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Friday MotoGP Summary at Valencia: Ducati vs. Honda, And Zarco vs. The World

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A lot has to happen if Andrea Dovizioso wants to win the 2017 MotoGP championship at Valencia. What he doesn’t want to happen is for Marc Márquez to run away with the race. And so far on Friday, that’s exactly what looks like happening.

On the face of it, fifth in both FP1 and FP2 is not promising. But look at race pace, and it is clear that Márquez is in devastating form.

In FP1, Márquez used a single medium rear tire, and posted 11 laps of 1’31. No one else managed more than 3 laps at that pace.

In FP2, he again used just a single tire, putting 20 laps on a soft rear tire. He set his fastest lap – good enough for fifth in the session – on his final lap, with a tire that has two-thirds race distance on it. While everyone else was throwing extra tires in to secure passage straight to Q2, Márquez was not concerned.

His pace left him feeling positive. “Of course this gives me good confidence,” Márquez said. “But what is better is that we started the weekend in a good way. In FP1 I felt good with the bike. We are on Friday so we need to keep working and keep the same mentality and concentration.”

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MotoGP

Eager to Avoid Another 2017, Yamaha Ramps Up Post-Season MotoGP Testing

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In a sign of how difficult Yamaha’s 2017 season has been, they have a busy testing schedule ahead of them in the next few weeks. After the traditional two-day test at Valencia, both the Movistar Yamaha and Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team will be heading to Malaysia, for a private test at Sepang.

The testing schedule for Yamaha means that Michael van der Mark will not be taking part in the two-day test at Valencia. Yamaha needs the resources from the Tech 3 team to assist Maverick Viñales, Valentino Rossi, and Johann Zarco get through their program.

“They have so much to test here that they need my team to help prepare everything,” Van der Mark told the media on Thursday.

The testing schedule and the decision to enlist the help of the Tech 3 team is a sign of how much work Yamaha fear they have ahead of them.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Preview of the Valencia GP

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For the fourth time in twelve years, Valencia will play host to a MotoGP title showdown. On Sunday, Andrea Dovizioso and Marc Márquez will slug it out for who gets to call themselves the 2017 MotoGP champion.

If you want a detailed breakdown of who has to finish where to wrap up the championship, you can read our separate story here.

But it boils down to two simple premises: If Andrea Dovizioso doesn’t win the race, the title belongs to Márquez, but Márquez can put it out of reach of Dovizioso by finishing eleventh or better.

If you are staging a championship showdown, the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Cheste, near Valencia, is a fine venue to choose. Set in a natural bowl, the circuit owners have managed to snake 4km of asphalt into a confined space.

The upside to that is that spectators can see just about every part of the track from whichever stand they sit in. The furthest point of the track is at most a kilometer away, no matter where you sit.

Cramming so much track into such a tight space has obvious consequences. There are a lot of tight corners in Valencia: of the fourteen turns the circuit has, three are first gear corners, six more are second gear corners, while half of them are tighter than 90°.

The compact space into which the track is crammed, combined with the long front straight create a lot of complications for tire manufacturers.

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MotoGP

How Dovizioso & Marquez Can Win the Title at Valencia

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On Sunday, Marc Márquez and Andrea Dovizioso will line up on the grid for the final MotoGP race of the 2017 season. At stake is the title of 2017 MotoGP Champion.

For Marc Márquez, it would be his fourth MotoGP title, making him the most successful Spanish rider in the premier class. For Andrea Dovizioso, it would be his first title, the one which is always most highly prized.

Dovizioso’s challenge cannot be underestimated. He trails Marc Márquez by 21 points. His path to the championship is difficult, and relies heavily on things going wrong for others.

Marc Márquez, on the other hand, faces a much easier task. The Repsol Honda rider has his destiny entirely in his own hands.

After 17 races, Marc Márquez has 282 points, while Andrea Dovizioso has 261 points. With 21 points separating them, who needs to do what to win the 2017 MotoGP title? We break down the arithmetic.

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The Curious Case of Female Spectators in MotoGP

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Last week during International Women's Day, my colleague Tammy Gorali - the first female commentator ever in the MotoGP paddock, I should point out - tweeted some timely statistics about female attendance at MotoGP races.

