MotoGP:Great Britain Part Une - It's Races Like These...

Whoa!

Now that one had shades of Indy, dontcha think, bro's?!

Action all the way up to the line and it's my job to sort through it all, albeit belatedly as this actually took place last Sunday, so let's do it...
With this one being on British soil, it was like the BBC made more of an effort to ensure their coverage was up to scratch (which in fairness it usually is) as qualifying was on for a longer time (over an hour instead of one on the dot) as was the race (a whopping two hours thirty minutes to capture all the build-up as well, a la their Formula 1 coverage!).

News at this point comes in the form of the evermore impressive Scott Redding, current rider of the Marc VDS Racing Team, who will be promoted to the full MotoGP class next year in the form of the Go&Fun Honda Gresini Team, likely to partner Alvaro Bautista, who's been having quite an impressive season so far imo.

QUALIFYING

For this one, as standard when it's the 'home race' for British viewers, all eyes were on the likes of Monster Yamaha Tech III's Bradley Smith & Cal Crutchlow, along with Michael Laverty of Paul Bird Motorsport.

That was definitely the right way to set the focus to start with as there were some fairly hefty smashes come the free practice as Cal was the unfortunate victim of two sets of crashes, effectively destroying both machines resulting in a frantic race against time to ensure they were ready to make the grid for qualifying itself.

Unfortunately, the thing same happened to Laverty (though once rather than twice) meaning that already British pride was dented, even though it was not qualifying.

Onto Q1 itself and it was all about the battle between Smith & Colin Edwards, as the two set out early on, to be clear of the rest of the field and made it fairly effortlessly into Q2. That brought out the big guns did it, and with the likes of Jorge Lorenzo, current championship leader Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, for sure it was going to be another three way tussle for pole position. Needless to say, it was not long before Lorenzo clocked the first pole position of the championship leaders and he smashed the previous lap record held by former Repsol Honda Team member Casey Stoner.

That would not last, however, as by the end of Q2, Marquez would make it on pole, in a move similar to the qualifying for last weekend's Belgium F1 as he followed Lorenzo over the line snatching pole from him in the dying seconds and pushing an even greater gap on the lap record from 2:02.020 in 2011 from Casey Stoner, to an astonishing 2:01.691.

Naturally this would go even further by the wayside during the race as the likes of Lorenzo and Marquez were clocking in the 2:00 flat range by Sunday's race pace.

THE RACE

Onto Sunday morning and once again, disaster struck, as Cal Crutchlow lost control of his bike in quite spectacular style in the warm-up, though luckily for the Tech III rider he was not seriously hurt, apart from considerable grazing down his arm.

It was what happened next that was truly astonishing as Marquez, having been following him around in warm up, crashed at the same place in almost identical circumstances!

He had to bail out faster than a jet pilot about to crash as in falling where he did, he would have been sandwiched between the two machines as they collided with disastrous results; a dislocated shoulder for the number 93 rider from Spain. :(

This was effectively looking to have put paid to his race weekend and his team engineer told the BBC cameras that effectively they were looking at damage limitations as, although Marquez had crashed, he had insisted he was going to race anyway...

Talk about hardcore, bro's!

So, with this accident changing the landscape for the race and upcoming title battle, this was effectively a chance for Crutchlow, Pedrosa & Lorenzo to scrap it out for the win.

Things would never be so convoluted for Tech III though, as Crutchlow has not exactly had the best of fortunes around Silverstone; breaking his collarbone in 2011 and of course, who could forget last year's efforts, breaking his ankle on the Saturday only to race on the Sunday from well down in the field and come up to finish an amazing 6th position!

Ho-lee you-know-what, bro's!

The start itself saw Lorenzo get off to an absolute flier, forcing me to consider whether they've finally got his launch package sorted out as he oh-so-nearly came together with his championship rival (and pole-sitter), Marquez as they battled it out for rights to go first into the first corner!

Following them around was the LCR Honda of Stefan Bradl, making it next before Valentino Rossi & Pedrosa, whilst further down the order saw Pedrosa heading up Crutchlow (who yet again got bogged down at the start!) and Bautista.

Was this again looking like a battle between Bautista & Crutchlow? Only time would tell, bro's...

By the end of lap one, Lorenzo & Marquez had already pulled out over a second's lead over the rest of the pack, forcing me to consider whether this would indeed be a repeat of Brno once Pedrosa broke free of the following pack (even if he was down the order somewhat!).

It was looking likely, the moment Pedrosa got Rossi before the first casualty of the day, Lukáš Pešek, was out; poor guy, that's two-for-two now!

Behind Pedrosa, Crutchlow was beginning to lose time to Honda Gresini's Bautista as he started closing down on the Doctor, in a move that forced the commentators to consider if this was not going to be reminiscent of Indianapolis earlier this year as the two of them fought desperately for position that day!

Finally, something broke for Pedrosa in terms of fortune and he got Bradl allowing him to try and close down the almost three second gap the front two had opened up by this time.

'This should not have been happening' was my majority thought as I saw Marquez scrapping with Lorenzo for position at the very front of the grid as you know what he'd done in warm-up that morning!

Talk about a 'never-say-die' attitude!

He at this point set a 2:01.9 lap record forcing me, like Steve Parrish, to wonder just what he'd had for lunch or what was in that injection, lol, to force such pace from him!

A mere two laps was all that lap record stood for, as Pedrosa proved he was ready to hunt them down by shaving off a few tenths of that coming in at something like 2:01.92 instead of Marquez's 2:01.96.

Proving that someone had been looking into their crystal ball, the three of them started to gap the field even more, alluding to the race at Brno being no fluke in terms of the sheer Spanish speed!

Behind them Rossi had overturned Bradl's position and the two of them were busy scrapping it out for position at the Vale, going back and forth as they swapped positions repeatedly. For fifth position this was and Bautista by this time had already taken the pair of them.

In CRT it once again was Aleix Espargaro leading the way around Silverstone, who was driving a rather lonely and uninterrupted race down in 11th position, though when his brother joins him next year, who's to say which one of them will come out on top?!

More to follow in part 2 of my MotoGP:Great Britain review, right after the jump --->