By the time MotoGP rocked up to Phillip Island in Australia for the 16th round of the 2015 World Championship, we’d already seen some amazing things. Each round was filled to brim with drama, something so perfect it could’ve been scripted by Hollywood.
Just a week prior to the Australian Grand Prix, the championship battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo had taken another dramatic turn. The Motegi circuit was wet by the time the five lights went out, though it hadn’t actually rained since the Moto3 race earlier in the day. A hard-charging Jorge Lorenzo chewed up his tyres as a result and dropped behind Rossi, who himself had been overhauled by Honda’s Dani Pedrosa for the victory.
So the Yamaha duo were split by 18 points ahead of the Phillip Island race, the ball very much in the nine-time World Champion Italian’s court. But, in Grand Prix motorcycle racing, things can change in a heartbeat.
Phillip Island is a real riders’ circuit; talent, for the most part, outweighs the performance of your motorcycle. This tends to create pack races, which is exactly what we got in 2015.
For the opening handful of laps, we had seven riders on four different makes of motorcycle battling for the the podium places. Ducati’s Andrea Iannone nailed the launch and took the holeshot at the start, though Jorge Lorenzo had other ideas and swooped around the outside of him at Turn 8.
However, the speed of the GP15 proved difficult to match, and the Yamaha rider was a sitting duck on the Gardner Straight. This pattern continued for many laps, with Honda’s Marc Marquez and Rossi eventually getting involved in the action. With each passing lap, the championship battle took on many different forms and possibilities as the top four jostled for position.
Iannone was actually a rather fortunate Italian that afternoon to go on to stand on the podium, because his race nearly came to a nasty conclusion on the second lap. Unfortunately for a seagull, who the internet have now named Gavin, couldn’t get off track quick enough at Turn 10 and rather grimly gave Iannone’s Desmosedici a new feather-effect livery. The bird strike actually punctured Iannone’s GP15’s front fairing, and he said after the race that he probably would have crashed out had the bird not taken flight.
Back to the race and Lorenzo, on several occasions, tried to make a break at the front, something he had done numerous times in 2015 to crushing effect. At one stage he had a 1.3-second lead, but he couldn’t extend his advantage further and pretty soon Iannone and Marquez were all over him.
Another daring move at Turn 8, this time on Marquez, with seven laps to go saw the Spaniard hit the front whilst his teammate was in fourth and in danger of taking a serious hit to his championship lead. Over the next six laps, the warring Rossi, Marquez and Iannone allowed Lorenzo to put a little bit of daylight between himself and them.
Into the final three laps, and it was frantic in the battle for second. Each rider continuously passed and re-passed each other. At Turn 10, Rossi went for a move on the inside of Marquez and Iannone mugged the pair of them in one of the greatest overtakes I’ve ever seen.
As the top four started the final lap, Lorenzo led by a second from Marquez, who had just passed Iannone again. The Honda rider proceeded to put in the lap of his life, demolishing Lorenzo’s one-second advantage and scything past at Turn 10, Rossi doing the same to Iannone. Marquez held his line through the final corner to take his first win at Phillip Island in the premier class from Lorenzo and Iannone, who’d just struck back at Rossi on the final corner.
Repsol Honda Team
In the end, the top four riders alone overtook each other 52 times in the space of 27 laps. In the battle for the championship, Rossi was now only 13 points ahead of his teammate with just 50 more up for grabs in the final two races.
That race was significant for two reasons, one of which I’ll explain in just a moment. That afternoon saw Maverick Vinales on an underpowered Suzuki battle hard with Cal Crutchlow and Dani Pedrosa, both of whom on near-factory and factory-spec Hondas. Fast-forward a year, Vinales is now a Grand Prix winner and has bagged himself a factory Yamaha contract for 2017 as the rider deemed fit enough to fill the shoes of the Ducati-bound Lorenzo. Sixth may not have been a world-beating result at the time, but on a bike that was 20 horsepower down on the two RC213Vs, Australia 2015 signalled the arrival of Maverick Vinales as one of the sport’s biggest hitters.
Now for the second reason this race was a significant one. Whilst we’d all enjoyed probably the best race ever staged, what we didn’t realise at the time was that it carried with it some pretty sinister undertones that would only a week later serve as a catalyst for one of the sport’s greatest and most souring controversies.
At several points in that race, Marquez deliberately backed off his pace, which Rossi thought was a retaliation against him for the pair’s two clashes in Assen and Argentina that year. Marquez did feel aggrieved at Rossi for these incidents, however the Spaniard wasn’t backing up his pace to slow the Italian down. Phillip Island is a hard circuit on tyres and Marquez was overcooking them during that race; if you overheat the front you’ll just lose all grip. So Marquez was cooling his rubber off in preparation for a final lap assault, which ultimately played into the hands of Rossi because it took points away from Lorenzo.
Rossi was never convinced of this and it all bubbled up into the now infamous ‘Sepang Clash’, which had a direct influence on the outcome of that year’s world championship battle.
Regardless of what the 2015 Australian Grand Prix sort of became a catalyst for, I still remember it with great fondness. I’ve probably watched the race six or seven times since last year and, genuinely, I still get the same goosebumps and adrenalin buzz I did when I first saw it 12 months ago. It truly was a special Grand Prix.
If you didn’t see the race or just want to relive it, the good folks at Dorna Sports have put the race free of charge on YouTube for you to enjoy. Follow the link to check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk9MUJ6_XPM.
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