In short, here tweets showed that over the past four years, the number of female spectators has declined an astonishing 19%. That's no small drop, and the timeliness of that revelation should be noted.

On its face, this tweet showed that MotoGP was seemingly hemorrhaging female fans. But, the reality isn't as clearcut, and this is also where things get weird.

Intrigued by Gorali's info, I dug into the numbers a bit further to see what was behind this startling statistic. What I found was that if you pulled the scope back further by just one more year, then over the past five years female attendance at MotoGP races has actually increased by 33%.

If your brain is hurting right now, that's ok, but it is difficult to understand how the number of women attending MotoGP races declined by 19% over the past four years, but increased somehow also increased 33% over the last five?

Keep on reading, and I will try and shed some light on this curious case of female MotoGP attendance.

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The Aki Ajo Monster Interview, Part 2: On Moto2

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Aki Ajo is one of the most significant figures in the Grand Prix paddock. The Finnish manager has seen a long string of talent pass through his team on their way to greater success.

Ajo explained how he goes about identifying talent in the first part of this two-part interview. In the second part, he gives more insight into the process of building a winning team.

Ajo talks about how he nearly ended up working with Romano Fenati in 2017, and some of the factors which prevented it. Ajo also explains why he believes Moto2 is the toughest category in motorcycle racing, and the daunting challenge stepping up to the intermediate category can be.

The Finnish team manager also dives more deeply into the importance of a team, and surrounding a rider with the right pieces to help him get the best out of himself. 

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The Aki Ajo Monster Interview, Part 1: On Identifying Talent

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Aki Ajo is one of the most significant figures in the Grand Prix paddock. The Finnish manager has seen a long string of talent pass through his team on their way to greater success.

The list of champions and great riders he has produced is almost endless: Marc Marquez, Johann Zarco, Jack Miller, Sandro Cortese, Luis Salom, Danny Kent to name just a few. 

To find out how he does it, I sat down with Aki Ajo at Valencia and spoke for nearly half an hour. The results of this interview were fascinating, and offer a great insight into the how to get the best out of a rider, to help them achieve success.

In the first part of this interview, he shares his philosophy of racing and team management, of motivation, and what keeps him going. He also talks about the difference it makes working with a rider the second time around, and why he is happy with his current crop of riders in Moto2 and Moto3.

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Paddock Pass Podcast #42 – Valencia

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The end of the racing season is here, which means our last race and testing update from the Paddock Pass Podcast crew. Thus, Episode 42 sees Steve English joined by David Emmett and Neil Morrison for a talk about the Valencia GP and following test week for the GP paddock, as well as the Jerez Test for World Superbike and MotoGP riders.

A lot happened between the racing and testing action, especially with the number of riders we saw switching seats for the 2017 season; as such, there is a bevy of items to talk about: Lorenzo on the Ducati, Vinales on the Yamaha, Iannone on the Suzuki, etc.

You won’t want to miss the insights the Paddock Pass Podcast team brings to these busy weeks in motorcycle racing, in both the MotoGP and World Superbike Championships.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

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Sunday MotoGP Summary at Valencia: All Good Things…

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Valencia is supposed to be an emotionally charged race. The last round of the season, the grand finale. The last chance for riders to lay it all on the line, in pursuit of glory. The bowl in which the Ricardo Tormo circuit is set focuses and amplifies the cheers of the crowd, carrying the racing to new levels of intensity.

There was an extra layer of emotion at Valencia this year. The excitement is tinged with the bittersweet taste of parting. There is the largest group of riders moving from one garage to another that I can remember in a very long time.

Riders and their crew become very close, a tight unit that works intensely together. They celebrate success together, and share their despair during the bad times. These men and women have been through a lot together, forging bonds that are not easily broken.

Riders may only be moving a couple of garages away, the parting is no less painful for that.

Those departing felt compelled to put on a good show for the people they leave behind, and they did not disappoint. In Moto3 and Moto2, the departing champions put on brave fights to reprise their title-winning ways, with supporting stars offering fierce opposition to add some luster to their victories.

In the MotoGP class, all the factory riders switching garages dug a little deeper inside themselves, and pulled some outstanding performances out of the bag. The extra emotion of the final weekend of the season produced three great races at Valencia, with three truly deserving winners.

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