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MotoGP Preview of the British GP: A Glorious Track

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It is hard to overstate just how different Silverstone is from Spielberg, where the last two MotoGP rounds were held.

Sure, both have very high average speeds – Silverstone at 179.7 km/h is among the fastest tracks on the calendar, and Spielberg’s 188 km/h is the fastest of the season – but that is pretty much where the similarity ends.

Silverstone has 18 corners, where Spielberg has only 10. The Austrian circuit is 4.3km long, while Silverstone is 5.9 kilometers.

The Red Bull Ring is three fast straights with a bunch of corners holding them together, while Silverstone is a complex of flowing corners and combinations of turns which present a real challenge to get right.

Oh, and Spielberg has steep climbs and sweeping drops, built on the side of a mountain (the clue is in the name, SpielBERG), while Silverstone is pretty much flat as a pancake, built around an old airfield on the top of a hill.

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MotoGP Preview of the Austria GP: Spielberg’s Bad Vibes

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The Red Bull Ring has faced much criticism in the six years since MotoGP started going back there, mostly about the safety of the riders on track. But one thing that gets overlooked is the circuit’s propensity for generating drama off track.

In 2020, we had Andrea Dovizioso announcing he would not be racing with Ducati again in 2021.

In 2019, we had the drama with Johann Zarco splitting with KTM, with additional drama around Jack Miller possibly losing a place to Jorge Lorenzo, who would return to Ducati to take Miller’s place at Pramac.

The year before, Yamaha had held a press conference in which management and engineers officially apologized to factory riders Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales for building a dog-slow bike that left them 11th and 14th on the grid.

Spielberg was the place where Romano Fenati got into an altercation with the Sky VR46 Moto2 team, and was sacked in 2016.

So much discord and division. Perhaps the circuit is built on a conjunction of ley lines, or perhaps the Spielberg track was built on an ancient cemetery where the contemporaries of Ötzi were buried.

Or perhaps the middle of a MotoGP season is when tensions generally reach boiling point. The latter explanation is the most likely, perhaps, though a good deal less entertaining.

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Thursday MotoGP Summary at the Styria GP: Rossi’s Retirement, Race Lessons, & Slow Healing

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It was an odd day today. The moment we heard that there would be an extra press conference to be held by Valentino Rossi, the work of a journalist goes into overdrive.

Preparing a story for if he announced his retirement, worrying whether to write an alternative story, for if he had announced he would be switching to Ducati and racing in his own team, putting out feelers to see what people thought the announcement would be.

Weighing rumors that he would be doing one thing or another.

The most remarkable thing about today’s announcement was that nobody knew which way it was going to go.

Normally, decisions of such import leak out; there were rumors that Jorge Lorenzo was going to retire for weeks before hand, Casey Stoner’s retirement had been credibly reported at least three weeks before the announcement, and Dani Pedrosa’s retirement had been telegraphed for a long time.

Even Rossi’s decision to drop long-time crew chief Jeremy Burgess had been leaked to the press a week beforehand.

And in truth, the leak probably forced Rossi’s hand, and into making an announcement before the Valencia race, instead of after it. Rossi got his revenge later, however, planting a false story with the same journalist a year or so later.

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MotoGP Preview of the Styria GP: Danger & Opportunity in the Alps

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If it’s scenery you’re after, the Red Bull Ring, or Spielberg, or Zeltweg – choose your favorite name for the Austrian circuit – is hard to beat.

Mugello maybe? The Italian track sits in a valley, rather than being set up against the lower slopes of a mountain, but Spielberg wins on the mountain backdrop behind it.

Phillip Island, perhaps? The Bass Strait makes for a stunning setting, but is it more dramatic than the Austrian Alps which frame the Red Bull Ring?

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MotoGP Preview of the German GP: Beating Marc Marquez

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Earlier this week, I wrote an article setting out why I think that Marc Márquez is the favorite to win at the Sachsenring. What the riders told the media on Thursday at the Sachsenring merely cemented the Repsol Honda rider’s status as front runner.

Despite his entirely mediocre results since his return to racing, Márquez was identified as at least a potential podium candidate by just about anyone you asked.

Should this be a surprise? Not when you consider that, as veteran US journalist Dennis Noyes pointed out to me, Marc Márquez has quite the record at anticlockwise circuits, tracks with more left handers than rights.

How good? He wins nearly 7 out of every 10 races he starts at a track which mainly turns left.

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MotoGP Preview of the Catalan GP: A Changed Circuit, A Curious Crash, & A Strange Swap

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Another week, another race track. We are a third of the way into the 2021 MotoGP season (probably, possibly, pandemic permitting), and things are starting to move fast. A third of the way now, and in three weeks’ time, we will be at the halfway mark.

It is hard to overstate how important this part of the season is. Jerez, Le Mans, Mugello, Barcelona, and Assen are the guts of the season, the foundations on which championships are built.

By the time we pack up for the summer break – a long one this time, five weeks between Assen and Austria, with Sachsenring taking place before Assen instead of after, its usual slot – we should have a very good idea of who is in the driving seat for this year.

