Episode 248 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is our Moto2 and Moto3 follow-up to Episode 247, which focused on the MotoGP action from the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and David Emmett, as they walk us through the on-track action in the support classes.
Episode 247 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the MotoGP action from the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.
On the mics, we have Steve English, David Emmett, and Neil Morrison, as they cover less of what transpired on the track, and more about Fabio Quartararo’s first MotoGP World Championship.
It has been something of an irrelevant day at Misano. On Friday morning, the track was soaking, rain keeping it wet. In the afternoon, it started off wet, but a dry line started to form.
“At the end, the last 10 minutes to go, we had one dry line, but lap by lap it was getting wider,” was how Takaaki Nakagami described it.
With damp conditions expected on Saturday, and a cold and dry Sunday, nothing of importance was learned on Friday.
It was a wasted day in terms of finding race setup, perhaps, but it was still useful in overall terms. MotoGP is full of young riders who haven’t had all that much time in the wet, and so Friday offered a chance to gain some valuable experience.
Of necessity, the past two MotoGP seasons have seen races repeatedly run on the same race track. 2020 was a succession of back-to-back races at the same track: Jerez 1 and 2, Austria 1 and 2, Misano 1 and 2, Aragon 1 and 2, Valencia 1 and 2.
With a better grip on the Covid-19 pandemic, 2021 was much better: the first 15 races have been at 13 different tracks. So far we have only had Qatar 1 and 2 and Austria 1 and 2.
The next three rounds will see MotoGP visit just one new circuit. We have the Gran Premio Nolan del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia-Romagna, or Misano 2, the Grande Prémio do Algarve, or Portimão 2, and then Valencia.
Episode 245 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show is a preview of the MotoGP action that is coming this weekend at the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as they gear us up for MotoGP’s second race of the season at Misano, and Valentino Rossi’s final goodbye to his home circuit.
Episode 163 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees David Emmett and Neil Morrison on the mics, as the dynamic duo looks at the second round at the Misano circuit, better known as the Emilia-Romagna GP.
As usual, there is to discuss from this latest round of the MotoGP Championship, and the guys pile on a massive amount of insight into what happened in Italy. We think you will find their conversation to be quite interesting.
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.
Just how close is MotoGP at Misano? The gap between Brad Binder in first and Taka Nakagami in second is just 0.002s, two thousandths of a second.
The top five are all within 0.071, just over seven hundredths of a second. The top ten are within half a second, and there are eighteen (18) riders within a second. It seems fair to say it is insanely close.
Or it would be if that were an accurate reflection of the actual state of the MotoGP grid. But the combined standings at the end of the first day of practice at the second MotoGP round at Misano in two weeks is rather deceptive.
Precisely because it is the first day of practice for the second race on consecutive weekends at the same track.
We are in the toughest stretch of the punishing 2020 MotoGP schedule, ahead of the second race of the first of three triple headers – 9 races in 11 weeks, in three sets of three.
It is a brutal start to this stretch, with last Sunday’s race followed by a test on Tuesday, then practice starting again on Friday. Over the course of 10 days, the MotoGP riders will have been riding for 7 of them.
What will the second race at Misano look like, after the MotoGP riders have already have 4 days of riding at the track?