MotoGP 2013 Gran Premio Iveco De Aragon: Bad day for Dani

When we celebrate a birthday, we would like to experience all the good things in our lives: probably a party with family and friends with good food and drinks, or maybe we can spend it with our significant other, but all in all, ones’ birthday is supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year.

Unless your name is Dani Pedrosa.

It was looking good at the onset of the race. Pedrosa was starting from third place on the grid behind fellow Spaniards Jorge Lorenzo in second and Marc Marquez in first . This is Marc’s seventh pole of the 2014 season and he was looking for his fifth win of the year.

At the start Marc got off the line slowly. Jorge, who had a great launch, took the lead going into turn 1, and before the end of the second lap had built up a margin of more than one second ahead of his rivals.

Both the Repsol Hondas were fighting for the second and third spot, and on lap 5, Dani overtook Marc for second place. Marquez, never one to back down from a fight, pressured Dani all the way, until the unthinkable happened on lap 6.

Marquez tried to go outside to try to get Dani to move off the racing line. The Hondas touched ever so slightly, and this was enough to get the bike of Pedrosa out of sorts and wobble as they came out of turn 12. Even before Dani could completely power out of the corner, he went highside (highside is a term for a motorcycle accident where there’s a sudden and violent rotation of the bike around its long axis and throwing the rider off the bike) and landed hard on the tarmac. This caused his eventual retirement, and most probably the loss of his chance to fight for the world championship. As the shock and horror of the Spanish fans subsided, Carl Crutchlow overtook Alvaro Bautista at turn 5 to move up to fifth, causing more agony for the fans.

While all of this was happening behind him, Jorge managed to maintain a lead of up to 1.318 seconds from Marc. But, as we all know the kid will never give up and just got better as each lap progressed. Marquez was biding his time until finally moving past Lorenzo into first place with 10 laps to go.

On lap 17, Marquez had a 0.454 second gap to Lorenzo but Jorge was never a threat. The 20-year old was well on his way to his fifth win of his rookie season.

Alvaro Bautista on his Honda fought it out with crowd favorite Valentino Rossi for third place, and, with five laps to go, Bautista got the better of the Italian at turn 14. With the prospect of an all Spaniard podium, the crowd were visibly excited and were at the edge of their seats. But Vale had other plans. On the following lap, Rossi braked later than Alvaro and got past him at turn 1, to secure the 146th podium of his MotoGP career.

Marquez on his Honda RC213V took the checkered flag ahead of Lorenzo and Rossi.

Marc now leads the championship with 278 points, with Lorenzo in second place holding a 39 point deficit, while birthday boy Dani is in third place with 219 points.

MotoGP now flies over to Malaysia for the Shell Advance Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix.

Thinking of attending? Tickets are still available for the race at the Sepang International Circuit and their various authorized agents.