Late-Braking MotoGP

If You Like Rollercoasters…

Friday and Saturday on the Portuguese coast saw relatively few surprises, if you ignore having both Yamahas passing directly into Q2. The Ducs and the #12 Aprilia were having things pretty much their own way. Contrary to recent history, the all time track record was NOT broken during qualifying, making my pole time prediction (1’36.986) look just plain silly.

Enea Bastianini continued his personal reclamation project, capturing pole, joined on the front row by Top Gun Maverick Vinales–remember him?–and the resurgent Marc Marquez, who is going to win himself some races again this year after spending most of the past three years in motopurgatory. I noticed at the end of qualifying how Hondas occupied the last four spots on the grid. In 2024, “Honda” translates from Japanese as “dangerous POS.”

The Saturday Sprint appeared to be another Bagnaia cakewalk until Lap 9 when Pecco failed to negotiate Turn 1, allowing Vinales, Martin and Marquez through. Martin had effed around with Marquez early in the race, and Marquez returned the favor on Lap 12, stealing the second step on the podium from his compatriot. Vinales held on for the win despite spending most of the weekend in the loo with gastroenteritis. During his post-race interview with Simon Crafar, he looked a little green around the gills. I expect him to be fast again on Sunday until something untoward befalls him, as is usually the case.

Sunday

Moto3 was, once again, riveting. Put breathtakingly expensive motorcycles in the hands of a bunch of hypercompetitive teenagers amped up on testosterone and adrenaline and things generally get interesting. Such was the case today under cloudy skies in Portugal. In 2024 Spain has a bit of a stranglehold on the upper echelon of the Moto3 grid, with the occasional Colombian thrown in for notes of rainforest and coca.

Watch the video. As is my usual practice, Ima be the spoiler. Daniel Holgado won by 4/100ths over Jose A Rueda, with Ivan Ortola claiming the third step on the rostrum.

Moto2 was anomalous, as Aron Canet, the official Bridesmaid of Moto2, lucked out when Alonso Lopez crashed out of the lead on Lap 12, leaving Canet a clear path to his first win in the intermediate class. Golden Boy and pre-season favorite Fermin Aldeguer followed up his undistinguished race in Qatar by jumping the start, serving a double long lap penalty, and still claiming P4. At the end, his front tire was a rubber rag, showing the deleterious effects of his day-long scramble. My person (xenophobic) favorite, Joe Roberts, ended the day in P2 with his eyes firmly on Round 3 at COTA in three weeks. Polesitter Manny Gonzalez spent his day jousting with Ai Ogura before claiming the final step on the podium. All in all, it was a nice race until the last lap or two when Canet went fully tumescent.

The main event on Sunday was generally minding its own business until the last three laps. Jorge Martin was happily leading wire-to-wire, dogged by Maverick Vinales who, in turn, was being pursued by the reborn Enea Bastianini. This lead group maintained a slight advantage over the next three contestants–Pecco Bagnaia, Marc Marquez and rookie sensation Pedro Acosta–until Lap 23.

It was on L23 when Marquez attempted to go through on Bagnaia and was unable to make it stick. The two alpha males gritted their teeth and determined to occupy the same bit of tarmac when they came together. Marquez haters will insist the resulting crash was entirely #93’s fault. The rest of us will call it a racing incident. Regardless, both riders went down and out of the points. Casual observers such as myself thought the final results were essentially cast at that point, ignoring the predictable distress which soon overcame Vinales.

At the start of the final lap, #12 appeared to be experiencing some kind of distress on the bike, his right leg sticking out, slowing down drastically. It may be that he was emulating teammate Aleix Espargaro, who miscounted the laps on a Sunday last year and gave away a win. It may be that his Aprilia lost power. It is being reported that he had a gearbox problem. Regardless, Pop Gun veered radically to port, onto the red, onto the green, finally sailing over the handlebars, out of the race, and hopelessly confounding my fantasy team. This debacle opened the door for young Acosta, who celebrated from the final step of the podium, while Bastianini collected the silver and Martin the gold.

Having put Vinales on my fantasy team, and watching his seemingly inevitable late-race disaster, I found myself channeling the late Chris Farley, berating himself for being “Stupid. Stupid!! STUPID!!!” after some poor decision-making. Whatever. Portimao gave us three fun races. With Argentina descending into chaos, we have three weeks until COTA, upshifting from the Roller Coaster to the Horsepower Rodeo. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming–GO BOILERS!

Tags: Aprilia, Ducati, Enea Bastianini, jorge martin, Marc Marquez, maverick vinales, Moto2, Moto3, motogp, pedro acosta, portimao

This entry was posted on March 24, 2024 at 11:25 am and is filed under Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing, Marc Marquez, Moto, Moto2, Moto3, MotoGP, MotoGP Portimao, MotoGP Results, Motorcycle Racing, Racing News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.