Jorge Lorenzo slams Bautista and Ben Spies has more tire woes
Published on 30 Jun 2012 by Toni M.
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Jorge Lorenzo slammed Alvaro Bautista for his over eager move that eliminated both riders on the first lap of the Assen race saying that his fellow Spaniard was like “a five year-old kid playing with his Playstation and not a 27-year old rider that has won a World title” repeating that “he [Bautista] has done these types of move before and how he could expect to pass me when he was a 100mt behind me!”
The Yamaha rider was also upset over Bautista’s penalty believing it was too light and that the Gresini rider should have been disqualified and not start from the back of the grid in the upcoming Sachsenring GP, citing his own disqualification in 2005. Lorenzo’s third engine was also destroyed in the crash and it had just 200km on it and he believes that the Race Direction may make an exception and let him use an extra one to add to his allocation. As we expected Honda did not take this well, letting everyone know their position on the matter which was a flat out no. Stating that the rules have to be obeyed and when a crash occurs there is always the probability that an engine could be rendered useless, and stating that the M1 doesn’t have an automatic cut off switch so the engine was destroyed not by the crash but because it stayed on after the incident.
“Well, today was a complete disaster, Alvaro’s move was crazy. I met him after the incident, he apologised and we shook hands but in my opinion this is not enough to justify the accident. When I made a mistake in Japan in 2005 I was penalized with a race. Race Direction told me that he will start from last position on the grid in Sachsenring but this is nothing. We hope that we will be lucky in the future that nothing will happen but if the riders are not penalized properly then they will continue to do crazy things like today. My leg has a big bruise, a big impact but nothing serious happened. Luckily for us we had a 25-point advantage or we would now be far behind. Now we are at zero with Casey so we begin again, the Championship is long so let’s see what happens,” said Lorenzo.
Ben Spies had more tire woes at Assen. After being hampered by tire issues at Silverstone where the left hand side of his rear tire blistered (Stoner, Hayden and Barbera had the same problem) at Assen the Yamaha rider lost chunks of rubber from his tire just like Valentino Rossi, who started several laps earlier to have the same problems and he had to pit and change his tire to continue, but Spies managed to gingerly to ride around the issue, but couldn’t stop Andrea Dovizioso from overtaking him on the last lap and taking third place.
“Today the bike was good, I struggled with some front grip in the beginning but was able to ride around it,” said Spies. “I managed to stay past Dovi and ride at my own pace, then about seven or eight laps from the end I was pushing to get away. A chunk came out of the tyre and then a second; I couldn’t do anything about it. I was hoping Dovi would get past me as I was worried the tyre would explode and I didn’t want to fall right in front of him. We’ve made some mistakes early in the year but the last two weekends we’ve had a bike to be on the podium but issues have prevented it. The bike and the team are working so well and I’ve been really comfortable on it so it’s disappointing.”
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