Portugal’s Miguel Oliveira (KTM) won the Indonesia Motorcycle Grand Prix on Sunday, the second round of the MotoGP season, on the wet track of the Mandalika circuit, ahead of two Frenchmen, world champion Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) and Johann Zarco (Ducati-Pramac).
The Grand Prix, delayed by an hour and a quarter due to heavy rain on the island of Lombok, took place without Spaniard Marc Marquez, six-time MotoGP champion, who suffered a concussion after a violent fall warming up a few hours earlier.
Starting 7th on the grid, Oliveira won his fourth victory in the top flight, after two successes in 2020 and one in 2021.
In the championship, Enea Bastianini (Ducati-Gresini) remains the leader with 30 points after his surprise victory in Qatar two weeks ago and despite an 11th place on Sunday.
Brad Binder (KTM) is 2nd in this classification by two points, while Quartararo returns to 3rd place after his disappointing 8th place in Qatar for the opening GP.
The Mandalika route, with a straight line of “only” 507 meters, suited the Frenchman and Yamaha better. He suffered from a serious lack of speed in Qatar where the longest straight is twice the distance.
Even though he hasn’t won since August 29, 2021 at the British Grand Prix, the defending champion celebrated his 2nd place as a victory. Starting from pole position, he had lost four places before getting back on the podium.
Because of the heavy rain, the start was given at 4:15 p.m. local time (9:15 a.m. French time), with a delay of an hour and a quarter. Perhaps thanks to the intervention of a shaman responsible for stopping the rain…
The 62,923 spectators and President Joko Widodo, a motorcycle fan present at the circuit, were treated to their race, the first in 25 years in this country of more than 270 million inhabitants, including a large community of motorcycle racing fans. .
The world championship had already come to Indonesia in 1996 and 1997, near Jakarta, when the top class was the 500 cc, but never since the establishment of MotoGP in 2002 and the arrival of 1000 cc displacements.
Score again on the ground
This Grand Prix has been shortened from 27 to 20 laps of this 4.3 km circuit, “for safety reasons due to high temperatures”, according to Franco Uncini, FIM Grand Prix safety manager.
Faced with the expected humid heat, tire supplier Michelin had supplied other tires to the teams to better face the conditions. But since the first free practice on Friday, several drivers have crashed, complaining in particular about these tires.
For Marquez, the fourth fall was too much, during the warm-up on Sunday, a few hours before the race. He went into a glide at turn 7, after losing control of the rear of his bike, at the end of the warm-up.
The Spaniard got up by his own means but he was very dizzy after this fall at around 180 km / h and was evacuated by helicopter to a hospital. He had nothing broken but stopped the charges anyway.
You have to be very “cautious when you have a shock to the head”, explained Alberto Puig, sporting director of Honda, to the microphones of the televisions.
Marquez, 29, broke his right arm in the first Grand Prix of 2020, which deprived him of the entire season. He had gradually returned but at the end of 2021, a new fall in training, in motocross, had deprived him of the last two races of the year, due to a diplopia problem (doubling of vision).