By Emilio Pérez de Rozas
In the middle of the afternoon they predicted that it was going to rain. Well, they said there was a 40% chance that it would rain on the Losail track, you know, in Qatar, and when it rains in the desert, it rains. And a lot. And, if it rains, it does not run. For the lights, for the brightness, for the reflection. What do I know! It does not run, period.
So we went in after eating in the desert catari (and now I mean the absolute absence, total, public, not sand), with the feeling that, after a handful of hours of plane (we still had left the return) and the investment of several hundred and hundreds of euros, we were going to run out of races.
But it was shown again that the men of the times are all similar, or equal, in all parts of the world. And, at most, what rained were victories and more victories of Spanish pilots, specifically the triplet No. 13, which was undoubtedly the one of good luck, although it will be good to get away from that number as soon as possible. Right now, in three weeks in Jerez, right?
The truth is that Qatar is a very special grand prize, not only for the schedule, the night, the sand, the debut of the season and the difficulty to put the bikes on point because the weather and schedule are unique and not they are repeated more throughout the whole season.
In that sense, there were situations that, in effect, seemed to us, right? prolongation of the preseason. For example, the absolute dominance of Maverick Viñales in the Moto3 category where, without a doubt, he will prove that he is a true prodigy, the new Marc Márquez, the future Jorge Lorenzo, he, a very nice kid who smells like a champion.
There was the pleasant, gratifying, wonderful surprise to see, finally, emerge, appear, shine, a young Italian, named Romano Fenati, one of the three youngest pilots of the World (the youngest, for weeks, for two months, it is his compatriot Niccolo Antonelli – a 125cc European champion and the other, champion of Italy–), who stuck to Viñales and, in the end, had no choice but to settle for second place. To make up ?, but if Loris Capirossi and Valentino Rossi went to get him to the podium to congratulate him and remind him that they, the champions, could only be sixth in their World Cup debut!
There was a feeling, confirmation, demonstration, that Moto2 is the category, that, maybe, we should write in capital letters, waiting for MotoGP to end up becoming something similar to the hand, of course, of the future CRT. There, in the intermediate category, we checked again what Marc Márquez is made of, pure indestructible steel, invincible even starting from his winter lethargy, ocular injury, very delicate operation of microsurgery and with only five workouts. Márquez said he wanted to score and ended up risking his life to win. That one smells like ‘Doctor’.
But in the pack that pursued Marquez, in addition to traveling a gallant and aggressive Andrea Iannone, who congratulated the winner nicely, was a scared Thomas Luthi who, perhaps, thought that his fabulous preseason was going to provide a blind victory. And, when he had to fight, he got scared. Of course, then two of his’ ‘mecas’, one of them of almost two meters, went to look for Camorra to the’ box ‘of Marquez and the champion of Cervera ended up stopping his feet.
And for feet, hands, trunk, legs, knees, wrists, ardor, courage and courage those of the fabulous couple of Sito Pons, whose team has risen from the hand of Pol Espargaró, plethoric all weekend Catarí to which, such time, you know little by little the third place, but you should know that this is sterling and that this, as Carlos Sainz said in his golden age of the World Rally, “is not how it starts, but how it ends”. The same reading will have brought out, yes, the happy Tito Rabat, a boy that no one, not even his gentlemanly father, has given him anything, because everything, like his carrer in Losail, has won him to pulse.
And, to celebrate, since fortunately the rain did not come, let’s celebrate that Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, already almost brothers, friends of conversation, greetings and hugs yupiiiii !, submitted the very Casey Stoner in a beautiful race, true, more Tactic that vibrant, but unexpected because of its tremendous outcome: victory of Lorenzo, second place, pegadito, pegadito Pedrosa and defeat of Stoner, who was, without a doubt, the only one who lost, since he, until that night, was the ‘ emir’ of Losail ‘, because he had won five of the last seven races he had played in the deserted track.
Just one more note, yes, I know I’m getting too long: the Valentino Rossi and Ducati looks very ugly, but very ugly. It seems that the two lines of research, development, development and development led by Italian engineer Filippo Preziosi and Australian technician Jeremy Burgess do not coincide in almost anything. And the ‘Doctor’ without knowing which one to choose.