Fortunately there were considerably fewer fallers in this race. Given that this is the pinnacle of motorcycle racing, that’s not particularly surprising. Dani Pedrosa, from pole, had his usual lightning start and took the lead into the first corner, However, Lorenzo was leading and Stoner had nabbed second by the end of the first lap. Then the Tech3 boys of Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso along with a resurgent Valentino Rossi, all got the jump on him in the next lap or two. Crutchlow, Dovi and Rossi all had a good duel for the majority of the race. Unfortunately, Crutchlow slid off, but managed to rejoin in 8th. A little later, Dovi did the same, but managed to get back on one place ahead of his team mate.
Meanwhile, Rossi hunted down and passed Stoner in the last couple of laps to take a well deserved podium. With the Tech3 falls, Pedrosa managed to come home 4th. Not a bad result, but considering he started from pole, that can’t have been particularly satisfying. Stefan Bradl came home a very respectable 5th. He’s really doing well in his rookie MotoGP season.
Poor Ben Spies had another shocker of a race. He wobbled a bit at the start (as did De Puniet) and never troubled the top 10. I can’t help feeling that one of the Tech3 boys will be at the factory team in his place next year. De Puniet actually baled completely on the start line. He then jumped over the pit wall onto a spare bike and completed the race on that. Not the best thing to happen to you at your home race.
All in all, a fair race. Nothing too exciting, but nice to see Rossi starting to come good. Mind you, how much of a part did the rain play in that? We’ll see as the season unfolds
Not quite as spicy as the Moto3 race, but a few noteworthy incidents. Firstly, congratulations to Tom Lüthi. After fighting his way through to the lead, he never relinquished it, taking a well-deserved victory. A good day for the brits. At one point we had Redding 3rd, Smith 4th and Rea 5th. Shortly afterwards, they reversed positions, with Rea taking 3rd spot. A beautifully recovered wobble saw Rea slip down a few places. Johan Zarco then tried to capitalise on him probably being a little shaken by that and he took him on the inside of the next corner. Unfortunately, Zarco clipped Rea’s front wheel and sent him into the gravel trap. Rea was understandably livid as he should have given him much more room. (more…)
Posted
by Tris
on Sun, May-20-2012 at 11:24.
See more in 2012 / Moto2
The French seem to be having the same duff weather as the UK at the moment. Le Mans is absolutely sodden today, and looks like it will be for the entire afternoon.
Viñales started on Pole and looked like it was going to go his way. Cortese and Fenati were much lower down the order and probably weren’t in a position to trouble him. Although leading for a while, Viñales dropped back to 5th for a while, being passed by the likes of Faubel, Oliveira, Zulfahmi Khairuddin (and someone else who escapes me right now!!). Despite the rain, the first half of the race wan’t that exciting. It remained fairly processional for quite some time. (more…)
Posted
by Tris
on Sun, May-20-2012 at 10:12.
See more in 2012 / Moto3
P1, Williams/Renault. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that. You’ve got to look back to Jacques Villeneuve’s 1997 championship winning campaign for that. OK, Williams won races with BMW in the hands of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya between 2001 & 2004, but this really feels like a nod to the past. Congratulations to Sir Frank Williams. What a great way to celebrate his 70th birthday, Also, congrats to Pastor Maldonado. Having been passed by Fernando Alonso into the first corner, I really didn’t expect him to come back. Jumping him at the first pit stop, he didn’t really put a wheel wrong after that. Despite Alonso starting to close in the last few laps, he held his nerve and deserved that win. (more…)
Moto 3 is delivering great racing. With rookie Romano Fenati leading the championship going into the race, it looks like being a closely fought season. Unfortunately, Estoril wasn’t kind to him. Well, Louis Rossi wasn’t. I think he had a fall and collected Fenati in the process. I say “I think” as the BBC coverage temporarily failed at exactly that moment.
It also looked like it was going to be a great day for local hero Miguel Olivera. After qualifying second and leading on the first lap, he was dealt a cruel blow with a mechanical failure that saw him retire shortly afterwards.
Pole sitter Sandro Cortese and Maverick Viñales had a great scrap, right the way down to the chequered flag. For a while it seemed like they were playing with each other, in scenes reminiscent of Nico Terol last year. Unfortunately, they caught the back markers right at the end of the last lap. Cortese just had the edge, but Viñales was pushing hard. On the very final run to the finish line, there wasn’t much available track and Cortese managed to get the better strip of available tar mac. To avoid the back markers, Viñales was forced wide onto the kerb and came home literally in Cortese’s shadow. Viñales seemed aggrieved in the interview (and judging by his body language with the way he was waving his arms at Cortese on the victory lap) but I can’t really work out why. I can’t see why he would have had any issue with Cortese. It was just wheel-to-wheel racing, and the back markers got in his way. However, it was good to see the pair of them shake hands on the podium. Although Cortese is now leading the championship, Viñales is only 2 points adrift. Not all doom and gloom. Given his track record last year, I’d put money on overhauling that deficit and taking the spoils at the end of the season.
Posted
by Tris
on Sun, May-6-2012 at 14:33.
See more in 2012 / Moto3
Cal Crutchlow is really on a roll. Another strong qualifying saw him start on the front row (3rd) ahead of Jorge Lorenzo. Unfortunately he was passed by Lorenzo at the first corner and wound up fourth. The usual protagonists of Stoner, Lorenzo and Pedrosa went off into the lead, and stayed that way ’til the end. Lorenzo looked as if he may pass stoner for the lead, but it never happened.
Crutchlow had another scrap with his team mate Andrea Dovizioso for the majority of the race, with Dovi getting the upper hand this time out.
