MotoGP:Sepang (Part One) - Dani vs. Marc War of Stars

After the events of the last round in Aragon, Spain, it remained to be seen what action would be taken after Marc Marquez was deemed to have taken out his team-mate Dani Pedrosa.

The answer? One penalty point taking his total up to three now, meaning that if he clocks up just one more in the remaining rounds, he will be starting from the back of the grid. His team, however, were penalised around 25 points meaning that going into this race in Malaysia, it closed the lead they had over rivals Yamaha.

This one would not be as straightforward and inevitable as some might think...

Going into this one, I have noticed that my reviews are getting longer and longer (because I want to set myself apart from all the other bloggers out there and actually go into significant detail, from a fan's point of view, what the best of the action really is, not just a surmised version! I'm just saying, is all...) and as a result of this it might have driven some readers away (no pun intended!) as they just want the nuts and bolts (again, no pun intended!) of what went on.

For that, I say "go elsewhere, maybe to the official results pages", because I'm not in this for short, concise reviews (even though it is now painfully obvious that I am anything but short and concise!), I'm in this for the long haul and by god (or whatever deity you serve or don't serve! :P) the season is a long haul!

QUALIFYING

Q1 - First of all, it has to be noted at this point that Yamaha Tech III rider Bradley Smith safely made it into Q2 having practised with sufficient enough pace to enable a straight promotion because of his tenth placed finish.

All eyes for this one, as usual, would be on who would come out on tippy top in the CRT battle, with the favourites Colin Edwards and of course Aleix Espargaro showing great promise early on. The latter it was who got the first pole of the session.

However, Edwards' luck ran out right at the very end of the session as he was pipped into Q2 by Andrea Iannone, the former Moto2 rider looking impressive in his debut year in MotoGP. Iannone's luck improved further as he managed to clock a time that was unassailable by even the star of this year's CRT title battle so as a result he led Espargaro into Q2.

One final note at this point goes to Stefan Bradl who was unfortunate to come off his machine in the warm up session that resulted in him being declared unfit to race by doctors because of a fractured right ankle. Seeing the incident I could see why as his ankle was trapped briefly under the bike and when released, his bike tore up the astroturf around the edge of the track with such force that it left it open for him to be injured.

Q2 - There were many highlights in this qualifying session as the pole was fought over by the usual suspects of Cal Crutchlow, Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa, Valentino Rossi & Marc Marquez and it was Cal who took first initiative in posting a time to beat.

That did not last long, however, as Jorge Lorenzo made it his business to undercut that by .7 of a second in the first sector, going on to beat his time by a full second, proving that he was back to his inimitable best.

Valentino Rossi was next across the line giving it an all Yamaha front row flavour, but that wouldn't last as one of the Honda's would spoil the party!

Guess who it was! ;)

Rossi managed to mug Crutchlow's time in second place only for the three Yamaha's to be beaten by Marquez (only temporarily, mind!) who was looking to get yet another pole this season. In doing this, he set a brand new record, taking it from Lorenzo's 2012 time of 2:00.334 and improving it to 2:00.011... uh-oh, was I going to be wrong about which Honda ended on the front row?

Nope! The best was purely saved for last as this all occurred in the closing moments of Q2, meaning that once again Marquez would be leading the charge and his team-mate would be a full row back in 4th.

The race is after the jump===>>