2014 Silverstone MotoGP Race Result: Pulsating Head-To-Head Contest

By Jacob Leech | Sun, 31/08/2014 - 13:04

Full Recap and Results Below:

Marc Marquez has taken his eleventh victory out of twelve races this season following an enthralling race-long dice with Jorge Lorenzo at Silverstone. Under cloudy sunshine Lorenzo and Marquez managed to build a lead of over a second by lap six and the two Spaniards exchanged blows and extended their advantage as the laps wound on, lapping with equal consistency and pace. As the race entered it's closing stages the pair remained locked nose to tail, Marquez stalking Lorenzo relentlessly. The Championship leader took the lead with seven laps remaining and looked to break away instantly.

Marquez wasn't to have it all his own way as Lorenzo responded and reclaimed the lead two laps later following a rare error from the #93. Marquez recovered instantly however to barge past Lorenzo and take over at the front heading onto the final two laps. Despite one huge scare halfway through the penultimate lap, Marquez held on to take victory by a relatively comfortable seven tenths of a second. Given the way his weekend started Lorenzo could take consolation in his ability to match Marquez's pace for the entirety of the race and earn a deserved second place.

Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso were apart of the leading group of six riders in the early stages but were eventually left to scrap it out for the final podium place. 'The Doctor' came out on top to beat both Pedrosa and his compatriot Dovizioso across the line in his record-breaking 246th Grand Prix start. Pol Espargaro finished in sixth place almost 20 seconds behind Dovizioso, he was a further two seconds clear of Stefan Bradl and Andrea Iannone who had a close fight in the final laps. Open class riders Aleix Espargaro and home town hero Scott Redding rounded out the top ten placings.

Results:

Pos. Points Num. Rider Bike Time/Diff.
1 25 93 Marc MARQUEZ Honda 40'51.835
2 20 99 Jorge LORENZO Yamaha 0.732
3 16 46 Valentino ROSSI Yamaha 8.519
4 13 26 Dani PEDROSA Honda 8.694
5 11 4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO Ducati 9.238
6 10 44 Pol ESPARGARO Yamaha 24.746
7 9 6 Stefan BRADL Honda 26.717
8 8 29 Andrea IANNONE Ducati 26.91
9 7 41 Aleix ESPARGARO Forward Yamaha 33.455
10 6 45 Scott REDDING Honda 39.094
11 5 68 Yonny HERNANDEZ Ducati 40.255
12 4 35 Cal CRUTCHLOW Ducati 43.027
13 3 17 Karel ABRAHAM Honda 52.245
14 2 7 Hiroshi AOYAMA Honda 58.981
15 1 15 Alex DE ANGELIS Forward Yamaha 59.164
16   2 Leon CAMIER Honda +1'05.680
17   70 Michael LAVERTY PBM +1'10.939
18   9 Danilo PETRUCCI ART +1'16.834
19   8 Hector BARBERA Avintia +1'16.904
20   63 Mike DI MEGLIO Avintia +1'34.939
21   23 Broc PARKES PBM +1'38.442
22   38 Bradley SMITH Yamaha 1 Lap
Not Classified
    19 Alvaro BAUTISTA Honda 2 Laps

 

2014
12
MotoGP
Silverstone, Great Britain
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Comments

I really have to stop listening to English broadcasts of MotoGP. Every race the commentators tell me this is Smith's race and I believe. And I am just hemorrhaging money at the bookies!

Ride around in 2nd place until a handful of laps to go, then make the devastating pass and simply ride away.

Where have we seen that before...

Marquez is not cruising to make a show of it. He is on the edge all the time. Up until the very last, when Lorenzo has no tire left to fight and could see his chance was lost, only 3 tenths separated them.

When you consider how badly the Yammie was doing in the first few practices, their comeback was remarkable.

I just took a look at the "Analysis" on the MotoGP Website and saw something quite interesting. I only looked at the top 4, so I don't know about what happened farther down the order - but if you look at the top speeds by lap there is a very interesting anomaly. For Marquez, he ran 320kph+ for the first 14 laps - but only cracked 320 once in the last 6. Dani, in 4th, ran 320+ for pretty much the entire race. The Yamahas behaved differently. Lorenzo was like a metronome running 320 more or less exactly through lap 15, then 319, 318.6, 318, 319, 317 for the last five. Rossi was even more interesting - 320kph+ through lap 13 only, then 319, 317, 317, 316 etc.

What we don't know is if this is tire related - a lack of "drive" - out of the Yamahas (we know Rossi had to over-ride somewhat to get past Espargaro and Dovi in the opening phases and ruined his tire earlier) - or fueling or some mix of both. The stark nature of the data I found interesting. The fact that Honda could still produce 320+ at the end of the race - out of both Pedrosa and Marquez, with the implied advantage elsewhere - explains why even Lorenzo's superlative ride today couldn't yield the top step of the podium.

I'm guessing it's more tire-related. One way or another, quite interesting.

Nice analysis cgates66! :)

Judging by the drop off in 46's speeds and the fact he mentioned overusing his rear tire to get by Dovi, I think your thesis makes very good sense

One additional thing this points out is the commonly held belief that the Honda is the horsepower king might be quite exaggerated. This differences seem quite small.

These bikes manage the remaining fuel independently from the rider to make sure the bike finishes the race. Whilst none of us know the intricacies of HRC and Yamaha software design & mapping we do know that the Honda appears to manage 20L of fuel better.

E.G. Its perfectly feasible that the Yamaha may for instance give 97% fuel when the rider opens the throttle fully and 96% on the next lap exiting the same corner and so on to manage the fuel whist the Honda is giving 100%.

Nobody will ever admit to what their bike does............ it be nice to be able to compare though.

Everybody moans about electronics in racing but look at it from a factories perspective, wheels go round pistons go up and down, where they can gain knowledge & train engineers the most is with continually developing software. Once these guys rotate onto road bike design the skills they have developed will allow them to develop software that makes street bikes use less fuel for more power.

Or so the theory goes.

I was watching from a few different corners; Rossi's Yam during all the practices looked unstable at the rear tyre coming out of corners, more than any other bike. Whether that was his riding or the bike who knows?

Until the race Lorenzo didn't have a good weekend either, although Bradley was consistently good and made a great start, and Pol got it together albeit late.

Strange and temperamental beats these bikes.

Really good race though, and a great effort by Scott Redding too.