Latest Posts:
Asphalt & Rubber
Tag

QP1

Browsing
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Valencia GP: The Pressure of the Championship

By No Comments

It was supposed to be a steady, stable weekend with consistent weather for all three days of the Valencia MotoGP round. But it’s 2020, so of course, that didn’t happen.

After a solid day of dry weather on Friday, conditions turned on Saturday. Not by a lot, but just enough to render chasing a quick time in practice and qualifying a treacherous business, with light rain coming and going throughout.

After the track dried in FP3, it never really rained hard enough to need wet tires. But there was just enough rain at times to make grip supremely treacherous, and to force riders to take bigger risks than they might have wanted.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the European GP: No Data, Mir’s Mind Games, & KTM’s Advantage

By No Comments

What is the point of free practice? It is to prepare bike, rider, and team (not necessarily in that order) for Sunday’s race. On a good weekend, you spend Friday testing your base setup and getting an idea of which tires to use.

On Saturday, you refine the setup and check how your preferred tire lasts over something approaching race distance. In warm up on Sunday morning, you might try a final tweak in search of more tire life or a fraction more performance.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Teruel GP: Takaaki Nakagami Shows His Colors

By 1 Comment

2020 keeps throwing up surprises. If having eight different winners on four different manufacturers, including the rookie Brad Binder, wasn’t enough, the array of riders qualifying on the front row is remarkable.

Twelve different riders have qualified on the front row of the grid, if we include Alex Rins as the twelfth at the Teruel Grand Prix, or Aragon 2. That is over half of the 22-strong grid.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Aragon GP: Heroic Quartararo’s, Honda’s Return, & Dueling Ducatis

By 3 Comments

It looked like we would have another twist in this weird and unsettling season this morning. At Turn 14, the current MotoGP championship leader’s Yamaha M1 got a little squirrelly as he rode over the kerbs.

A little too squirrelly, the front stepping out and then the rear gripping and flicking Fabio Quartararo up into the air, and down onto his left hip. When the Frenchman finally slid to a halt, he struggled to get up, clearly in enormous pain.

He was stretchered into a waiting ambulance, and taken off to the medical center.

For a while, it looked like this could be a serious blow to Quartararo’s title chances, handing the advantage to Joan Mir.

But scans and X-rays revealed that the Petronas Yamaha rider had gotten off relatively lightly, with only bruising and a hematoma in his left hip.

A match for the bruise to his right hip suffered in a crash on Friday morning.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Catalunya GP

By No Comments

What did we learn from qualifying for the Grand Prix of Catalonia on Saturday? We learned that qualifying is extremely deceptive.

The front of the grid is a mixture of riders who are genuinely fast on race pace, and riders who are only quick over a single lap.

But what we also learned is that the track at Montmelo, outside Barcelona, is so hard on tires that qualifying is only a very small part of the story. It is uncertain whether where you qualify will have any bearing on the outcome of the race.

The problem at Barcelona is that the track is punishing on tires. You do not get to the end of the race with tire to spare. Indeed, you may not make it to the end of the race at all.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Emilia-Romagna GP: Lost Records, Sharing Blame, & The Suzuki Mystery

By No Comments

It was an almost perfect lap. Pecco Bagnaia had sat at the top of the timesheets for a good chunk of Q2 after beating Maverick Viñales’ best time up to that point by three tenths of a second.

As the final minutes of qualifying ticked down, his rivals closed in, Viñales snatching back top spot with five minutes left to go.

But Bagnaia wasn’t done yet. He had been fastest in FP3, then set a withering pace in FP4, and came into qualifying brimming with confidence.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Styria GP: An Unwanted Guest in Parc Ferme

By 3 Comments

Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring proved as exhilarating a spectacle as ever, but like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet, an absent specter took some of the attention away from a celebration of racing.

A little over an hour after qualifying finished – delayed because Jaume Masia tore the fairing from his Leopard Honda Moto3 bike after crashing in Q1, then rode back to the pits dumping oil and water all over the track – a press release from the Repsol Honda team reminded us of the absentee champion.

Marc Márquez, the press release announced, would be out for another two to three months, to allow him to recover fully from the broken humerus he suffered at the first round of MotoGP on July 19th.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Austrian GP: Desmo Dovi Divorce Overshadows Qualifying

By 2 Comments

It was one of those days. We had a fascinating FP4 session for the MotoGP class, where a clear pattern emerged for the race, followed by a thrilling and action-packed qualifying, yet barely anyone is talking about that at all.

And all because early on Saturday afternoon, the bombshell dropped that Andrea Dovizioso will be leaving Ducati at the end of the 2020 season.

Though the news itself did not quite come as a surprise, the timing and nature of the announcement caught us all a little off guard. Ducati had said they had hoped to make a decision after the two races at the Red Bull Ring.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Czech GP: Why Old Is Better Than New…Sometimes

By 1 Comment

If ever there were a day where qualifying and practice told two very different stories, it was Saturday at Brno. The tales were linked and related, interwoven in many ways, but the differences outweighed the common threads.

The grid tells a tale of heroism, surprises, and the cruel application of sensible rules. Practice is a story of dark foreboding, of the grim war of attrition that awaits on Sunday afternoon. Qualifying was tough; the race is going to be much, much tougher.

Qualifying is always the highlight of Saturday afternoon, though the final free practice session, FP4, is what matters most. With nothing on the line but race setup, and conditions close to what they will face at race time on Sunday afternoon, teams and riders show what they are really capable of.

Even then, the story told is not in the overall result, but tucked away in the analysis timesheets, where teams send out riders on old tires, to see how they hold up once they get a lot of laps on them.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Andalusian GP

By No Comments

He came. He tried. But in the end, it proved impossible. Even for a man whose ambition and competitive drive burns as fiercely as Marc Márquez’.

After riding with fewer problems than he feared on Saturday morning, the fracture in his right arm started to swell in the afternoon, and made riding impossible.

Marc Márquez was forced to face the limits of human endurance and willpower, and accept that racing on Sunday would not be.

Saturday afternoon was the first time that the media had had a chance to actually speak to Márquez since his crash last Sunday.

He hadn’t spoken to the media after the race – for the obvious reason that he was injured and needed medical attention – nor had he spoken to us on his return to the track.

His mind was focused laser-like on Saturday morning, when he would get a chance to ride – skipping Friday was part of the deal he made with HRC before they would even allow him to get on a bike – and he wanted no distractions.

But on Saturday afternoon, after his body had forced him to throw in the towel, Márquez finally told us exactly what happened a week ago, when he crashed out of the race, and kicked off the roller coaster ride which ended with him pulling into his garage after a single lap during Q1.

Keep Reading
By
MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Spanish GP: Risk vs. Reward

By 1 Comment

For a stunning and heartrending reminder of just how difficult and delicate the 2020 MotoGP season is going to be, see Alex Rins’ huge crash at Turn 11 during qualifying on Saturday at Jerez.

The Suzuki Ecstar rider lost the front at one of the fastest and most treacherous corners of the circuit, and was forced to pick the bike up to try and save it.

But as he entered the gravel trap, he realized he was traveling too fast, and decided to drop the bike to avoid hitting the barrier on the outside of the corner.

That is never an easy maneuver at speeds well over 170 km/h, and Rins fell badly in the attempt.

Keep Reading
By