MotoGP Sepang: Monsoon rain, tires and red flags and rider quotes

The 16th round of the 2012 World Championship at the Sepang International circuit was full of joy, but it also had a lot of drama in this second consecutive race weekend. It started Friday morning when Maverick Vinales decided in an unexpected and shocking move to quit his team while he was second in the Moto3 championship.

The second surprise was Malaysian rider Zulfahmi Khairuddin in pole position in Moto2 and leading the race for a while to the delight of a fan packed Sepang circuit, until Sandro Cortese decided that he wanted the victory along with winning the inaugural Moto3 World championship title, all in the same day. The German rider would deny Khairuddin the win by just 0.028s.

The Moto2 race was barn-burning shocker. Three riders got on the podium for the first time this season, Alex de Angelis, Anthony West and Gino Rea in a wet and wild race that had to be red flagged after 17 laps, which saw a highly disappointed Marc Marquez crash out of 6th after coming under pressure by Andrea Iannone, and having to postpone his championship title till next week. The surprise of the Moto2 race was wild card rider Hafizh Syahrin, who gave the regular riders and even the wet weather specialists a run for their money after coming from 26th on the grid to lead the race for several laps until he started to fade and finish fourth, but he like Kharaddin were the real two stars of the day for the Malaysians.

The MotoGP race saw a superb Dani Pedrosa take another victory (his fifth in the last six races) and his first ever wet race and shorten the gap in the standings to Jorge Lorenzo, but the red flag on lap 14 that halted the race, sparked controversy and conspiracy theories from many fans.

Many believed that a struggling Lorenzo, who had already worn down his soft rain tire (the harder compound rear was chosen by the four Honda riders and Ducati’s Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden) and was being caught by a hard charging and hounding Casey Stoner, had raised his hand twice in order to get the Race Direction to stop the proceedings a couple of laps to early in order to insure his second place in the race, however Valentino Rossi also raised his hand and many riders also agreed once in their garages, that the race couldn’t have continue in such treacherous conditions and even a re-start would be impossible with monsoonic rains pouring down from the heavens and with the impending dusk, as the race was scheduled at 4pm instead of the usual 2pm, to avoid the maximum heat of the day.

Even if Pedrosa does win the next two races (even if Phillip Island seems unlikely, with team mate Stoner who will go all out and throw caution to the wind to take a final victory in front of his home crowd before he retires) Lorenzo needs only come third in both rounds to take the championship crown and the Yamaha rider is playing it very, very safe.

with TWOWHEELSBLOG