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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the Aragon GP: The Peak of Perfection

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In all likelihood, how you view Sunday’s MotoGP race at Aragon will be a matter of perception. For many people, it will be a forgettable affair, the race over after the first couple of corners, Marc Márquez clearing off into the distance.

For a few, it will be the greatest display of motorcycle racing they have ever seen. Both views are valid, because, in all likelihood, Marc Márquez will win Sunday’s race by something approaching the largest margin in a dry MotoGP race ever.

That might seem like a bold prediction, but just look at Márquez’ performance so far this weekend. In FP1, he came within a quarter of a second of the outright lap record. In FP2, he was posting times in race trim to match his rivals best laps on brand new soft tires.

In FP4, he was a ‘mere’ four tenths faster than Maverick Viñales, but of the 17 full laps he posted in the session, 6 were faster than Viñales’ best lap. And 10 were faster than Fabio Quartararo’s fastest lap in the session, the Frenchman finishing third in the session.

Securing pole position was almost a formality, his 61st pole maintaining his 50% record. (And stop to think how insane that is, that Márquez starts from pole in half of the races he contests.)

He was a third of a second faster than second-place man Fabio Quartararo, and didn’t really look like he was trying. He had time to spare on ramping up the pressure on his rivals, choosing his position to make sure they knew he was there, and coming through.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the Aragon GP: Marquez The Merciless, And Pit Beirer Talks About Zarco

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Everyone not called Marc Márquez will be worried at the Motorland Aragon circuit. They will be worried at the fact that the reigning champion, and last year’s winner, went out and put in a fast lap in FP1 on soft tires.

They will be worried because that lap was 1.6 seconds faster than anyone in FP1, and 1.1 seconds faster than anyone in FP2.

But above all, they will be worried that it was a demonstration of his confidence in his own pace. Márquez went for a quick lap during FP1 thinking of Saturday, and the likelihood that rain would prevent anyone from going faster during FP3.

More importantly, it allowed him to spend all of FP2 on his race pace, in conditions likely to be similar to race time on Sunday afternoon.

It was a typical stroke of strategic genius, Márquez and his team giving himself a head start on preparing for the race.

Not only has he had more time figuring out whether to use the hard or the soft rear tire for the race – as so often, the medium is neither fish nor flesh, the drop not much smaller than with the soft, the grip not much less than with the hard – he has also had time to work on race setup.

Márquez is already two steps ahead of everyone else before they have even lined up on the grid.

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Thursday MotoGP Summary at the Aragon GP: The Zarco Situation

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It was supposed to be a quiet year for rider rumors. Most riders have a contract for 2020, and much of the speculation had been about when negotiations for 2021 would start.

The biggest controversy looked like being whether Takaaki Nakagami would get a 2020 Honda RC213V or a 2019 bike.

Then we came back from summer break, and it’s all been insane since then. First there were the reports of Jorge Lorenzo talking to Ducati about a possible return for 2020, taking Jack Miller’s seat at Pramac Ducati.

Then on Sunday night at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, KTM’s home race, we learned that Johann Zarco had told KTM that he wanted to leave at the end of 2019, after just one year of his two-year contract.

So far, so shocking. On Tuesday, KTM announced they were replacing Zarco with immediate effect, and giving his bike to Mika Kallio to ride. Zarco was left without a ride for the rest of the season, and facing an uncertain future. More about that in a moment.

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the San Marino GP: Old Rivalries Rekindled

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A race track is a large place. 4+ kilometers of asphalt, 15 meters wide. A MotoGP bike is a small thing, under 2 meters long from nose to tip, and 60 centimeters wide. The bikes should get lost in the vast expanse of asphalt on track. Yet somehow, these tiny vehicles always seem to run across each other on track.

The riders are to blame, of course. There are advantages to be gained from following other riders around. In Moto3, a slipstream is vital to gaining extra speed.

In MotoGP, using a rider ahead as a target allows you to judge your braking points better and gives that extra bit of motivation which is worth a tenth or two. And a tenth or two can mean starting a row ahead of where you would otherwise.

When bikes meet on the track, it always sparks resentment. The rider in front is annoyed at being followed, and will slow down to try to force the other rider in front. The rider behind gets annoyed by the antics of the person they are trying to follow.

In the best case, it is all soon forgotten. In the worst case, well, it involves Marc Márquez and Valentino Rossi and a small war breaks out in the Italian and Spanish press, and a much bigger war breaks out among the fans.

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Friday MotoGP Summary at the San Marino GP: Why Are the Yamahas So Fast on a Track with No Grip?

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On a normal race weekend, you might see one or two minor updates in all of the garages collectively. Factories don’t like to debut too many new parts at the same time, as there is not enough time to evaluate them effectively.

And normally, you would test one part at a time and evaluate them separately, to try to understand what difference each specific part makes.

However, there was an official test here at Misano two weeks ago, and so teams had a chance to do the preliminary sifting ahead of the race.

And that is why Valentino Rossi started FP1 with a new carbon-fiber swingarm on both of his Yamaha M1s, tested a new aerodynamic front wheel cover, and both he and Maverick Viñales had one bike each with the new double-barreled exhaust debuted at the test.

