MotoGP Season - 2010 Qatar Results

The 2010 MotoGP premier class flavour opened much as due Sunday night in beautiful Doha, Qatar, with Casey Stoner on the pole and the two Fiat Yamaha studs on the front row. Five laps into the race, Stoner was finished for the night, and Round 1 was suddenly up for grabs. Valentino Rossi then spent added day at the duty demonstrating that he is the prizewinning in the business and the odds-on favorite to repeat as World Champion. However, whatever emerging guns are suggesting that it’s not all going to be business as customary in 2010.

Early on, digit could see this wasn’t going to be no steenkin’ procession. Although Rossi ended up leading 17 of the 22 laps, Dani Pedrosa, Stoner and an antecedent Andrea Dovizioso every enjoyed some time in the lead. At the moment when Stoner lost the front end on Lap 5, Rossi, Pedrosa, Nicky Hayden and Dovizioso were every within 3 seconds of him and within a half second of digit another. 

Jorge Lorenzo, New Kid in Town Ben Spies and a surprising Randy de Puniet were all running within three seconds of Dovizioso. Lap 6 of this race was about as good as it ever gets in MotoGP, with the top 13 riders all within 9 seconds of each other. It was, as they say in the Southwest Airlines commercials, “ON”.

• Three of the crowning octad finishers were Americans.
• Nicky Hayden is feat to be a factor again this year, the way he was in 2008. Not the champion he was in 2007, but a definite contender.
• Ben Spies is for real. A legitimate danger to win the denomination in the foreseeable future. Ditto for Dovizioso.
• Yamaha is the crowning machine discover there. Ducati haw be the most overrated machine discover there. Honda has a puncher’s quantity most weeks. Suzuki is discover to lunch.
• Randy de Puniet is improving. He haw belong in my mythical Division 1. In that he’s French, I wait him to run stronger in training than in races. At Doha he qualified 4th and ended 6th.
• Dani Pedrosa is not yet up to speed this year. Although he got soured to his usual un-freaking-believable start, he qualified 7th and ended 7th.
• For perhaps the prototypal time EVER, Jorge Lorenzo exhibited whatever patience and maturity. After getting soured to his usual poor start, he appeared content to settle backwards in 6th place. At Stoner’s exit he moved into 5th. At Lap 7 he sat in 4th place, where he remained, biding his time, until Lap 21, when he ate Hayden’s, and then Dovizioso’s lunch and got Rossi in his crosshairs. At the finish, he trailed Rossi by a plain second. If the race had lasted one more lap he probably would have won. Is this a new, improved Jorge Lorenzo, one with exclusive six engines to last an whole season? We’ll encounter out.