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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Emilia-Romagna GP: Close Times Hide the Bigger Picture

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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.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the San Marino GP: Bumps, Grip, Tires, Yamahas, Rookies, & Radios

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It should come as no surprise that in a paradoxical 2020 MotoGP season in a year full of paradoxes, a new surface at Misano should have simultaneously both improved the track and made it much worse.

Yet the paradox is relatively easy to understand: the tarmac chosen for the new surface has a lot more grip, but it is also softer when it gets hot, deforming more and producing more and bigger bumps. The additional grip is great, but you can’t always benefit when your wheels are being kicked up into the air.

“There’s more grip than last year but the track is similar to motocross!” Fabio Quartararo told us. “A lot of bumps. Positive that there is more grip but we need to adapt because honestly the first exit in FP1 was really difficult to manage the bumps.”

One of the things making the bumps so difficult to manage is where they are. “It’s bad,” said Jack Miller, “especially in the fastest sector, it’s really quite bad. That back section, the bike just starts shaking and bouncing, and one lap you can get through there semi OK, and the next lap you’re just bouncing around and you can’t really get back on the track.”

“Down to the back straight, before the first fast kink, on the dead straight piece it’s bumpy, the bike is going like that,” Miller said, waving his hands about to indicate just how much the bike moves. That was tricky as you approach the fastest part of the track. “You’re trying to get the bike settled as much as you can to tip it in. It doesn’t feel great.”

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Styria GP: Another Weekend, The Same Track, A Different Outcome?

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It’s groundhog day. The MotoGP paddock is back in exactly the same place and doing exactly the same thing it was doing a week ago. The coronavirus-curtailed 2020 season is big on repetition, and as a result, on disorientation.

With no distractions at the track, everyone is starting to go a little stir crazy. What things will be like at the second race at Valencia, in the middle of the third run of three back-to-back races doubling up at some circuits, heaven only knows.

What does change from last Friday was the work to be done. Better weather and a weekend’s worth of data mean that most teams are much closer to their base set up. (But no everyone: there are a few riders who are a bit lost, and grasping around for a solution).

That leaves the teams free to experiment with the tires they weren’t sure about a week ago, riders swapping between the soft and medium rears, for example.

“Not too much difference,” Jack Miller said. “It is what it is. Don’t get too focused on what worked the week before. You’ve got to keep an open mind. For example, I’m leaning towards the medium tire this weekend, but we need more analysis.”

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Austrian GP: A Wasted Session, KTM vs. Ducati, & Yamaha as Supplicant

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We nearly got away with it. The clouds hung heavy over the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg for much of the morning, but it stayed dry for all three classes, and the Red Bull Rookies practice as well – I will leave it to the imagination of the reader as to why the Red Bull Rookies are racing in Spielberg this weekend.

But halfway through FP2 for the Moto3 class, at the beginning of the afternoon, the heavens parted and the deluge began.

The weird thing about the rain is that it was so incredibly localized. The Red Bull Ring is a relatively compact circuit, not elongated like Assen, or spread out over a vast territory like Silverstone, so to have a downpour in Turn 3, the track completely soaked and water running across the track, while a few hundred meters downhill, along the front straight and at Turn 1, the track was completely dry, made for impossible conditions.

A few Moto3 riders nearly got caught out as they hammered up the hill toward Turn 3, then found themselves unable to brake for the corner and forced to run wide.

And so MotoGP lost out on FP2 almost completely. The track was neither one thing nor the other, soaking wet at the top half, between Turns 3 and 4, and desert dry down the bottom near the pits.

It was way too dangerous to go out on slicks, and a waste of time to go out on rain tires and burn up the limited sets they have. The wet parts of the track were wet enough for the soft wets, the dry parts of the track were capable of destroying even the medium wet within a few laps.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Czech GP: Bumps, Grip, Crashes, & Ducati’s Shapeshifter Device

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What did we learn from the first day of practice at Brno? Not much, but that in itself is valuable. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that the Automotodrom Brno circuit has not seen much action, so there is very little rubber on the track.

