Michael Scott | October 13, 2017
DAY ONE NEWS FROM MOTEGI
Moto3 riders were warned again on race eve at Motegi, in a special summit meeting threatening heavily increased fines and other punishments for the still widespread practice of dawdling on track or in pit lane in qualifying, waiting for a slipstream.
Race Director Mike Webb was flanked by Dorna chief Carmelo Ezpeleta and the FIM Stewards as he laid down the law. While no new formal penalties were announced, he promised that earlier threats of pit-lane starts and even disqualification were now all the more imminent.
Later, he explained his position.
“They are young children, and they have to learn,” he told Dorna.com.
The problem was almost unknown in Moto2 and MotoGP, and the biggest issue was safety. The younger riders aren’t so aware of the dangers,” he said. At the meeting he had shown clips of accidents caused by riders going slowly on the racing line.
He didn’t want to introduce new regulations or new methods of qualifying in the middle of the season, he continued, but he had told the riders that penalties for repeat offenders would me much stronger for the rest of this season.
Jonas Folger flew home just two days before practice began for in-depth medical tests, with a suspected recurrence of a debilitating infection with the Epstein-Barr virus.
The German, whose performance had dropped off somewhat after he had led his home GP on the Monster Yamaha and finished a close second to Marquez, had been increasingly stricken by exhaustion.
On arriving in Japan, he said, he felt so weak that “I could hardly leave my hotel room”. He visited the doctors of the Clinica Mobile, who advised him to go home for hospital tests.
There is little treatment other than rest for sufferers from the Epstein-Barr virus.
Folgers absence is potentially good news for Yamaha Superbike rider Michael van der Mark, who was called up to replace the injured Valentino Rossi at Aragon, but found upon arrival that his services would not be required.
Now the Dutch rider’s name is high on the list to replace Folger, although not until the Malaysian GP, two races away.
There was no time for him to come to Japan, and next week’s Australian GP clashes with the Superbike event at Jerez in Spain.
For the Japanese race, Yamaha factory tester Kohta Nozane was pressed into service at the last minute on the Monster Yamaha, and distinguished himself by placing 13th in the first day of free practice, two tenths and one place down on Rossi.
The more experienced Yamaha tester Katsuyuki Nakasuga was already entered as a wild card (he placed 24th and last).
This made three Japanese riders in the Motegi race. Former 250 champion and MotoGP rider Hiroshi Aoyama, a factory tester for Honda, was entered in place of the injured Jack Miller, on the VDS Honda. He was 22nd.
Suzuki has joined the “go fly a kite” group, with its latest “aero bodywork” making its debut, and cast in the same mould as that of Ducati and Aprilia.
Like those two, the modified fairing – tested for the first time after the last GP at Aragon – comprises a box-section slapped on the side. It is a bit lower than Ducati’s very obvious units, and a bit longer.
All factories are allowed one aero update per rider in the first season, and these complete the full set.
Marquez’s flag-to-flag jinx struck again at Motegi, when for a third time the defending champion had to miss a formal practice of the new bike-swap procedure – and for the same reason as before.
The new practice was first tried at Silverstone, and tested again at Misano and Aragon at the end of the FP2 sessions. But two out of three times, Marquez had crashed late in the sessions, so did not have two bikes available to practice the change-over.
He did it again at Motegi.
The other notable crash on Friday came when Cal Crutchlow was taken by surprise under braking by Jorge Lorenzo, ahead of him but travelling slower than he had expected.
Braking to avoid the bump, Crutchlow lost the front, and his sliding bike cannoned straight into Lorenzo’s Ducati.
It was a somewhat spectacular crash, and the pair had a heated exchange in the gravel. Later, Crutchlow acknowledged that “I look like the villain;” but added that the slow-moving Lorenzo should share the blame.