By Dan Moakes
November 29 2013

There was just one race left in the 2013 FIM MotoGP World Championship, and 20-year-old class rookie Marc Márquez looked set to take the title, even if rival Jorge Lorenzo could win the race at Valencia: it was looking good for the Spaniards on home ground.

Repsol Honda rider Márquez was 13 points ahead of the Yamaha team leader, and just 13 more from a fourth place finish would put him out of reach. Given that the youngster had not been off the podium in each of his finishes for the year, and that he was perhaps more likely to have some kind of support from team-mate Dani Pedrosa (six times a GP winner at the track) than would be the case with Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, Marc was in good shape. But anything can happen in racing, and unexpected turnarounds have not been unknown at the final Valencia round in recent seasons.

In the Yamaha camp there was news that crew chief Jeremy Burgess was going into his last race with the works team, with Rossi having decided to sever their alliance. The Australian, formerly a Honda man who had worked with Freddie Spencer, Wayne Gardner and Mick Doohan, had been with Rossi throughout the Italian’s MotoGP career. Burgess had followed Rossi from Honda to Yamaha and then on to Ducati, where their record of success had somewhat tailed off. The return to Yamaha had not seen ‘the Doctor’ repeating past glories, so Valentino obviously felt it was time to change things as he looked to the 2014 championship.

In qualifying, Lorenzo suffered an engine problem and had to switch to his other Yamaha; but still the outgoing champion was second fastest. Márquez was on pole position for the ninth time in 2013, and behind the leading Yamaha were Pedrosa (third) and Rossi (fourth). More Yamahas followed on, with Tech 3 riders Cal Crutchlow and Bradley Smith respectively fifth and sixth; and then there were the customer Hondas, with Álvaro Bautistá (Gresini) heading Stefan Bradl (LCR) in seventh and eighth.

The best of the Ducati runners were next, with works riders Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden (ninth and tenth) just ahead of Pramac rider Andrea Iannone. On this occasion, the leader in the CRT class was Danilo Petrucci (twelfth), riding the Ioda Suter-BMW for the Came IodaRacing Project team. It was not his best grid slot for the season, but this marked his first time at the very front of the CRT ranks in qualifying. Following on behind the Italian were Héctor Barberá, Aleix Espargaró and Claudio Corti.

Then there were two more full prototype machines, namely the remaining Ducatis. Pramac rider Yonny Hernández was in P16, and regular substitute-wildcard rider Michele Pirro was back and starting from P17. Then came Colin Edwards, from Hiroshi Aoyama, Randy de Puniet, Michael Laverty, Luca Scassa, Bryan Staring, Damian Cudlin, Lukáš Pešek and another wildcard in the form of 37-year-old Martin Bauer, with his second outing on the S&B Suter-BMW for Remus Racing Team.

The start of the race saw a bit of a reshuffle, with Lorenzo getting away in the lead, ahead of Pedrosa, Márquez, Rossi, Bautistá, Smith and Crutchlow. Iannone was up to eighth, heading Bradl, Hayden, Dovizioso, Espargaró and Hernández. Valencia has a dead straight start-finish blast, leading to a left-handed first corner, and the second corner is a tighter left named after Mick Doohan. Lap two saw Pedrosa pass Lorenzo on the inside line as they approached turn one along the main straight, but the Yamaha man was able to regain his position on the inside at Doohan. Dani repeated his move a lap later, but this time ran wide at turn one and surrendered the position even sooner.

Working his way through past the leading Ducatis, Bradl set an early fastest lap, but this was quickly surpassed by Lorenzo, who set a new track record. Pedrosa’s feisty form continued, with the 28-year-old busy at turns four (Terol) and five, two successive right-handers. Dani passed Jorge on the inside for the first of these, with the compliment being repaid yet again. A bit of a margin was starting to open up to sixth man Smith, who was being followed by Crutchlow and Bradl, but the action up front allowed Bautistá, through into fourth, and Rossi to remain close.

Turn fourteen, named after Adrián Campos and following on from a lengthy left over a crest, is a tight left that delivers the racers into the main straight. When Lorenzo went wide here he had to fend off Pedrosa once more as they went down to turn one, but this he did, and the same at the left-hand turn three kink. More swapping back and forth would soon happen at turns four and five, and again at several places further round the lap. Every time Lorenzo was able to regain the lead, such as when Pedrosa got ahead just before turn fourteen, but then went wide so that the Yamaha rider squeezed through on the inside.

