Jorge Lorenzo stormed the opening race of the 2012 season with a victory from the Honda's Dani Pedrosa & World Champion Casey Stoner. Stoner had led by over 2 seconds but in the final quarter of the race dropped back and was overtaken by both Lorenzo & Pedrosa with ease.Stoner put his late race pace drop off down to an arm pump issue. I am not so sure, he has been highly critical of his team, and the bikes chatter issue this weekend, particularly when the tires begin to wear. These issues seem to to have been (magically) replaced by arm pump on race day. This smacks of a Casey coverup, he is saying to Honda I can win and will once you sort my chatter issue, and by the way I'll take the hit for this one with my 'arm pump' - lol. Probably feeling a bit remorse over his public slating of his team on Saturday night. I'll even throw in a dead arm can't lift trophy performance that the academy would surely consider oscar worthy.
Crutchlow had a good race with job rival Dovizioso losing out in there first head to head. Cal also thought he could have competed for podium if his legs were a bit longer. The spacer put in-between the tank and rider, meant he couldn't touch the ground properly at start.
Rossi had a nightmare. Its now official; he hates the Ducati. 'I can't win on this bike.' It doesn't get more explicit than that. He got pushed off track by Barbera and considered parking up, only out of respect for his engineers whom he wanted to gather more data for, did he continue. He looks a broken man, the fight is clearly draining from the 9 times world champion. His team boss Jerry Burgess is quoted as saying he (Rossi) may not be capable of fighting with Casey or Lorenzo anymore. This is complete rubbish, if he thought that they would all go home. This in my opinion is a clear kick up the arse for Rossi from the veteran crew chief, stop moping- yeah the bikes a bucking bronco, but Hayden can ride it, Stoner rode it. And most importantly this GP12 took 4 months, 25 engineers working round the clock to design and build, there is no other bike, there is no other team. So, ride or quit Vale!
Moto2 is going to be spectacular this year, Iannone is a nut job (Simoncelli style), Marquez is ridiculously talented and Luthi is fiery character. Add to this the fact that all of the other 29 riders are within 6 seconds of the front.
When Stoner has fixed his chatter ( I mean arm pump) and is in the shower 10 minutes before the 2nd place rider in MotoGP, I will be looking to Moto 2 for the real racing.
