A round-up of the Catalunya by Breeshey Shaw
Well to say Catalunya was uneventful would be a lie. It started off as quite a normal GP from overtakes retirements. In the first few laps, championship leader Fabio Quartararo dropped down to 5thhe was overtaken by his biggest rivals Jack Miller & Johann Zarcowho are now just points behind him in the championship. Quartararo later managed to secure the fastest lap while chasing down Miguel Oliveira. A lap later Marc Marquez span out of the third race in a row and his home Grand Prix, along with Marquez,Pol Espargaro,Danilo Petrucci, AleixEspargaro,Valentino Rossi and Iker Lecuona did not finish. Both Aleix Espargaro and Valentino Rossi went out after coming into difficulty at turn 10 (not at the same time) this is most likely due to the fact that turn 10 was tarmacked so didn't have as much grip as the others, orat leastthat is what Valentino and Aleix say. Now the most interesting part of the race came when Fabio Quartararo was suspected to be given a long lap penalty, he then proceeded to open his leathers and take out his chest protector all at around 190 mph... wow, now this is as I'm sure you are aware a big ole safetyhazard,but he wasn’t surprisingly black flagged, he finished the race in third, however, due to a long lap penalty of three seconds he finished fourth just in front of Joan Mir. But his luck didn't stop there, and he was later given another three-secondpenalty for the leather opening incident, and he ended up finishing sixth overall behind Maverick Viñales. Not a good day for the French man at all. After doing some reading online it seems his leathers weren't fully closed at the start of the race this allowed the wind to get under his neck andslowly undohis zipper until it was loose. This then forced his chest protector loose and caused him to fully undo his zip and ditch the protector altogether. The big debate was should he have been black flagged? Personally, I think yes, as he was in clear violation of the rider safety equipment rules and if he had crashed, he would have been severely injured. Anyway, the race ended with Miguel Oliveira in first place, Johann Zarco in second and Jack Miller in third. This leaves the championships top three being Fabio Quartararo with 115 points, Johann Zarco with 101 points and Jack Miller with 90 points. Safe to say it’s going to be a close race in Germany on the 20th.