MotoGP Misano – Day 3 Report (SPOILER ALERT)

The entire paddock was affected by a terrible loss today, the young talent Shoya Tomizawa passed away after an awful accident that occurred during the Moto2 race. It was hard to listen to the riders in the press conference, they are aware of the risk and for this simple reason we should respect them even more. Shoya wasn’t the first and won’t be the last; “this is racing” which is sometimes true. Let’s keep him in our memories and prayers, never forgetting that these sportsmen are risking their life in every single session.

125cc

Thanks to perfect racing weather the two stroke category started smoothly. The very first laps produced some great overtaking maneuvers and the riders were eager to stay up front.  After a while Nico Terol and Marc Marquez decided to run away from the rest and within a couple of laps they were far ahead of everybody. Towards the end of the race, with four laps remaining Marquez was leading with over a second from Terol and was able to extend this lead to 2.185s and win the race in Misano. Efren Vazquez was the third Spaniard on the podium, followed by Bradley Smith, Sandro Cortese and Pol Espargaro. Now Marc Marquez leads the championship with 197 points, followed by Terol with 188 and Espargaro with 177.

Moto2

Toni Elias was able to win a perfect race, from pole position to the chequered flag. The champioship leader made a magistral performance winning here in Misano, giving a big blow on the other rivals, even though a superb start from Andrea Iannone was soon put aside with a ride through penalty.  The sad news of the day took place when during lap 12 Shoya Tomizawa lost control of his Technomag-CIP Suter bike on the fast part of the track and fell to the ground and was accidentally hit by Alex De Angelis and Scott Redding.  The podium was completed by Julian Simon and Thomas Luthi, who stormed to third after starting from 15th on the grid.  Now Elias leads the championship with 211 points, ahead of Simon with 128 and Luthi with 124.

MotoGP

Dani Pedrosa executed a great start, and was able to stay up front from the beginning until the end of the race. The Repsol Honda rider was able to gap a lot in the first laps. A great battle for 3rd place ensued with Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner and Andrea Dovizioso. With 17 laps to go Rossi decided to stay up front with a surgery pass for him and a brilliant overtaking maneuver guaranteed him the provisional podium finish that he maintained until the end of the race.  Jorge Lorenzo was able to finish in second place and now leads the championship with 63 points over Dani Pedrosa. Andrea Dovizioso was
fourth, followed by Casey Stoner and Ben Spies.

Press Conference

Dani Pedrosa – I was shocked when I heard the news, because until Parc Ferme I didn’t know about it so I was ready to have a good time after a back to back win.  The contrast was so big for me, but sadly there is nothing we can do about it.  My victory was great, team is working good and it is a good moment for us. But today it doesn’t mean anything at all.

Jorge Lorenzo – I really cannot speak too much about the race because what happened today brings the race on another level. Shoya was a nice person, a good guy and a strong rider. Today we had bad luck and we lost him.

Valentino Rossi – Yeah, it really is a bad situation. In these moments all the results means nothing, I saw the crash on TV and at the beginning I hoped that De Angelis’ bike had caught up with Shoya’s bike. But when I saw the replay I understood that the bike hit his body and that there was Redding as well. At the beginning I was hoping that it was a big crash with a lot of fractures and not finish like this. Shoya was a big fun, always smiling, very fast and
he was also very young.  So I am deeply sorry as everybody else. There was a really strange atmosphere on the podium, you wait to have fun after a good race also because you are in Italy with a lot of friends and fans. You know we went through this also when Daijiro Kato passed away, this time we knew the bad news just before the podium. We need to be happy though both for De Angelis and especially for Redding.