Ben Spies had another difficult race. He was running in fourth for the first couple of laps, but then ran wide and the two Tech 3s sneaked through and he was left to fight with Stefan Bradl for the remainder of the race. Bradl has really taken to MotoGP very well. He managed to pass Spies a couple of times, but the Yamaha rider managed to get the best of him in the end.
With Bradley Smith having a position at Tech3 in MotoGP next year, Dovi on a 1 year contract and Cal on the second of his two year contract, we know there will be musical chairs there. I think Spies’ contract is also up for renewal at the end of the season, so he really needs some better finishes to keep his ride. For the moment, Dovi and Crutchlow are putting him to shame.
The BBC have just shown some highlights of last year’s French race, reminding me of Dovizioso having some really close wheel-to-wheel racing with Rossi when he was on a factory Honda. In light of that, this season is looking much worse for Rossi. Dovi comfortably has the upper hand on an inferior bike (no disrespect to the Tech3 Yamaha team). Here’s hoping something happens to bring him back to the front.
Another great Moto2 race. Really tight at the front. Scott Redding looked as if he was in for a strong race, starting on the front row. Hower, he slipped back down the pack, and ended up finishing with fellow brit Bradley Smith just outside the top ten
The front settled out with Tom Lüthi, Pol Espargaro and Marc Marquez all stealing the lead off each other. Eventually Marquez and Espargaro managed to break a way a little from Lüthi. It was evident that Esparagro was sizing up Marquez for a pass on the last lap to steal the victory from him. Try as he might, he wasn’t able to make any of the moves stick. After a third attempt at the tight chicane towards the end of the lap, he outbraked himself, gifting Marquez the win. That was a shame, as it would have been nice to see him take the win with a proper start to finish race, rather than the rain-adjusted one last time out. Mind you, with the way he’s riding, it’s only a matter of time.
Of all people, Johan Zarco deserves a mention. He was up at the thick end wit the top three for quite some time. Eventually they managed to pull away from him, but he came home a very solid fourth. It’s obvious that he’s taking to Moto2 a lot better than Nico Terol is. Again, he was nowhere to be seen.
Posted
by Tris
on Sun, May-6-2012 at 13:12.
See more in 2012 / Moto2
OK, you’ve spent a while building your multi boot ISO stick and it works perfectly. The boot menu looks pretty plain, doesn’t it. Like me, you may have seen various Linux CDs booting with fancier looking menus. Even ones with wallpapers.
I tried and failed a few times to work out how to do this. Eventually, I stumbled on an entry in the Ubuntu forums that helped me out.
Firstly, copy the “unicode.pf2″ font file from “/usr/share/grub” on your PC to the /boot/grub folder on your USB stick
Make sure the following files are present in the /boot/grub folder on your USB stick
- unicode.pf2
- png.mod
- jpeg.mod
- vbe.mod
- vga.mod
- gfxterm.mod
- part_msdos.mod
- fat.mod
There were all for me. I didn’t need to get them from anywhere else.
Delete /boot/grub/grubenv from the stick.
Using ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/, find the UUID of your USB stick:
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Apr 29 22:41 7FD4-7E8B -> ../../sdd1
You’ll want the entry with the shorter string (only 8 characters).
Now add the following code to the beginning of boot/grub/grub.cfg on your USB stick:
insmod part_msdos
insmod fat
set root=’(hd0,msdos1)’
search –no-floppy –fs-uuid –set <your stick’s UUID>
loadfont /boot/grub/unicode.pf2
set gfxmode=1024×768
insmod vbe
insmod vga
insmod gfxterm
terminal_output gfxterm
insmod png
if background_image /boot/usb-splash-screen.png
then
set color_normal=white/black
set color_highlight=yellow/black
else
set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray
fi
You’ll see there’s a line that specifies the name and path the background image. Adjust that to suit your needs.
Obviously the “set gfxmode” line, sets the screen resolution. I don’t know it if has to match the size of the image, but it can’t do any harm. My image is 1024 x 768.
The particularly observant among you will have noticed the line before the background image initialises a PNG module, as my background image is a png. If you’re using a JPG, change that line to “insmod jpeg”.
With regard to the text colours, there are only a few (16?) you can use. Have a google for GRUB2 text colours and you’ll find details of all the valid entries you can use.
That should do the trick. Enjoy your customised menu.
With all the various Linux distros and their respective desktop environments, it’s a real faff to have to keep burning CDs/DVDs or re-making a bootable USB stick. Also, with storage getting more and more affordable, you don’t have to stretch the bank to buy a sufficiently large stick that can hold multiple ISOs. By installing the GRUB bootloader on to such a stick, you can tweak the config menu to boot of ISOs on the stick.
(more…)
Phew. Thankfully the rain held off and there was no carnage. Dani Pedrosa had his expected lightning start. Unfortunately that wasn’t to last and he slid back down the pack, being passed by a charging Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo. The pair of them took the lead and never relinquished it. Lorenzo pushed Stoner for the remainder of the race, but wasn’t able to pass.
Although Dovi initially got passed his team mate Crutchlow, it didn’t last and he slid back to 5th. Crutchlow was harrying Pedrosa for the entire race, but just couldn’t get past for the last step of the podium. Shame. As much as I like Dani, it would have been great to get a brit on the podium.
Nicky Hayden started well and was at the sharp end for a while at the beginning. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep it up and slid down the pack a little. Ultimately, he came in 8th, with Stefan Bradl one place ahead.
Poor Valentino Rossi’s season didn’t get any better. He finished 9th, having had a great scrap with Hector Barbera on the Pramac Ducati, only just getting the better of him. All the rumours on the net at the moment suggest he may not see the season out with Ducati. Will be interesting to see if that’s the case.
Only 1 week to wait ’til Estoril. Can’t wait