Michael Scott | April 7, 2018
2018 Argentina MotoGP Saturday News
Tough Decisions in Mixed Weather Conditions
Rain had been expected on Friday, for the rest of the weekend. It finally arrived, though very lightly and fitfully, on Saturday – giving MotoGP riders their first time on wet tyres in anger since the Malaysian GP last year.
But it was a very difficult kind of rain, coming and going very unpredictably.
According to pole qualifier Jack Miller: “It wasn’t nice to ride. It could be raining at one corner, then two laps later it would be raining somewhere else.”
Fellow front-row qualifier Dani Pedrosa added: “It was very light. We have to be ready for any conditions tomorrow, but it will be very difficult.”
All hoped for a dry race, but with Friday the only dry day so far, and the track dirty and the new tarmac (from turn 12 through to turn four) very green, tyre choice would be difficult.
Michelin had brought an extra medium compound front and rear, giving four different tyres to choose from at each end.
“Trying to know which tyre to use is going to be a bit of a lottery,” said Miller.
Lorenzo Not Happy with Teammate
The unhappy Jorge Lorenzo’s troubled start to his second year with Ducati got a bit more so in Argentina, after the Spanish Movistar TV network put the cat among the pigeons. They showed a highly provocative quote from an as-yet unbroadcast interview with Lorenzo in which he put the squeeze on his team-mate Dovizioso.
The Italian, he said, had been trying to undermine him since both joined the 125 class at the same time in 2002.
The exact context was not clear, and Jorge declined to answer direct questions, saying he was in “race mode”, and that people should wait to see the full interview, to be broadcast before the next race in Texas.
But many took it as a sign of a forthcoming fall-out with Ducati, in spite of assurances of the opposite from the team.
Lorenzo’s reputation for sometimes willful independence had already been given a boost when he dispensed with his new “riding coach” Alex Debon after just one race. In his early years the young rider had a public falling out with his manager-father, and has since then made other abrupt changes to his support crew.
2018 Argentina MotoGP Saturday News
Moto3 Road Rage?
Moto3 title challenger Aron Canet got away with what appeared to be blatant aggression, when he knocked off Kazakh rookie Makar Yurchenko on Friday morning.
The pair had clashed earlier on the lap, when the new guy slowed the three-times winner. From the outside, it looked as though Canet then hung back, and deliberately dived inside Yurchenko’s CIP KTM.
He was too fast, and his own crash sent Yurchenko flying.
The rules forbid riding “causing danger to other competitors”, and it seemed likely Canet had earned some sanction … at least a grid-position penalty, if not worse. But Race Direction’s investigation concluded it was “a racing incident”, with no further action.