Paul Bird Motorsport rider would soon be the first man to crash.

Towards the front, Espargaró was not demonstrating the pace to stay with the leaders, and he would soon lose out to both Bautistá, at the Sachsenkurve, and Crutchlow; and not too long afterwards to Smith. The final left-hander is called Quickenburgkurve, and is acute and uphill, and this was where Cal then moved up to fourth place with a move on the inside. Bradl, Rossi and Márquez held the first three places, with Crutchlow now chasing after them. But the next change came when Valentino lost out to Marc in another Quickenburgkurve pass.

Rossi then had a brief ‘moment’ with the rear of his bike, which meant Crutchlow was now placed right on his tail. Quickenburgkurve was the scene of another overtake involving Márquez, going through into the lead on the inside of Bradl; but this time the German almost got back alongside following through onto the main start-finish straight. These two had eased clear a touch, only for Rossi to set fastest lap and marginally close the gap to Bradl. But Márquez went quicker still as he now took his advantage to 0.7s and beyond.

Márquez was over 1.0s ahead by the time Rossi got through to second position, getting on the inside of Bradl for turn eight, the left-handed Audi-Brucke. By now, fifth man Bautistá was running alone, but Crutchlow was quickly in a position to push Bradl back another position. Stefan had a moment that meant he drifted wide at Quickenburgkurve, so that Cal had his chance. With the leader clear by almost 2.0s and Bradl now only just about in touch in fourth, the closest contest was between Rossi and Crutchlow for second.

At around half-distance, the Englishman took his momentum through turn eleven to set up for a pass at the Sachsenkurve, and in second place he began to leave the multi-champion trailing a little: Rossi would later describe how his Yamaha had begun to slide. Márquez was lapping rapidly and had a 2.8s lead, which Crutchlow started to chip away at, and which stabilised at about 1.6s with five laps to go. Therefore Marc took his second MotoGP race victory, also the 80th in the premier class for a Spanish rider, dating back to Álex Crivillé’s first in 1992; and meanwhile Crutchlow matched his best GP result. The next four were well spaced out at the flag, with Rossi then Bradl, Bautistá (his best result so far this year) and Smith.

Dovizioso had got past team-mate Hayden before also relegating Espargaró to take seventh, just ahead of the ART man, who is yet to be beaten home by a CRT rival this season. Nicky was next, on the last of the full factory bikes. Corti’s FTR-Kawasaki had lost several positions as the race progressed, such that the 26-year-old Italian finished in P15, behind Pirro, Barberá, de Puniet, Edwards and Petrucci. Outside the points were Laverty, Aoyama, Abraham and Pešek, with Staring on the FTR-Honda suffering a late crash after having been lapped.

The two leading contenders had been restricted to fourth and fifth places at Assen, but with both Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo unable to race in Germany the way was left clear for Marc Márquez to really take advantage, moving ahead of both men. Cal Crutchlow and Valentino Rossi both made up ground, whilst Stefan Bradl had a noteworthy run at home, although without quite achieving his first podium visit in the class. Will the turnaround at the top be consolidated next time out, or perhaps reversed again?

Standings after eight races: Márquez 138; Pedrosa 136; Lorenzo 127; Crutchlow 107; Rossi 101; Dovizioso 74; Bradl 64; Bautistá 58; Hayden 57; Espargaró 52 ·· CRT leader: Espargaró.
Honda 176; Yamaha 172; Ducati 75; ART 52; FTR-Kawasaki 25; Ioda Suter-BMW 15; PBM-ART 3; FTR-Honda 2.