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Lukas Pesek

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With the 2013 MotoGP season at its halfway mark, now is a good time to take a look back and examine the engine usage for the teams and riders.

In 2012, with the engine durability regulations in their third full season, the factories appeared to have the situation pretty much under control. The only excitement arose when something unexpected happened, such as Jorge Lorenzo have an engine lunch itself after he was taken out by Alvaro Bautista at Assen last year.

For 2013, the engine allocation was reduced from six to five engines per season. Each rider now has five engines to last the entire season, for use in all timed practice sessions during each race weekend. With three seasons already under their belt, no real drama was expected, yet that is not quite how it has turned out.

Since October is just simply too long of a wait for the Italian company’s new uber carbon fiber racer lid to come to the United States, our bromance with the AGV Pista GP helmet continues to manifest itself online here at Asphalt & Rubber — and yes, we also don’t have the patience for the still-very-racey but-less-uber fiberglass-bodied AGV Corse, which comes a little earlier to the US, in September.

With the MotoGP season starting in earnest this weekend, one of the more minor highlights was the debut of all the riders’ new helmets, and for 2013 we now have five Pistas to drool over on the MotoGP grid, which certainly doesn’t help our “patience is a virtue” mantra.

While we work on centering our chi, there are a bevy of  photos for you after the jump. However, on any given Sunday you can find Stefan Bradl, Andrea Iannone, Danilo Petrucci, Lukas Pesek, and of course Valentino rep’n their Pistas on the grid. Which one is your favorite?

The second day of the special CRT test at Sepang, laid on to allow the teams using the brand new Magneti Marelli spec-ECU, was as beset by problems as the first day. If technical problems and a lack of parts had been the bane of day 1, it was the weather which dogged the teams, though technical problems persisted.

Heavy rain in the morning meant that only Danilo Petrucci went to put in a few laps before running into an electrical issue with a coil left the engine running on two cylinders. The rain stopped in the afternoon, but the track remained wet, leaving the riders present to do only a few laps.

Petrucci ended the day fastest – though his best time of 2’23.546 is fairly meaningless at a track where the race lap record is 2’02, and the pole record 2’00 – but frustrated at having not been able to get much work done. The electrical problems left him stranded in the pits in the morning, while teammate Lukas Pesek took the only Magneti Marelli ECU the team currently has at their disposal in the afternoon.