That makes sense and thanks for clarifying. It also explains in a better way why the announcers said he couldn't pick up the bike after crashing and why he just walked away. Shame, because I'd like to see him healthy and give Rossi a better run for his money.
They played up the injury immediately when he walked away...but reports from folks at the scene indicated that the problem was that the handlebar was broken, so there was no need to pick it up.
After the race Stoner said that the problem was his grip on the front. He said he had taken the bike out to scrub up the tires during warm up. Then the tires had cooled down. Then they'd been put in tire warmers before the race. Finally, he claimed that the chemical composition of the rubber had been affected, and that his grip just wasn't there. Of course he, nor the announcers, are particularly knowledgable about the technical issues....Stoner said last week that he couldn't get the bike going after the BRNO crash because there was a rock somewhere in his carburetion, and the announcers parroted this in yesterday's race commentary. As I'm sure everyone here knows, the bikes are fuel injected. There's a throttle body, but no carburettors.
Four races in a row Stoner makes an error. Rossi really rattled him at Laguna Seca.
The really big news yesterday was that after the race it was announced that Pedrosa has jumped ship from Michelin and will be riding on Bridgestones effective with today's post race testing at Misano. What a lot of egg on everyone's face. HRC, Repsol, Michelin, all explaining that there was nothing wrong with Michelin tires except that they didn't match Pedrosa's riding style.
When you consider that the order of finish yesterday was Bridgestone, Michelin, B, M, B, M, B, M, B, M, its hard to blame the tires for why you weren't on the podium. I think what really ragged Pedrosa most was that he was looking at Lorenzo's and Elias' exhaust pipes all the way to the finish line. Too bad the King of Spain wasn't there to make him shake hands with his fellow Spaniards again.
FWIW, Rossi can't mathematically clinch at Indy because of the tie breaker of most victories. If Rossi wins at Indy and then drops out and Stoner wins the last four races, they would be tied on points, but Stoner would win because he would have 8 victories to Rossi's 7... of course right now Stoner only has 4 victories and Rossi has 6. Its not likely that Stoner will catch him, and the race after Indy will most likely provide the mathematical clinch for Rossi.
One other aside that everyone probably knows is that Rossi tied Ago with 68 premier class victories yesterday. So at Indy, if Rossi were to win, he would become the undisputed all time leader in premier class victories. Ago would still have the upper hand on total premier class championships (8 vs 5 going on 6 for Rossi).
Capirossi appeared in his 277th grand prix yesterday, and so he took the record for appearances from Barros. Hard to believe with all the races and different classes that Ago rode in that he's not up there too. Capirossi and Rossi are both "iron men."
