From my limited perspective–the kitchen table at my home in Indiana–it was an enjoyable last weekend in September/first weekend in October as MotoGP arrived in The Land of the Rising Sun. Something for every taste and budget, as it were. In the premier class, young Jorge Martin continued his assault on the 2023 title, elbowing his way to pole, another Sprint win, and being declared the winner of the red-flagged main event on Sunday. Somkiat Chantra led an Idimetsu Honda Team Asia 1-2 in an increasingly familiar Moto2 parade. My boy Jaume Masia won again in a tightly contested Moto3 tilt with the lightweight title chase tighter than bark on a tree.
The MotoGP race itself was a portrait of disorder at the start. The clouds and humidity which featured all weekend finally gave way to rain five minutes before the start, with all riders on slicks. Well, not ALL riders, as Luca Marini and Alex Marquez were absent, nursing injuries received in the Buddh steam bath last week. Anyway, when the red lights went out, the grid departed their starting spots as if they were skating on black ice, and the wet race white flags came out on Lap 1. All the serious riders immediately entered the pits, leaving Fabio Quartararo, Michele Pirro, Stefan Bradl, Franco Morbidelli and Cal Crutchlow circulating on their way to complete irrelevance on slicks, gambling with nothing to lose that the rain might suddenly, unexpectedly quit. Check the standings at the end of Lap 1–you’ll never see those numbers at the top again.
Martin occupied P4 at the end of Lap 2. By Lap 6, in the driving rain, he had sliced through the top of the order into P1 where he stayed through the end of Lap 12, at which point the race was red-flagged. Although a restart was possible, the conditions failed to improve sufficiently to allow it, probably to the relief of the riders. And so Pecco Bagnaia’s lead in the 2023 title chase was cut from 13 points on Friday to three points on Sunday evening. Marco Bezzecchi trails Martin by 48 with Brad Binder, who crashed today and gutted my fantasy team, another 13 points back, but still in it by my reckoning, with the nasty, life-threatening part of the schedule starting in less than two weeks.
Still no announcement as to Marc Marquez’ plans for 2024, despite assurances that they would be revealed by this weekend. Ditto for Pedro Acosta, as there is now some doubt that he will get his ticket punched for MotoGP next season. A bunch of riders will be getting promoted from Moto3 to Moto2 next year, as per usual. We took issue with the provisional 2024 calendar elsewhere this weekend, even before we become fully immersed in the brutal piece of the 2023 schedule starting next time out in Indonesia, where afternoon temps are reliably in the 90’s and the humidity is like a wet towel. As one of our faithful readers commented concerning the riders and their attitudes toward the killer schedule, beatings will continue until morale improves.
The muffled, rhythmic, pneumatic sound you hear in the background comes from the equipment keeping Fabio Quartararo’s 2022 MotoGP title hopes alive. Mathematically speaking. People with a dog in this fight will tell you the championship is now down to an exciting shootout in Valencia, despite Quartararo’s indisposition. As if. Young Pecco must now endure another two weeks of nightmares, in which, being dogged by Quartararo, he crashes late in Valencia, and lies there in the gravel watching the Italian punk him and win the title. Whereas Fabio has had to endure a long late-season decline, Bagnaia’s deep set fear must be choking in his One Shining Moment.
Saturday
I was working my grandson like a field hand in the yard most of Saturday–paid him handsomely and fixed his lunch, gave him a few free secrets of life etc.–and so missed most of the action from the track. I’m now ignoring Moto3 and can’t stand the suspense of Moto2, so I’ll focus on the big bikes this week. This is, after all, where Fabio Quartararo’s dream of repeating as MotoGP world champion was going to go up in smoke, courtesy of a miserable second half of the season, a hand injury at exactly the wrong time, and the blinding dominance of the bikes manufactured by Ducati Corse. Marquez said after qualifying he is losing 3/10ths to the Ducatis in the main straight. The Yamaha is losing 3/10ths to Marquez. The writing has been on the wall for some time in the premier class. Fabio will not repeat as MotoGP champion in 2022.