Pedrosa led again with another pass on the inside at turn one, but this time Lorenzo’s reply at Doohan saw the Honda man get a bit of a push from behind, Dani being forced wide. This also let Márquez through, and in fact Pedrosa recovered himself only in fifth position, also losing out to Bautistá and Rossi. An investigation into Lorenzo’s actions would follow, but nothing untoward would come of that, and for now it left a race for victory between the two championship rivals. Márquez took a turn in the lead, but Lorenzo got back ahead before turn two, and fought off another move at turn seven, the left-hand kink at Afición.

Having passed his team-mate for sixth, to be followed through by Bradl, Crutchlow had then managed to crash out of the race. Pedrosa had followed Rossi through past Bautistá, but at that stage there was a one-second gap from second to third. Dani moved back into a podium position when he overtook Valentino on the approach to turn one. At the front, Márquez set a new fastest lap, which Lorenzo then improved upon, although it wasn’t really what the Yamaha man needed to do.

To win the championship, Lorenzo was going to need the men behind to get involved and push Márquez back to fifth. His crew in the pits signalled Jorge to slow down in an attempt to somehow block Marc and bring the next trio into play, but their man must have felt that his chances were too slim to bother with that, so instead Lorenzo seemingly decided to go for the win, which would be his third in a row. At half-distance, Pedrosa had got clear of Rossi and was chasing after the men ahead, and meanwhile Lorenzo was about 0.9s ahead of Márquez. Even if Dani caught up and got through into second the title would go to the Repsol youngster.

Márquez seemed able to take it relatively easy as Lorenzo pulled away and Pedrosa closed in. With a few laps left to go, Jorge was out of range, whereas Dani was under 0.5s behind Marc. The tight left at turn six, named after Angel Nieto, saw Pedrosa move through into second place, apparently a gift from his team-mate. Surviving a bit of a moment after completing the move, Dani sped on his way, but too late to close the gap to Jorge. Therefore the Yamaha man took victory, but a safe third for Márquez was more than enough to earn him the MotoGP crown. On this occasion, Rossi got clear of Bautistá for yet another top-four result, with the Spaniard reaching 501 points for his MotoGP career.

Bradl was sixth, from Smith, to complete the Honda-Yamaha group, and then came the Ducati runners. Iannone had lost out to Hayden and then Dovizioso, then got back ahead of his compatriot, but was back in tenth when he suffered a lowside crash at turn one. Hernández had run ahead of the CRT group before his own exit, so that Pirro came through and took tenth place behind Hayden and Dovizioso. Espargaró made it 14 from 18 with another success in the CRT class, heading Barberá, Corti, Petrucci, Edwards and the rest. Pešek, Cudlin and de Puniet were the other non-finishers.

Jorge Lorenzo had taken his fifth race win from the last seven events of the season, and this one put him on a total of 31 premier class victories overall, level with four-time 500cc world champion Eddie Lawson. It also marked the 90th premier class success for the Spanish nation, by far the dominant force in 2013. But for Jorge, injuries sustained in the summer had been costly, and it was the new man who triumphed, with Marc Márquez taking over from Casey Stoner in terms of his spectacularly effective form on the Honda. The last time a rookie had secured the crown in Grand Prix racing’s big class had been right back in 1978. There is no reason not to think that Márquez can now go from strength to strength, just as Kenny Roberts did in his day. Can his compatriots, and the rest, fight back in 2014?

Final championship standings after eighteen races:
1 Marc Márquez (Honda) 334
2 Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) 330
3 Dani Pedrosa (Honda) 300
4 Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) 237
5 Cal Crutchlow (Yamaha) 188
6 Álvaro Bautistá (Honda) 171
7 Stefan Bradl (Honda) 156
8 Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati) 140
9 Nicky Hayden (Ducati) 126
10 Bradley Smith (Yamaha) 116
11 Aleix Espargaró (ART) 93 · top finisher in the CRT division
12 Andrea Iannone (Ducati) 57
13 Michele Pirro (Ducati) 56
14 Colin Edwards (FTR-Kawasaki) 41
15 Randy de Puniet (ART) 36
Yamaha 381; Honda 376; Ducati 155; ART 99; FTR-Kawasaki 65; Ioda Suter-BMW 26; PBM-ART 3; FTR-Honda 2.

2013 race wins: Lorenzo 8, Márquez 6, Pedrosa 3, Rossi 1; other podium visitors: Crutchlow, Bradl

A full review of the 2013 MotoGP season will follow shortly