What makes the triumvirate of Mugello, Barcelona, and Assen key? They are fast, punishing tracks that test man and machine.

They are riders’ tracks, where a fast rider can make the difference, but they also need a bike to be set up well in pursuit of a good result. There are no shortcuts at those three circuits, no relying on one aspect of the machine to get you out of trouble.

The bike has to do a lot of things well, from braking to turning to accelerating. That needs a good crew chief to analyze strengths and weaknesses, a competent team to find the right balance between them, and a good rider to use that bike between them.

If motorcycle racing is about finding the best compromise between braking, acceleration, turning, speed, the Mugello-Barcelona-Assen is the ultimate test of that.

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Thursday MotoGP Summary at the Portuguese GP: Normality, And the Return of Marc Marquez

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After a month in the desert, MotoGP returns to something more resembling normality. The Grand Prix paddock has left Qatar behind to fly to Europe, gathering at the Circuito do Algarve in Portimão, Portugal.

The change is all-encompassing: from the wild temperature swings from day to night of Qatar to the temperate climes of Portugal’s Algarve coast in balmy springtime; from dust and wind to mist and sunshine. From the bright artificial spotlights to being bathed in natural sunlight.

Above all, though, the change is from having a narrow window where everything resembled race conditions, that golden hour from 7pm to 8pm, to having usable conditions both morning and afternoon.

From a track where Michelin couldn’t bring a selection of tires which would allow a choice for the race at night, to a track where the teams should be able to find a tire that works for their bike, instead of having to bend their bikes to suit the only tire that will withstand the the weird conditions that prevail in the Qatari night.

Not that tires won’t be an issue at Portimão. Last year’s allocation has been tweaked, based on data collected at the track when MotoGP visited for the first time.

And because we go there now in mid-April, rather than late November, when the sun is higher in the sky and radiating more heat into the ribbon of asphalt the riders have to traverse.

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Thursday MotoGP Test Summary at Qatar: Why Ducati & Yamaha Are Strong, And KTM Is Struggling

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There was a palpable sense of excitement after the record-setting laps by Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo yesterday. Would more records be broken on Thursday?

They wouldn’t. Though both Maverick Viñales and Franco Morbidelli got under Marc Márquez’ original lap record at the track (a record which still stands, incidentally, given that records are only set on race weekends and not at tests), they still ended up several hundredths short of Miller’s blistering time from Wednesday.

And with the wind expected to pick up on Friday the prospect of a lap of 1’52 is growing ever more distant. Conditions will not be as absolutely perfect as they were on Wednesday again any time soon.

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Thursday MotoGP Summary at the Portuguese GP: How to Approach the Last Race with Nothing on the Line

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And so the voyage into the unknown begins. MotoGP kicks off its final round of this fundamentally weird season at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimao.

The combination of the final round, a new circuit, and the Moto2 and Moto3 titles still at stake meant that it was a long and grueling day of interviews, media debriefs, and press conferences, with barely a moment to catch your breath or a quick bite to eat in between.

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MotoGP Preview of the Valencia GP: The Marquez-Dovizioso-Crutchlow-Iannone Mad News Week

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It is Groundhog day one last time. The last of the back-to-back races at the same tracks beckons, the riders returning to the scene of last week’s triumphs and tragedies.

Will we see a repeat of last week? Will there be another Suzuki Ecstar 1-2? Will the KTMs be at the front again? Will Ducati have another worrying weekend? Does Yamaha face disaster again?

The weekend certainly kicked off with a repeat performance of Valentino Rossi’s Covid-19 saga. Last Thursday, news started to leak that Valentino Rossi had failed a COVID-19 test, and would not be able to travel to Valencia for the European round of MotoGP.

In the end, he had two positive tests 24 hours apart and missed only the Friday sessions, taking to the track on Saturday morning for FP3. That gave American rider Garrett Gerloff his time in the sun, or rather, the rain, the spray, and the sun, the weather wreaking havoc last weekend.

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MotoGP Preview of the European GP: Life Inside the Bubble in the Final Stretch

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We are entering the final stretch of The Year That Went On Forever. It turns out that compressing an intense, 14-race season into the space of 19 weekends feels more like five years than five months.

Speak to people inside the paddock, or even speak casually to a rider, and they will tell you how mentally draining it is. Stuck in the Covid-19 bubble, wary of venturing out for fear of becoming infected.

That was what happened to Jorge Martin and Valentino Rossi, and they paid a heavy price. Both missed two races, and it looked like Rossi would miss a third, when he tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.

Fortunately for him, a test on Thursday came back negative, so he is on his way to Valencia. If he has another test come back negative on Friday, he will be able to race this weekend.

You don’t even have to have the virus yourself to be forced to miss races. Tony Arbolino missed Aragon after he sat too close to a person with Covid-19 on a plane back from Le Mans.

And now Iker Lecuona will miss Valencia because his brother, who is also his assistant, tested positive in Andorra.

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