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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Argentina GP: Following Freight

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It has been a busy day for everyone involved in MotoGP. A large section of the paddock was sat either behind a computer or staring at a mobile device frantically refreshing their flight tracker app of choice, watching the exploits of Aerostan aircraft EX-47001, as it finally made its way from Mombasa in Kenya to Lagos in Nigeria to Salvador in Brazil.

As I write this, it has taken off from Salvador and is winging its way to Tucuman, where it is due to land some time after 9pm. At Salvador, the flight number changed from BSC4042 to BSC4043.

A sign? I leave it up to the reader to decipher the letters BSC in the flight number.

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MotoGP Preview of the Argentina GP: Weirder & Weirder

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Despite being back to something resembling relative normality, MotoGP is off to a strange start in 2022. The season opener at Qatar saw the favorites fall short, and a surprise winner and championship leader.

The second race, at Mandalika in Indonesia, nudged uncomfortably close to farce, the rain saving the MotoGP race from disaster. But like many wet races, the result was far from representative.

For round 3, MotoGP heads to Argentina, and the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit. The track in Argentina is a lesson in contrasts.

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MotoGP

Mandalika, Michelin, Marquez – How a Chain of Unfortunate Choices Ended in Disaster for Honda

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Honda went into the Indonesian Grand Prix widely seen as potential front runners. Pol Espargaro had been fastest in the test at Mandalika a month previously, Marc Marquez had been quickest on the second day of the test, Honda riders had set a consistently fast pace, looking better than their single-lap speed.

What’s more, Espargaro was coming off a podium at the season opener at Qatar, the race where Marc Marquez had finished fifth.

To say the Indonesian Grand Prix ended badly for Honda is an understatement. Pol Espargaro was fastest Honda once again, but the Repsol rider crossed the line way down in 12th, 33 seconds behind the winner, Miguel Oliveira.

Espargaro was one of only two Honda riders to finish in the points, crossing the line just ahead of Alex Marquez on the LCR Honda in 13th. Takaaki Nakagami could only struggle to a 19th place, 49 seconds behind the winner.

That wasn’t the really bad news, however. The worst blow for Honda was the fact that Marc Marquez manage to miss the race, and perhaps endanger his chances of the 2022 title, or worse. Much worse.

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Indonesian GP: Chaos Reigns

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The first Indonesian GP in 25 years has been a complicated affair. A new track, in the middle of a construction site where a new resort is being built. A track which was resurfaced after the test uncovered issues with the asphalt.

The blistering tropical heat, capable of raising track temperatures to well over 60°. The swapping out of the rear tire used at the test for an older, safer tire used in Austria and Buriram to prevent the tire from blistering if track temperatures get that high.

And the intense rains which leave the track wet for a long time, have eaten into setup time, and keep washing dirt onto the surface.

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at the Indonesian GP: Low Grip & Yamahas

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We say it pretty much every Friday of a MotoGP weekend: it’s hard to draw conclusions from the first day of practice.

The first day of practice is usually spent trying out different setups and then assessing which tires are the best compromise between performance and durability for the race, so just glancing at the timesheets doesn’t tell you as much as you would like.

The first day of practice at Mandalika is even more complicated to unravel. First, there is the fact that it rained heavily on Friday morning, leaving the track damp at the start before drying out.

Then there’s the fact that nearly half the track has been resurfaced, the work finished not long before MotoGP arrived.

Finally, Michelin changed the construction of the rear tire from the one used at the test, in response to the heat at the track, the new surface, and the data from the test.

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Qatar GP: Surprising Youngsters

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If it has felt like a long wait for the season to get underway again. And Saturday at Qatar showed us just what we have been missing. A surprising FP3, where eight riders managed to improve their lap times, despite the session taking place in the heat of the day, and the wind having picked up and bringing a dusting of sand to the track.

Among those who improved were Enea Bastianini, who jumped up to fifth, threatening Pol Espargaro, Pecco Bagnaia, and Fabio Quartararo. Espargaro and Bagnaia bettered their times, Quartararo did not, setting up another thrilling contest to get out of Q1 and into Q2. If you were looking for drama, you got everything you could have hoped for, and more.

