[COVERAGE] Red Bull Grand Prix of The Americas

A weekend of firsts, broken records, and great racing at the world-class Circuit of the Americas(COTA). If your not familiar with COTA, its located in Austin, TX and it’s the 1st purpose-built Grand Prix facility in the United States. Besides MotoGP, Formula 1(F1), V8 Supercars, Rolex Sports Car Series & American Le Mans Series, make the journey to Circuit of the Americas for one of their rounds. COTA consists of 20 turns, elevation change of 133ft, & .62 mile back straight that makes up the 3.4 mile track.

With many strong rides this season, Dani Pedrosa, Cal Clutchlow, VR 46 Valentino Rossi(back to Yamaha), Marc Marquez (2012 Moto2 World Champion), and the reigning world champion, Jorge Lorenzo, we are excited to see how this season unfolds. After some great battles in Qatar, we are ready for some more action for Round 2 at Circuit of the Americas!! A forecast of sunny and low to mid 70s make it ideal temperature for the weekend. As the race weekend starts off, we are greeted with low 40f degree weather in the mornings, much cold than anyone expected. Combined with a 8-15mph wind, the next few days would make morning practices a bit more of a challenge. As expected race times drastically reduce in the afternoon, where the Rookie, Marc Marquez comes in the fastest by just over a half-a-second faster than his teammate Dani Pedrosa. As the weekend progresses, Saturday conditions are in line with yesterday, and still after the 4th Free Practice, Marc Marquez comes on top with a 2:03:779. Dani trails behind by a small gap, were Lorenzo is nearly a full second behind Marquez’s time. We start seeing that the Honda’s favor this track over the Yamaha’s. After we finish up Q1 and on our way to Q2, Dovisiozo tops his teammate Nicky Hayden for 6th and also top Ducati. The top 5, in order are Bradl, Crutchlow, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, and Marquez. This is Marc’s first pole position and also breaks a long time record held by Freddie Spencer all the way back in 1982. Spencer at the age of 20 years and 196 days, while Marquez at the age of 20 years and 63 days. We had a feeling he would be breaking this record, but no one knew he would break in only his 2nd top class race.

Race day is finally here, and its the best conditions we’ve had all weekend. As all 26 rides take off from the grid, Pedrosa with a great start takes the lead into turn one. Marquez falls back to 3rd while quickly overtaking Bradl in the first lap and stays close to Pedrosa. Lorenzo does all he can to keep up with both Hondas, but slowly falls back after taking 3rd place from Bradl. With 13 laps down, Marquez finally makes his move and passes his teammate Pedrosa. Dani tries to keep up, but Marquez keeps pushing all the way to the checkered flag with a 1.5 second lead ahead of Dani. We now witness another record held by Freddie Spencer broken by Marquez in his first MotoGP win! Lorenzo finishes 3rd while crutchlow works his way up the back after making a mistake for a impressive 4th place. Nicky Hayden is the top American(9th) and Ben Spies finished 13th, dispute strong pain from a previous injury that has not completely healed. Wild Card Rider Blake Young finished 1 lap down in 21st and local boy(man) Colin Edwards completes nearly half the race after having major issues with his CRT machine.
Moto2’s race was won by Nico Torel and Moto3’s race was won by Alex Rins both first time winners in their class. If all those records and first weren’t enough, the Red Bull Rookie Cup had its first race in the United States, which included a race on Saturday and another on Sunday. It was a packed weekend of records and firsts, with over 131,000 in attendance during the race weekend, we will all be talking about this until we start it all over again next year!

Date: April 19-21st, 2013
Location: Austin, TX
By: Erik
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Tags: Austin, Circuit of the Americas, COTA, Moto2, Moto3, MotoGP, red bull, Rookie Cup
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