Motegi MotoGP: Suzuki misses out on season best result

Suzuki’s home race in Japan ended in bitter disappointment after Alvaro Bautista threw away a golden chance to claim a career best MotoGP finish at the Twin Ring Motegi.

The Spaniard was pushing in fourth position to keep a hard charging Andrea Dovizioso at bay when he lost the front-end of his factory GSV-R machine at the penultimate corner on lap 14.

The chaotic early stages of the 24-lap race had seen former 125GP world champion Bautista run in third place for six laps.

Valentino Rossi and Ben Spies had collided on the first lap, Casey Stoner ran off track while leading and Marco Simoncelli and Andrea Dovizioso were both penalised with a ride through penalty for jumping the start.

Stoner took third from Bautista on lap 12 as the Aussie surged back through the field but Bautista had a healthy advantage of seven seconds over Dovizioso’s Repsol Honda when he tumbled out.

It was the third time in the last six races that Bautista has crashed with a top six finish on the cards and factory team boss Paul Denning told MCN: “He made a mistake basically pushing too hard in the wrong place. He hadn’t had a single movement of the front tyre for the whole race. We gave him a signal the lap before of Dovi +7 and he knew full well what the potential speed of Andrea had been earlier in the race and therefore he was going to have to push to the maximum to keep fourth. His mindset was he’s had a fifth and a sixth and he wanted a fourth and you have to admire that. But unfortunately he just pushed too hard in the wrong place to try and pick up the lap time. The data showed he was pushing a lot harder than the lap before and that’s it.”

For the latest on Suzuki’s future and six pages of coverage from the Japanese Grand Prix, see the October 5 issue of Motor Cycle News.