Qualifying was another master class by two riders clearly at the top of their respective games, Marc Marquez once again, Pecco Bagnaia at last. My favorite interviewer, Simon Crafar, was in the booth today, observing that the Honda RC213V does not have a single winning characteristic, yet there goes Marquez, putting it in places no other rider can even conceive of, ending up in P3 for the start of the race. In Q1 with double zeroes on the clock, he steals a ticket into Q2. Afterwards, he is surrounded by the resurgent Alex Rins avec his soon-to-be-extinct Suzuki GSX-RR and another quartet of the damned Italian engineering marvels, starting in P1 where Jorge Martin calmly set an all-time track record (by 6/10ths!) in Q2. EBas sits in P2 looking frisky, with Rossi’s wild boys, Bezzecchi and Marini, sitting pretty on Row 2. Marquez gives the impression of being close to 100% again. His bike gives the impression it needs to be taken back behind the garage and shot.
For those of you keeping score at home, the top three contenders for the 2022 MotoGP title–Pecco Bagnaia, Fabio Quartararo and Aleix Espargaro–would be starting Sunday’s race in P9, P12 and P10 respectively. Disrespectively. How this happened would take a while to explain, but my theory of untimely crashes is coming into clear focus. I’m looking forward to writing the season recap, as events seem to be unfolding as expected, other than Aleix is probably doomed. Oh, and the fact that the north star of my predictions, and worldview, is on its way to being proven exactly wrong.
Sunday
There were moments in the middle of the race in which the tension was absolutely superb, moments which offered us a glimpse of the immediate future–Bagnaia and Bastiannini dominating the 2023 championship season–as well as my own vision of the future, in which Ducati Corse makes the decision to stop supporting all these random teams and simply becomes the engine supplier for the premier class, the rest of the OEMs reduced to Moto2 status, building their brand entries around a single engine. The superiority of the Italian machines is occasionally blinding and was on full display at Sepang after taking six of the top eight spots in Australia a week ago (minus the top two, for whatever reason.) Today a podium closeout was shaping up until Jorge Martin, who had destroyed a longstanding track record during QP2, casually crashed out of a comfortable lead on Lap 7, doing a reasonable impression of Warren Zevon’s “Excitable Boy.”
For me, the most interesting part of the race occurred during laps 9 through 14 when Bagnaia and EBas were arguing over the lead and young Marco Bezzecchi, spawn of the Valentino Rossi clan, suddenly appeared on Quartararo’s tail. The sitch at the time was if Bezzecchi could overtake Quartararo and Pecco hold on to win, the championship would be over. The announcers theorized that MB’s tires were going off. My own thought was that he was thinking, “Step three on the podium, or make the factory bitch win it on his own in Spain?” To me, it looked like he backed off, but that’s just me. Same way I looked at Martin’s off–my notes read ‘team player,’ promoting Bagnaia to the lead. Silly.
My new favorite metaphor for crashing out of the race came courtesy of Louis Suddaby, describing Bastiannini’s decision “not to throw it at the scenery,” a phrase which is bound to show up in future articles…By Lap 2 it looked as if we were going to see an electric face-off between Quartararo in P5 and Marquez in P4, but it never took place. Quartararo went through early while Marquez faded, as expected, ending his day in P7. It was a set-up ripe for controversy, had the two mixed it up while the Ducati contingent was busy getting away. Maybe next year.
Thinking about how Ducati has seemingly found a way to solve the economics of MotoGP, compared to the quandary endured by Suzuki, having experienced recent success but unable to make the numbers work for even a single team…Brad Binder, with his skeletal air, his shaved head and beard looks like one of the South African mercenaries so often found in modern action films. Don’t mess with him on the track… I had to post the photo of Carmelo Ezpeleta and Sultan Somethingorother, Carmelo, the Big Cheese of MotoGP, doing an excellent job of not sweating through his trousers, while the Sultan, Grand Gouda of the locals, looks cool as a cucumber in the equatorial steam bath…The rain expected by the announcers never materialized, to the dismay of fans like myself who love the entropy of flag-to-flag tilts…
On to Valencia
Before Round 18 at Phillip Island, there were five combatants–Pecco, Fabio, Aleix, Miller and EBas.
