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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Aragon GP: Maverick’s Debut, Again

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With 21 riders covered by less than 1.3 seconds at a track over 5 km long, it is hard to pick a winner after Friday.

Take Jack Miller’s stellar lap out of the equation, and it’s even closer: the gap between Aleix Espargaro in second place and Joan Mir in 21st is precisely 1 second; Espargaro to Enea Bastianini in tenth is exactly two tenths of a second; Espargaro to Danilo Petrucci in fifteenth is half a second.

If ever you needed an example of just how close the current era of MotoGP is, Friday at Aragon delivered.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the British GP: Risk vs. Reward

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It’s only Friday, so the times don’t mean all that much. You don’t win MotoGP races on Friday. But you can certainly lose them, and even lose championships if you’re not careful. Especially on a Friday.

That was the lesson of Silverstone, as both Marc Marquez and Fabio Quartararo found to their cost. Marc Marquez had a fairly simple lowside, but managed to do so at 274 km/h at one of the fastest parts of the circuit.

Quartararo’s crash was much, much slower – 75 km/h, rather than 274 – but could have been much more serious. The Frenchman lost the rear, then the bike tried to flick him up and over the highside, twisting his ankle in the process.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Austria GP: Rain Wrecks Plans

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We know that the weather in the mountains is changeable, but Friday at the Red Bull Ring took the cake.

A bright, sunny morning, with ideal conditions for riding – so ideal that Johann Zarco sliced another tenth of a second off the outright lap record in FP1 – and in the last ten minutes or so of FP2 for the Moto3 class, a few drops of rain, and then lightning, and a hailstorm in 30°C heat.

The MotoGP riders went out on a soaking track, but by the time the session finished, it was almost dry.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Styria GP: A Wasted Day

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In an ideal world, MotoGP teams can use practice to prepare for the race on Sunday. Test tires in FP1, make setup changes in FP2, finalize the setting in FP3 and FP4, then into qualifying to be ready for the race.

In an ideal world, conditions are comparable enough through all practice sessions on Friday and Saturday to find the optimal setup choices for Sunday.

But we don’t live in an ideal world, of course. Temperature differences and changing conditions leave a lot to a mixture of experience and guesswork. Even then, as long as you have dry weather, you can get pretty close.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Dutch TT: The Viñales Mystery

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Eventful. That was the best way to describe the first day of practice at Assen.

The riders got a chance to sample the new asphalt, and they also got a chance to sample typical Assen summer weather: cool and dry in the morning, sprinkles of rain in the afternoon, followed by a downpour harsh enough to soak the track and allow a few laps in full wet conditions.

Not ideal for working on bike setup, especially if your name is Garrett Gerloff, and you have been drafted in to replace Franco Morbidelli, who spent the morning having surgery on his meniscus and ACL, and faces an 8-week period of rehab.

That would mean a return after the two races in Austria. But more of Gerloff later.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the German GP: An Unexpected Setback

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Day one of the German Grand Prix is in the bag, and is Marc Márquez still the outright favorite for the win on Sunday?

If you went by FP1 on Friday, you would say yes: the Repsol Honda rider took three flying laps to set the fastest time of the session, before turning his attention to working on race pace.

He used one set of medium tires front and rear for the entire session, ending with a 1’22.334 on a tire with 24 laps on it. That lap would have been good enough for thirteenth place in FP1, just a hundredth of a second slower than Miguel Oliveira’s best lap.

Oliveira made it clear that he considered Márquez to be the favorite at the end of the day as well. “For me since the beginning Marc is the clear favorite for the win on Sunday,” the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider told us.

“We have been trying to understand what he is doing different to the others on this track because he is so successful.”

By the end of the afternoon, Marc Márquez didn’t look quite so invincible. The Repsol Honda rider finished the day twelfth fastest, six tenths off the fastest rider Miguel Oliveira.