The circuit has always been fairly low grip, but it is much worse now than it has ever been. It needs rubber down on it before any conclusions can be drawn.

That makes figuring out what is going on rather tricky. The track is changing session to session, as bikes deposit a thin smear of Dunlop and Michelin rubber on the surface of the track and in the crevices between the grit particles used in the aggregate.

That leads to big changes in grip levels: Fabio Quartararo’s fastest time in FP2 was over eight tenths faster than the best lap set by Takaaki Nakagami in the morning session. Quartararo’s best time from Friday was nearly three quarters of a second slower than the best time at the end of the first day in 2019.

With the times so far off the pace – Quartararo’s time is two whole seconds off Marc Márquez’ outright lap record, and half a second slower than the race lap record – and grip still changing, conditions were just to inscrutable to draw any conclusions from, or at least any conclusions which might last beyond Saturday morning.

Trying to work out which tire will work best was almost possible on Friday. There are still too many unknowns.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Andalusian GP

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Same circuit. Same weather conditions (more or less). Same riders (more or less). Same bikes (more or less). So why do we even need practice? Why not just skip all of Friday and go straight into qualifying on Saturday?

Compare the combined standings at the end of the first day of the Spanish and Andalusian Grand Prix.

Just five of the 22 entries are within one position of their place in the combined standings of both FP1 and FP2 at the end of Friday: Maverick Viñales, 2nd-1st last week and this, Jack Miller 6th-7th, Fabio Quartararo 15th-14th, Pecco Bagnaia 18th-17th, Tito Rabat 19th-18th.

The rest of the field varies wildly. Discounting the walking wounded – Marc Márquez, who didn’t ride, Cal Crutchlow, and Alex Rins – riders are five, even ten positions further up or further down the order at the end of Friday practice.

Franco Morbidelli was 12th last week, 4th this week. Andrea Dovizioso was 4th last week, 10th this week. Valentino Rossi was 13th last week, 2nd today.

Rossi may be one of the few exceptions, in that he has made significant improvements since last weekend, though more of that later. For the most part, the difference is not necessarily of speed, but of strategy.

With a weekend of practice and racing under their belt, most teams and riders already have a clear idea of where they stand in terms of setup, and so are working on minor changes in pursuit of a few more tenths.

There was a lot more work on race setup, and a lot less on chasing a quick lap for Q2. Q2 can wait until Saturday morning.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Spanish GP: Heat, Wind, & Tires

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Be careful what you wish for. For four months, MotoGP riders sat at home and twiddled their thumbs, hoping for the racing to return. They got their wish, but there was a catch: the season opener is in Jerez, in July, in the withering heat of an Andalusian summer.

It was positively punishing on track, especially in the afternoon, once track temperatures started to creep into the mid 50s °C. The track gets greasy, and that catches riders out, especially rookies. Alex Márquez was one such rider: the Repsol Honda rider tucked the front at Turn 8, disrupting the plan for the session.

“In the crash, I was too optimistic, coming from the morning with a good feeling on track, you know,” the younger Márquez brother told us. “I made a rookie mistake.

The grip changed quite a lot from the morning to the afternoon. I was a little bit wide in the entry, but I was on a good lap so I tried to go back to the right line but I was a with a little bit too much lean angle on a dirty surface, and then the front was just closed.”

Understanding how the heat affected the track was the key to the afternoon. The track has plenty of grip when temperatures are in the 30s and 40s°C, but once the mercury creeps past 50°C, the grip goes away, turning the MotoGP bikes into a real handful.

By the end of FP1, track temperatures had hit 40°C. By the start of FP2, the track temperature was already 54°C, and rising.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Qatar GP: New World Riders, Riding at Night, & KTM Gets Faster

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There is nothing like the sight of racing motorcycles entering a track for timed laps to bring a circuit alive.

