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Friday MotoGP Summary at the British GP: Why Grip Creates Complications as Well as Advantages

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Has the resurfacing of Silverstone been a success. Judging by the reaction from the riders, you would have to say yes. “I don’t think you’ll speak to another rider today who doesn’t have a smile on his face, because the asphalt is amazing, the grip is amazing,” Jack Miller raved, echoing the thoughts of most riders.

The timesheets proved that they were not just saying that at the behest of the Silverstone PR people. It took Marc Márquez 4 laps of the track to beat the best time set during FP1 in 2018, his time already faster than the existing race lap record.

By the end of FP1, Fabio Quartararo was within a whisker of the outright lap record set in 2017. That record was beaten first by Valentino Rossi at the end of FP2, then destroyed by Fabio Quartararo five seconds later. Quartararo’s best lap in FP2 was over seven tenths quicker than Márquez’ pole record from 2017.

It was much the same pattern in Moto2 and Moto3. Tony Arbolino smashed the outright lap record in FP1 for the Moto3 class. In Moto2, Fabio Di Giannantonio broke the outright lap record by six tenths in FP1, then in the afternoon FP2 session, Jorge Navarro took another seven tenths off the time set in the morning.

The track is much, much faster. On Thursday, Jarno Zaffelli, the man who had drawn up the requirements, and then overseen and monitored the laying of the new asphalt, had predicted that the race lap record might be cut by as much as 1.7 seconds on Sunday. It is looking increasingly likely that that is a realistic target.

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MotoGP Preview of the British GP

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This time last year, the entire paddock was stood in the rain, looking at the skies, and wondering how we were ever going to have a MotoGP race at Silverstone again.

After a brief shower of torrential rain on Saturday put more water on the track than the new surface could drain away, making the track unrideable and creating conditions which saw a series of riders crash at the end of Hangar Straight, Tito Rabat coming off worst as Franco Morbidelli’s wayward Honda smashed into his leg and destroyed his femur.

With the forecast for rain later on Sunday, the race was rescheduled for an early start, the lights due to go out at 11:30am local time. But the rain came earlier than forecast, and was heavier, and the track never dried out. There was standing water at several sections around the track.

We waited, and we waited, and we waited. And we looked at one another and asked, have you heard anything? And every time we heard about a possible start time, or a time to evaluate track conditions, that was contradicted or retracted ten minutes later.

In the end, conditions never improved enough to be able to run the race safely, and after an impromptu meeting of the Safety Commission convened by at least some of the riders, race day was canceled. No MotoGP race, no Moto2 race, no Moto3 race.

Nothing. The crowds, who had sat valiantly in the rain for hours with nothing to see except the safety car and its attendant bow wave, went home with surprisingly little fuss. Hard to riot when you are stone cold freezing and wet to the bone, I suppose.

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KymiRing Test Concludes with MotoGP Riders Critical of the Track

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The first official test at the Kymiring has wrapped up, the second day of testing taking place under much better conditions than the first day on Monday. The day started dry, though action didn’t start until 11am, the riders losing an hour of time as the test was cut short by the weather.

On a dry track, times were considerably quicker than on Monday, when the track was both wet and dirty. Where riders were circulating in the 2’10s on Monday, Bradley Smith managed to get down to 1:47.540 on the Aprilia. 

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MotoGP Testing at KymiRing in Finland Gets Underway

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Testing has come to an end after the first ever day of MotoGP action at the Kymring in Finland, six of the test riders for the six official MotoGP manufacturers turning some laps at the newly built circuit.

Present were Stefan Bradl for Honda, Jonas Folger for Yamaha, Sylvain Guintoli for Suzuki, Mika Kallio for KTM, Michele Pirro for Ducati and Bradley Smith for Aprilia. Kallio was chosen over KTM’s other test rider, Dani Pedrosa, to give the Finnish rider a chance to ride on his home track.

The test was convened mainly to give Michelin a chance to understand the stress the track will put on the tires. Although they have software that can simulate tire loads and wear based on the layout of the track and the abrasiveness of the surface, measured using special molds, that is always an approximation.

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The Different Trajectories of Johann Zarco & Jorge Lorenzo

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What are you to do if you find yourself stuck on a bike you know you can’t ride? On a bike that you are convinced is trying to hurt you, and that you keep falling off of every time you try to push?

The obvious answer is you try to leave as soon as possible. But that simple answer hides a host of factors that make leaving not as easy as it looks. The cases of Jorge Lorenzo and Johann Zarco illustrate that very well.

First of all, why would a rider want to leave a factory ride? The pay is good, rarely less than seven figures. Riders have a chance to shape the bike and point development in a direction that suits them.

They are treated, if not like royalty, then at least like nobility: transport is arranged and rearranged pretty much at their whim, picked up at their front doors before a race and deposited there again afterward. The pressure is high, but in a factory team, they do everything they can to take the strain and let their riders concentrate on riding.

That is little consolation when the going gets really tough. When you are struggling to get inside the top ten, despite giving your all to try to make the bike go faster.

When you are crashing at twice, three times your normal rate. When factories are slow to bring updates to the bike. Or even worse, when they bring boxes and boxes of new parts, and none of those parts make much of a difference to your results.

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Johann Zarco & KTM Part Ways for 2020

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The Austrian round of MotoGP has been a weekend of bombshells. After the news that Ducati and Jorge Lorenzo had been in talks to replace Jack Miller in the Pramac squad before the weekend, on Sunday night it emerged that Johann Zarco asked to be released from his contract with KTM for 2020.