The KTM man had achieved his first objective. “I believe together with him will come another couple of riders that are able to challenge for the win. I am working to be one of them,” Oliveira said on Friday afternoon.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Catalan GP: Missing Grip Causes Tire Confusion

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Once upon a time, Barcelona was regarded as one of the great motorcycling tracks, all sweeping corners demanding the utmost concentration and skill.

So much of a motorcycling track was it that a couple of sections had to be put into it to make it a better track for cars, and especially for F1.

The grand sweep of La Caixa had a hairpin inserted, to give the cars somewhere to brake. And Turn 13 had a tight little chicane added on the inside, to slow the cars down before they got onto the straight.

Four fat tires meant they were at risk of going through the final corner so fast that would be within spitting distance of the sound barrier by the end of the straight.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Italian GP: On the Relative Sensation of Speed, & Two Slow Riders

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The only thing missing was the crowds. It was good to be back at Mugello, the most glorious jewel in the MotoGP calendar.

Like all jewels, Mugello comes with sharp edges that need handling with care, and it took rookies and regulars alike some time to get used to the sheer speed at which they blasted down the straight.

Brad Binder had been impressed. “This morning was my first time ever at Mugello on the GP bike so it took me a while to find my feet and figure out where to go because it’s a bit different to how I remember it in Moto2; the straight is quite a bit quicker!” the South African said, with a fine sense for understatement. “Turn 1 is a lot more on the limit to find a good marker.”

Contrary to expectations, Johann Zarco’s top speed record of 362.4 km/h set at Qatar was not broken, the Frenchman’s temporary Pramac teammate Michele Pirro managing a paltry 357.6 km/h in FP2.

It may not have been faster than the top speed at Qatar, but it certainly feels a lot faster.

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the French GP: Uncertainty Reigns

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If you want to get an idea of what might happen during the race at any particular MotoGP round, the tried and tested method is to pay particular attention to what happens in FP4.

Watch the session carefully, and then pore over the analysis timesheet carefully, checking to see who was using which tires, how many laps they had on them, and the average pace they were capable of doing.

Disregard the fast laps set at the end of each the three free practice sessions which select who goes through directly to Q2, and take the qualifying results as a guide to be viewed through the lens of a rider’s projected ability to convert a strong grid position into solid race pace.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the French GP: Why Le Mans Is Such a Crashfest, Rossi’s New Speed, & Alberto’s Return

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It was an expensive first day at Le Mans. Bikes in the three Grand Prix classes hit the deck (and the gravel trap) 44 times on Friday, a colossal number, even for Le Mans.

To put that into perspective: at the first race in Qatar, there were 37 crashes over all three days of the first Grand Prix, and 27 over three days of the Doha round at Qatar.

In fact, six of the nineteen rounds held in 2019 had fewer crashes over all three days than Le Mans did on Friday, and another five rounds only had a handful more.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Spanish GP: Speed vs. Pace, Bagnaia vs. Nakagami, & Stifled Dissent

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It is a truism to point out that it is just Friday, and too early to be getting excited about who is where on the timesheets. But the reason it is a truism is because (the clue is in the name) it’s true.

Friday is just the first day of the weekend, and not everybody is up to speed right away. Things change over a weekend, especially once the engineers have had an evening to examine the data.

The weather and the track changes too. The tail end of storm Lola has just passed over Jerez de la Frontera, and temperatures are slowly returning to normal after an unseasonally cold and wet period.

The mercury is creeping higher once again, and with every degree of temperature and every ray of direct Andalusian sunlight, track temperatures are increasing, bringing more grip.

In addition, every bike that laps the track lays down a little rubber, creating more and more grip. And there are a lot of bikes turning laps at Jerez: in addition to the usual three Grand Prix classes of Moto3, Moto2, and MotoGP, there are also the Red Bull Rookies and MotoE.

The MotoE bikes, in particular, help the MotoGP teams. Like MotoGP, MotoE uses Michelin tires, and the big, heavy machines lay down a lot of Michelin rubber which helps create grip for everyone, and especially MotoGP.

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