You even got the customary yellow flag drama in qualifying, with laps being canceled due to yellow flags having a significant impact on the grid in all three classes. A yellow flag waved at the end of Q1 for a crash by Darryn Binder meant Johann Zarco had his best lap canceled, put in right at the end of the session.

Although fans don’t like the rule, it was put in place after a couple of horrific incidents, most notably when Tito Rabat had his leg destroyed at Silverstone in 2018 when he was hit by Franco Morbidelli’s bike. The aim is to slow riders down when they see a yellow flag, something which the change has been largely successful in doing. But it comes at the price of laps being canceled.

Whenever an important lap gets canceled, there is an outcry to find a better solution. Unfortunately, a better solution is almost impossible to find. All of the alternatives proposed just introduce other problems, as you would expect when the law of unintended consequences kicks in.

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MotoGP

Friday MotoGP Summary at the Qatar GP: Suzuki’s Newfound Speed

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Testing is all well and good, but at last, we have real, actual data from a race track on a bona fide race weekend. All 24 bikes on the track at the same time, trying to figure out as much as possible in two short 45 minute sessions.

No running separately, or trying to figure out how the conditions for the 8-lap run done at 11am compare to the 12-lap run at 2pm, or the 7-lap run at 5pm.

The first day at Qatar may have been genuine competition, but the picture was also confused by the schedule. With FP1 at 1:40pm, in the heat of the day, and FP2 shortly after sunset, at 6pm, conditions were completely different, the air temperature 7°C lower, and the track a whole 16°C cooler.

“Well, for sure now it is hard to see who has the better pace than the other because we don’t have the normal day schedule,” Miguel Oliveira reflected after the first day.”The hour is not that different but for the temperature and the wind it changes quite a lot.”

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MotoGP

MotoGP Preview of the Qatar GP: Politics, Track Time, & A Lack of Setup

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From time to time, when I stray from talking about motorcycle racing to share something political on Twitter, I am told by some random Twitter user to “stick to bikes”.

What they mean, of course, is that I should not share political opinions or articles they do not agree with, but that’s a different question.

Talking about politics is, of course, still “sticking to bikes.” Circuits have to be built somewhere.

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MotoGP

How Honda’s Radical Redesign Reshapes the 2022 MotoGP Season

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What did we learn from the Mandalika test? First of all, we learned that building a circuit is hard, and every aspect of it needs to be carefully monitored. Because using the wrong stones in the aggregate for the asphalt can mean you have to resurface the track just a few weeks before the race is due to be held.

Despite the state of the asphalt, once the track cleaned up – something the riders had to be bullied into to doing, even though it was for their own good – the riders put in a lot of laps, the reward for effort going to Takaaki Nakagami, who racked up a grand total of 91 laps on the final day, or over 390km.

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MotoGP

Mandalika MotoGP Test Saturday Notes: The Cream Rises to the Top

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You could tell testing was underway in earnest at Mandalika on Saturday by the fact that for most of the day, Brad Binder’s name was stuck at the top of the timesheets. The time Binder set was already well under Pol Espargaro’s best time from Friday, hitting a 1’31.814 on his third exit from the pits.

But, nobody followed suit until the final hour or so of the test, with Luca Marini eventually ending up fastest with a lap of 1’31.289. The teams and riders were too busy with the hard graft of testing, optimizing parts and refining setup, figuring out the best base with which to launch their assault on the 2022 MotoGP championship at Qatar in three weeks’ time.

A day of riding had made a huge difference to the track surface, with a clean line with high grip appearing.

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MotoGP

Mandalika MotoGP Test Friday Notes: Sweeping the Circuit to Start

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It was a good day for attention-grabbing headlines at Mandalika. Pol Espargaro ended the day with a scorching lap which took him under the WorldSBK Superpole by four tenths of a second.

There were six different manufacturers in the top six. The lead on the first day changed hands time after time in the last couple of hours.

But the headlines don’t really mean very much. Times were dropping because the track started off filthy and only really started to clean up in the last hour or so of the day.

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