If yesterday, the atmosphere was best described as eerie, the baritone roar of a pack of Moto3 bikes was enough to snap the MotoGP paddock out of its malaise.

We went from wandering around looking lost to watching the timing screens, and jumping out of the way of bikes as they entered the pits.

Walking up and down pit lane, and with a chance to focus on Moto2 and Moto3 exclusively, a few things catch your attention.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Sepang Test: There Is More Than One Way to Go Fast

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The first day back after the winter break is always tricky. Bodies are sore after riding a MotoGP bike for the first time. That uses muscles which are impossible to train, and so soreness quickly sets in. Then there are the unforeseen hiccups which always arise when prototype machinery first hits the track.

Parts don’t quite work as expected, they don’t fit as easily and as quickly as hoped, and there is always a nasty surprise lurking somewhere. But then again, that’s why you go testing, to iron out the details before racing starts in earnest.

Andrea Dovizioso was just one of many riders hindered by such hiccups. “The first day you have to try a few things and a few things can happen which make you lose time,” the Italian said. “You can’t follow exactly the plan. That’s what happened today. It didn’t work a lot but we had to fix a few small problems – nothing bad.”

Or it can rain. As it did for an hour in the afternoon, and then again shortly before the end of the test. With the track taking time to dry, that meant the riders lost probably two and a half hours of track time on Friday. But all of these things are just a part of testing, and something everyone has to deal with.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Valencia GP: Cold Crashes, Impossible Schedules, & An Impressive Debut

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Valencia is a fine place to celebrate the end of the MotoGP season. For the vast majority of the paddock it is close to home, at most a couple of hours by airplane, car, or train. It has a fine building in which to host the end of season awards ceremony, the Palacio de Congresos, designed by renowned architect Norman Foster.

And it draws a massive crowd, over 100,000 fans turning up on Sunday to watch a race which usually doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, beyond rider pride (and there is little much grander than rider pride).

But it also has its downsides. The track is neatly folded inside a tight little bowl, but at the cost of having a lot of left-hand corners, and only a couple of rights. And with the season at its current length, the race is in mid November, and even when the sun is shining, temperatures can be Baltic, something the winter winds don’t do much to help.

Caution is advised in these conditions. With the track temperature in the mid teens, even very soft rubber on the right hand side of the tire is not enough to save you at Turn 4 if you try pushing too hard, too early. As Valentino Rossi found to his cost.

In FP1, the Italian entered the first right hander of the circuit a little too fast with a new tire, and found it wasn’t quite up to temperature. “Sincerely, I made a mistake, a stupid mistake, because I had the soft front, but I pushed a little bit too much already in the first lap, and I crashed.”

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Malaysian GP: Smashing Records, Saving Crashes, & Blazing Trails

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The point of motorcycle racing is to go faster than everyone else. And because motorcycle racing is a sport composed of many different parts, there are a lot of different parties wanting to be fastest.

Riders want to be fastest to win races and championships. Factories want to be fastest to win championships, but also to have the bike with the highest top speed, and to collect lap records. Even tire suppliers want to collect lap records. That, after all, is how they measure progress.

Since coming into the class, Michelin have shattered a lot of records set by Bridgestone, the previous Official Tire Supplier to MotoGP. But not all of them, and if you speak to people from Michelin, this is something they are far from happy about.

But they keep chipping away, circuit by circuit, looking for ways to improve the tires to allow the bikes to go faster. This is the way Michelin creates competition for itself, and sets goals for its R&D department to pursue.

So far, they have done pretty well, taking the race lap record at nine of the tracks which MotoGP raced at prior to 2016, when they took over from Bridgestone.

Their record on outright lap records is even better. Up until Friday morning, Michelin still had five circuits where they hadn’t beaten the fastest ever lap set during practice or qualifying by Bridgestone.

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