25 April 2009

Alvaro 3rd On Grid After "non" Qualifying Session


The wisdom of planning GPs into countries' crap weather seasons has once again come into focus with the piss-poor joke of qualifying being null and void in Japan due to torrential downpours, after rain in the desert at Losail.
As such, Alvaro starts from 3rd spot on the grid; "qualifying" being based on the timings from yesterday's Free Practice sessions.

Here's what he had to say...
"Whenever this happens you always regret not pushing harder in the first session but we're on the front row and that will be important for us to make up positions in the first part of the race. I think we have a good setting for any condition so we just have to wait now and see what state the track is in tomorrow.
I felt good in the wet practice this morning - I just had a visibility problem towards the end and couldn't continue to improve my lap time, but the feeling with the bike was good. The objective will be to go out and give 100%, run at the front and take care to judge the track conditions correctly."


Good luck for the race, Bati :-)


3 comments:

abc said...

*giggle*

Someone is obviously not happy with MotoGP right now. ;)

Can't help but agree with it.

gb said...

I think my main issue is on a couple of levels.
Firstly, it simply would have been nice for him to up his grid position from ifrst to pole... though whether that would have really made any difference is hard to say in retrospect. Bit it would have been nice anyway.
And secondly I'm actually miffed as a fan and viewer. We've already got less sessions / coverage, and to put others at risk on account of planning *in spite* of good information of predictable weather conditions, seems simply stupid to me. Fans will always watch the races on whatever date at whatever time of the day or night. They always have and they always will.
What really *does* risk trying the patience of us, in my opinion, is making the sport ridiculous and a lughing stock; of losing sessions or events entirely (or postponing them).
It also baffles me that so much of this kind of thing is defended in the name of 'business' and 'sponsors'... I wonder how the F1 sponsors felt about their logos being covered up and hidden by tarpaulins in Sepang for most of the race?

abc said...

Absolutely agreed. To be honest, the only reason why I still watch the championship(not too interested in the main class really) is because I support a few riders. Without that I would have switched off probably last season already.

And as you say, it boggles the mind how all these recent decisions (Qatar alone has so many things that are just wrong) and rule changes are just nodded off without anyone really speaking up. All in the name of "cost cutting" and making a few more bucks. Especially the Qatar race freaks me out every year. Playing the clowns for the rich guys.
Something really has to change in terms of their decision making or WSBK will really become the biggest road racing championship soon. And this in itself is already a joke, because those two are supposed to be completely different series and not to be compared to each other. But by cutting out its vital parts and alienating fans around the world, MotoGP per se is nothing special anymore...