Marc Marquez is to miss the Algarve Grand Prix, to be held at the Portimão circuit this weekend.
According to a press release from the Repsol Honda team, the Spaniard suffered a crash during training which has left him with a mild concussion.
As he was still feeling unwell a couple of days after the event, Marquez and the team have decided to skip the penultimate round of MotoGP.
Episode 211 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show, which means that this one sees Steve English and Gordon Ritchie on the mics.
The pair talk about the WorldSBK round at Estoril, and the superbike racing action that ensued at the Portuguese track.
As always, the conversation is insightful and lively, and it helps prime us for the start of the MotoGP season this weekend.
Episode 199 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the on-track action from the Portuguese GP, as well as the fallout after the checkered flag waved.
On the mics, we have Steve English, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, as the trio discusses the MotoGP action from Portimão.
The idea behind setting the grid in Grand Prix racing is simple: after two 15 minute sessions, the rider who sets the fastest lap gets to start from pole position, the other riders ranked in order of their best lap times.
Of course, the fact that qualifying is split into two sessions to prevent people using tows to artificially boost their starting positions (more on that later) is already a distortion, as the quickest riders left in Q1 have sometimes posted faster times than those who made it through to Q2.
It was hardly ideal circumstances to make a return to the toughest class in motorcycle racing after more than eight months without riding a bike. Overnight rain left the track covered in damp patches, making the surface treacherous and unpredictable.
But that didn’t deter Marc Márquez: though he wasn’t the first out of the pits in FP1, he was on track soon enough. And he was fast soon enough too, ending the morning session as third quickest, just a quarter of a second slower than Maverick Viñales.
Drawing conclusions from times which are 2.5 seconds off the race lap record and 3.5 seconds off the best pole time is a little premature. But Márquez was fast again in FP2, in much drier and consistent conditions.
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.
Episode 198 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show takes a look at what we can expect from the MotoGP Championship, as it heads into its first European round.
On the mics, we have our usual crew of Steve English, David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, who discuss the upcoming round at Portimão.
The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed back the start of the WorldSBK season even further. After the Assen SBK round, which had been due to kick off the 2021 WorldSBK season, was postponed until July, Estoril had taken over as season opener.
Now, however, the number of Covid-19 cases and the prevalence of the Brazilian variant in Portugal has meant that travel restrictions imposed to combat the virus make holding the Estoril round on the proposed dates extremely uncertain.
As a result, the Estoril round has also been postponed until later in the year. At the current point in time, a new date for the Portuguese round has not been set, but the most likely timing for the race is around July or August.
Episode 174 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one comes to us from the MotoGP paddock, as we start the first round of the final triple-header of the season.
On the mics, we have a trio of hosts: Steve English and David Emmett, as they discuss the race weekend’s events, and as they close out the 2020 MotoGP Championship and support classes.
Are we in for a fairy-tale ending to the wild ride that has been the 2020 MotoGP season? The odds are very good indeed, if only because qualifying has laid out so many different scenarios for a fitting end to the year.
We already have a fairy-tale ending to qualifying, Miguel Oliveira the first Portuguese rider to take pole, at the first MotoGP race to be held at Portimao, the first race in Portugal since 2012.
Could Oliveira convert his maiden pole into a second win? There is plenty of reason to think he might do exactly that.
Whenever a journalist gets a little too excited over a rider’s lap times after FP2, and starts asking them what it means for the race, they inevitably get slapped down with an old racing aphorism.
“It’s only Friday,” riders will say, whether they are at the top of the standings, at the bottom, or somewhere in the middle. Being fast is nice on a Friday, but there is still a long way to go until the riders line up on the grid on Sunday. An awful lot can, and usually does change in the meantime.
That old adage is exponentially true on a Friday at a brand new track where nobody has ridden before. Especially an extraordinary track like Portimao, which snakes all over the Algarve countryside like a roller-coaster hewn into the hills.