“It’s positive, because it looks like that Yamaha is working stronger now and also working in the right direction,” Rossi told us on Friday afternoon.

“For me, from the end of 2016 to the Brno test, in reality everything we test is not clearly better than the old stuff. So technically speaking it was a very difficult period and in fact the gap to the other manufacturers increased.”

“But now, from the beginning of the season something changed and have a lot of different people from Japanese especially but also Europe and it looks like now we start to see the effect.”

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Thursday MotoGP Summary at the San Marino GP: Preconceptions, Disagreements, Come Backs, & Critics

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Thursday was the first chance most of the media got to talk to the MotoGP riders after the test at Misano two weeks ago, and find out what they really thought about the test, rather than trying to decode the meaning of the press releases issued.

That clarified a lot about the test, answering some of the questions we had been left with, and intriguingly, raising yet more questions which had slipped under the radar.

As always, however, when you ask different riders about a subject, they will have different opinions. Even if they are teammates, like Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli. Asked about the state of the track, Quartararo expressed concern about the lack of grip, especially in certain places.

“For me, [track grip] was terrible, but some corners were good, some corners were less, and one corner was totally a disaster, corner 14,” the Petronas Yamaha rider said.

“I think many riders crashed in this corner. I heard that when Marc crashed, he thought it was the white line which they just painted, but as soon as you want to put lean angle in this corner, you crash. And I have a lot of big moments in this corner. Let’s see if it improves this weekend, because in the test it was a really critical place to ride.”

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MotoGP Preview of the San Marino GP

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There is a lot to like about the Gran Premio Octo di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini, aka The MotoGP Race With The Name Which Is Too Long To Fit In A Headline. The track is just a stone’s throw from the Italian coast, so visitors can spend their days at the track and their evenings at the beach, soaking up the atmosphere.

The weather is (usually) spectacular, the food is outstanding, and the area has a long association with motor sports, and motorcycle racing in particular. A quarter of the paddock could probably sleep in their own beds and commute to the track at the weekend.

But the upsides also have a downside. The location of the circuit may be perfect for the fans, but it is a nightmare for crew chiefs and riders. The sea mist which settles on the track most nights brings salt along with it, robbing it of grip.

The spectacular weather in September usually also means the sun burning down, raising track temperatures to the high 40s Centigrade, and into the region where the grip falls off a cliff. The track can be greasy and unpredictable, and despite being resurfaced to address these issues, physics and chemistry will always prevail.

Franco Morbidelli knows the track well. As part of the VR46 Riders Academy, he rides the track on a very regular basis, and knows how it changes throughout the year.

“We all know that we are going to struggle with the grip,” he says. “Misano, especially in this moment of the year has no grip at all. It’s very hot, I think that the salt that comes from the sea somehow affects the grip. I know the track very well, and I know how it reacts, and during the summer, it’s completely different, no grip at all.”

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Misano MotoGP Test Friday Notes: Much Work for Yamaha, Honda, KTM, & Michelin

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The Misano MotoGP test may well turn out to be more important than it might seem at first glance. Perhaps precisely because it was a private test, and the teams could work in some privacy away from the prying eyes of most media.

The pit lane was closed, and there were virtually no media present, with the honorable exception of Italian stalwarts GPOne.com.

It meant that factories could test early versions of their 2020 bikes with relatively little interference from outside, other than the usual crowd of engineers from rival factories gathered round as they warm up their bikes.

And that is precisely what Yamaha, Honda, and KTM in particular spent their time doing, while Ducati and Suzuki debuted a few parts which may or may not see use next season.

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Misano MotoGP Test Thursday Notes: A Busy Day of Testing

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The advantage of a private test is that work can take place away from the prying eyes of the media.

Some of the MotoGP manufacturers, most notably Yamaha and Honda, have taken advantage of the fact that the two-day test at Misano is private, and have debuted various new parts for both this year and next.

With the pit lane closed to the media, the factories can work more freely.

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Saturday MotoGP Summary at the British GP: Confidence Breeds Contempt

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Confidence plays a key role in racing. Having confidence in yourself, in your team, in your bike, in your strategy. If you have confidence in every part of the jigsaw puzzle which goes to make up motorcycle racing, you can exceed expectations.

Motorcycle racing may play out on 300 hp machines around six kilometer stretches of asphalt, but the fifteen centimeters of gray matter between the ears is where winning and losing is decided.

That confidence is what explains so much of Marc Márquez’ success throughout his career. He has confidence in his ability, gained through hours and hours of practice, and hard training in preparation.

He has confidence in his team, having worked with the same group of people for most of his career. He has confidence in his bike: it may not do everything he would want, but he understands exactly what it will and won’t do, and can make it do what he needs it to do.

He has confidence in the ability of his team and himself to come up with a strategy to cope with whatever a race weekend throws at them.

All these things combined are what has allowed him to win five MotoGP championships and 50 MotoGP races. Each of these elements of confidence feeds into the other, in a virtuous circle, making him stronger.

And they allow him to take risks at the right time to gain maximum advantage.

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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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