There was a sweepstake in the Jerez press office on Saturday evening for the podium of the MotoGP race. 135 people entered but only three people got the podium right, which I suppose is about right considering the permutations. I was not one of them so I didn't win a pot of cash. I did get the right riders ... but in the wrong order.
I was convinced that Jorge Lorenzo was going to win, a thought process borne out of his string of 1m40s on race tyres before he bolted on his qualifiers on Saturday afternoon. When he did bolt on his Michelins, it was probably the best bit of qualifying I have ever seen. He was on another planet.
Jerez has a tendency to give us results that come out of the blue, but MotoGP itself may well be heading back that way after Dani Pedrosa's win last weekend at the Spanish track, especially as Ducati's reigning Champion, Casey Stoner, was stroppy and saggy-shouldered after dragging himself out of the gravel twice during the race.
![]() Jorge Lorenzo celebrates in parc ferme © DPPI |
For the Aussie it was actually a good result, as he tagged the back of Shinya Nakano's Honda before he went in the sandpit for the second time, so it could have been a non-score. Yet all of a sudden he looked like the Stoner we knew on the LCR Honda V5 in 2006 - something that we never, ever saw last year.