Before Round 19 today, there were four–Pecco, Fabio, Aleix and EBas.
Heading to Round 20 in Valencia, there remain but two contestants. The Italian holds every card in the deck; the Frenchman, with a broken finger on his left hand, can’t even hold the few cards he has. The Italian, with his fellow Ducati teams, will have, in effect, up to seven wingmen watching his six should the need arise. The Frenchman is all on his own, his teammate mired in the muck all year, the satellite guys ready and willing but unable to help fend off the swarm of Desmos. On paper, it looks to be no contest, Pecco riding the last two laps with one hand on the handlebars and the other blowing kisses to the irritated fans, who want, above all, to see a Spaniard on the top step and hear their beloved anthem one more time in 2022. This November, the contest writ large will not involve a Spaniard, not that the fans care that much. The rumor expected to be circulating in the stands at the finale will assure all those in attendance that, like the swallows to Capistrano, #93 will be back next year, and the anthem is likely to get a good workout once again.
See you in two weeks.
Brolly #1Brolly #2SepangThese Frenchmen are incorrigible. Don’t do it, Johann.Big Cheese and Grand Gouda.Then there were two…
There are people who don’t like racing at Silverstone, for whatever reason. The cafeteria in the press room is inferior? The air conditioning lacks gusto? It’s flat as a board? Its military roots are offensive to the universe? Silverstone is long and fast and wide, allowing for more overtakes than you see in any other race on the calendar. The result is what we saw today, 20 laps of brilliant riding, strategies working and failing, five Ducatis in the top ten, and Pecco closing the gap to Fabio by 17 points.
After a warm weekend of practice and qualifying, the view from here, waiting for the lights to go out, was that Fabio’s Yamaha would be at a decided disadvantage versus the Ducs and Apes. Pecco Bagnaia, everyone’s pre-season favorite, was likely to continue his recent form of either winning or crashing out. Aleix and his Aprilia looked fast all weekend until it launched him into a low Earth orbit during FP4, causing him to race with one leg/ankle/foot combination and one leg/etc. He managed a respectable P9 in a race most mortal humans would have mailed in. Johann “Bridesmaid” Zarco, still looking for his first premier class win, and looking swarthier than ever with the elegant full beard, won pole with another seven riders who broke Marc Marquez’s previous track record set in 2018. And, lo and behold, who comes lurking around the upper echelons of the racing food chain but one Maverick Vinales, aka Cole Trickle. He appeared to be preparing for a stirring comeback to the top step of the podium in merry England, but was unable to mount a successful challenge to Bagnaia on the final lap, appearing to come slightly unglued in the process. P2 is a nice result for Pop Gun as he attempts to resurrect his once promising career with the Noale factory,
Zarco took the holeshot on his Pramac Ducati and led the race for five laps until bad luck, the only kind he knows, undid him, sliding out of the lead into a general Gallic funk. Jack Miller, the forgotten man in MotoGP, spent most of (qualifying and) the race in P3, ultimately securing 16 points for his day’s work. Alex Rins appeared to have good pace all weekend and looked strong early today, but developed what appeared to be grip issues before fading to P7 at the flag.
So, after Zarco led at the start, Rins took over the lead until he was passed by Pecco on Lap 12, who was never seriously challenged thereafter. Vinales moved up the leader board over the last few laps, creating the anticipated Bagnaia vs. Vinales challenge on the last lap. But Pop Gun’s resurrection will have to wait, as he was unable to bring the fight to Bagnaia due to several twitches. Pecco never blinked.
Fabio ended up limping home in P8. EBas, who started in P8 and had nothing going on most of the day, rallied late to secure P4 and feel good about himself heading to Austria in two weeks.
Late-Braking MotoGP 