Ah, Phillip Island… if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes. Today it started like we had never left Japan, then it lived up to Barry Sheene’s famous line “Welcome to Phillip Island, gateway to hypothermia.” Finally the Sun came out for a while and it was positively warm. Expect more of the same through the weekend.
None of which is likely to improve the condition of Marc Marquez, who appeared at today’s press conference sounding like he had a bad cold and wrapped in a scarf. He did not look anything like his usual perky self.
Was this a result of the foul weather that afflicted the Japanese GP, or a function of his program between then and now? Honda shipped Marc and Dani Pedrosa directly from Motegi to Indonesia to do a tour of factories, fan groups and road-safety programs. Just what you need in among the flyaway trio of three races in three weekends. Indonesia is of course a massive market and very important to all the manufacturers, but wouldn’t it have been better to make the visit after Malaysia or as Jorge Lorenzo did after his last championship, straight after Valencia?