The Frenchman has long been unhappy with the Austrian factory, sometimes very publicly so. Since the moment he jumped on the KTM RC16, he has struggled to adapt to the bike.

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KTM Pulls Out of Moto2, Effective Next Year

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Their home Grand Prix is traditionally the place where KTM announce the racing plans, and this weekend’s Austrian MotoGP round is no different.

There is to be a shakeup in the Moto2 and Moto3 classes, while the Austrian manufacturer has extended its commitment to MotoGP for five more years beyond 2021.

KTM will stop as a chassis manufacturer in Moto2, but bring back Husqvarna as a separate team and bike in Moto3.

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Austrian GP: The Real Gap Disguised By a Superlative Pole

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Is four tenths of a second a realistic gap between first and second on the grid at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg? It doesn’t represent the real strength of the riders on the first two or three rows. The gap separating the group capable of battling for the podium is a couple of tenths, give or take.

And it doesn’t represent a realistic pace around the Red Bull Ring. Sure, you can flirt with laps of 1’22 for a lap or two, but to do so requires burning through your tires at an unsustainable rate.

You can get down to the mid to low 1’23s on both the soft and medium rear Michelins, but to do so requires you to stress the edge of the tire to the extreme, overheating it and wearing it out in the space of 5 laps, not the 28 laps the race will last.

The soft will do race distance – Michelin expect most riders to be choosing between the medium and the soft rears – but it takes a little more careful management.

If anything is going to be a limiting factor at the Red Bull Ring, it is going to be fuel. Spend 28 laps with the throttle wide open for most of the lap, and you burn through gasoline at a rate of knots.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Austrian GP: Marquez vs. Dovizioso…and Yamaha

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Another track, another day of Marc Márquez dominance. He was only second in the Friday morning session, 0.185 seconds behind Andrea Dovizioso, but he had a formidable pace from the start.

22 laps all on the same tires, ending with a lap of 1’24.566, which was faster than Alex Rins in seventh, who had set a quick lap on a new soft rear tire.

In the afternoon, Márquez stepped up the pace, this time keeping a soft rear for the full session instead of the medium he had used in the morning.

This time, at the end of his 23 laps on the same soft rear, he posted a lap of 1’24.708. 23 laps is just five shy of race distance. If Marc Márquez is going that fast that late in the race, he will be a hard man to beat.

The Repsol Honda garage was busy, too. In the afternoon, Márquez finally debuted the updated aero package he had tested at Brno, consisting of larger upper wings, and slightly broader lower wings.

Fitting the fairing meant hiding the bikes behind screens to protect their naked form from prying eyes, or rather, prying cameras. But the fairings, they cannot hide. Nor the carbon frames neither.

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MotoGP Preview of the Austrian GP

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Racing in Austria has always been about speed. When Grand Prix motorcycles first raced in Austria, they went to the Salzburgring, a hairy, narrow track that snakes along one section of the mountain east of Salzburg, then down a bit, and then all the way back again.

It was fast, and it was terrifying, and by the time Grand Prix left the track, the average speed of a lap was over 194 km/h. But it was also incredibly dangerous, with no runoff in sections, and steel barriers along large parts of the track.

After abandoning the Salzburgring, Grand Prix moved to the A1 Ring, the predecessor of the modern Red Bull Ring.

The A1 Ring was a shortened and neutered version of the original Österreichring, a terrifyingly quick circuit that rolled over the hill which overlooks the little town of Spielberg, where the F1 cars reached average speeds of over 255 km/h.

The original circuit is still there, at least in outline, visible from the satellite view of Google Maps.

Shortened and neutered it may have been, but speeds were still high. In 1997, Mick Doohan took pole for the race at an average speed of 175 km/h, faster than the 171 km/h average speed for pole at Phillip Island, a notoriously quick track.

When MotoGP returned to Austria after an absence of 20 years, speeds were still high: Andrea Iannone’s pole lap was set with an average speed of nearly 187 km/h, making it the fastest track on the calendar.

And yet the track is not fast in the traditional sense. It is not fast and flowing like Phillip Island, Mugello, Assen, or Termas de Rio Hondo.

Nor it is a track where the bikes explore the limits of outright top speed: at the Red Bull Ring, the highest recorded speed is 316.5km/h on the climb up the hill, 40 km/h slower than the front straight at Mugello, where they have clocked 356.7 km/h.

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Could Jorge Lorenzo Take Jack Miller’s Place at Pramac Ducati?

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You would think, with only two riders not yet signed up for 2020, and both of those (Jack Miller and Takaaki Nakagami) saying they are just working out the details, that there would not be much drama over contracts in the MotoGP paddock.

Things are not quite the same in the WorldSBK paddock, where Alvaro Bautista’s reign of terror has come to a very premature end, opening all sorts of speculation for the 2020 season.

Those two strands are starting to come together after Brno, amplified by moves in Moto2 and WorldSBK. The rumors are flying, some more sensible than others. And many of them are very much in the category of insanity.

At the core of these rumors is Jorge Lorenzo, and his extended absence from the MotoGP paddock due to the injuries sustained in his crashes at the Barcelona test and practice at Assen.

Since then, the rumor mill has gone into overdrive, with questions over whether Lorenzo will continue with Repsol Honda or try to do something else.

Over the summer break, there were rumors he would retire, and the latest rumor has him going back to Ducati in some form or another.

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