MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

It's Only Friday, as the riders like to say to hype-hungry journalists after the first day of practice. That is of course true, but this It's Only Friday has brought a whole ream of fascinating stories to follow. It is far too early to be drawing conclusions for the rest of the season, but so far, 2025 looks a lot less like 2024 than we feared.

Yes, Ducati is still clearly the strongest manufacturer. The Márquez brothers topped the timesheets on Friday, Gresini's Alex beating Lenovo's Marc by half a tenth of a second. And in terms of pace, Ducatis are looking strongest as well: Marc Márquez was running 1'29.9s on old tires, teammate Pecco Bagnaia 1'30.0s.

But there are signs the other factories are catching up. There are as many Aprilias in the top 10 and directly through to Q2 as there are Ducatis (three). All five manufacturers are straight through to Q2. There are two Hondas in the top ten, Joan Mir an impressive sixth fastest. And Pedro Acosta is both quick over a single lap and running just a tenth or two off Pecco Bagnaia's pace on used tires. It has been very interesting day indeed.

Let's start with the Ducatis. Before the season started, Marc Márquez was widely tipped as the championship favorite. Nothing that happened on Friday has diminished that idea. Márquez was fast throughout both sessions of practice, at or near the top of the timesheets. His single lap is fast, and he looks capable of doing a fast lap at will. He did a 1'29.4 just 6 laps into the morning FP1 session. His first flying lap would still have been good enough for second place in timed practice, and he had a 1'28 canceled because of yellow flags.

It had been a 'good day, solid day', according to the Ducati Lenovo rider. He would admit to having expected this result, but it was certainly what he had hoped for. "Of course you try to think in an optimistic way, and I was looking to start in a good way and from the first run I found the good feeling I found in the test. That was important," Márquez told reporters.

He praised his brother Alex' speed. "The biggest surprise of the preseason, checking the top, was my brother," Marc Márquez said. "But it is not a surprise any more because he was fast in Catalunya, he was fast in Malaysia – and you can say ‘OK, circuits that you are riding well’ – but he was fast here and fast again today so it is not a surprise any more."

Alex Márquez was careful not to get too carried away with his speed so far. "It was a good day: double Marquez leading," the Gresini Ducati rider joked. "But if you see the championship we are both in the same position with zero points. We need to keep calm. We have many weekends ahead and many things to improve."

Márquez also pointed to the other bikes which have improved. "Of course the three Aprilias were in the top ten; the other manufacturers are working and every time are closer and closer. So we need to keep going," the Ducati Lenovo rider told reporters.

Fastest of the rest is Pedro Acosta, still comfortably faster than the rest of the KTMs, and another rider to lose a fast lap to a yellow flag - that was a theme, much more on that when we come to Pecco Bagnaia.

Acosta was very happy at the end of the first day. "Good Friday! Maybe the best one since I’m a MotoGP rider," Acosta said. No 'It's Only Friday' for him. He and his team had gotten a lot of work done. "Long morning trying to understand the tires. A quite good afternoon trying to take the pace and good time attacks, which was my weakest point last year."

The problem that KTM had at the test, and last year's race, was wear of the rear tire, the rear Michelin getting chewed up by the RC16. That was an issue they had worked hard on, Brad Binder said, working on electronics to manage the spin of the rear tire on acceleration.

The worst place was not the straight between Turns 1 and 3, as you might expect. "The worst place for really grazing the center of the tire is probably the exit of Turn 3," Binder explained. "Because you spend a long time with just a little bit of spin. So it's important to try to cut that, and if you can cut that, for sure there's a good advantage. Because it just gets super hot with the spin."

Another way that spin can be reduced is by riding the bike differently, and the KTM has changed compared to last year. It is less of a point-and-squirt bike, and can carry a bit more corner speed. "This bike needs to flow a bit more," Pedro Acosta explained. "We need to use more the corner speed like our competitors."

That needed work from the rider as well as the bike, Acosta admitted. "I need to also understand how to do it. Normally I always try to brake super late then turn and spin. Now it’s completely the opposite, try to brake smoothly, have the corner speed and be fast."

That was better for overall speed, he explained. "You suffer less, the bike is moving less. Generally, the bike is better." But it went against everything he had learned, Acosta admitted. "It was more natural last year. But natural doesn’t mean faster. We need to be faster. Many times, a human can make more difference than a machine, let’s say. For this we can try to adapt ourselves and it will be much better."

The surprise of the Buriram test had been Marco Bezzecchi and the Aprilia. The Italian had been able to carry the pace he had at the test over to the race weekend. A sign of his confidence was the fact that he crashed on his final run, in an attempt to find that little bit more from the RS-GP. But that was a positive, another lesson on the way to adapting to the Aprilia.

"It was a positive day for me," Bezzecchi said. "At the end, maybe I tried a bit too much. But it's the first time that I tried to make a bit more. I think it was possible to avoid the crash. It's the first time I had a similar movement in braking, so I didn't really know what to do. But I tried to put the bike in anyway. So, small mistake, but overall it was a positive day."

The fact that there were three Aprilias in the top ten was a very positive sign that it wasn't just Bezzecchi who was getting the most out of the bike. After languishing in the lower regions of the timesheets for most of the day, Raul Fernandez jumped up into the top ten with a strong lap, and his pace is not a million miles away. And Ai Ogura's impressive debut in the premier class continues, the Trackhouse Aprilia rider (now sporting a rather fetching Gulf Oil livery) fast enough to squeak into Q2, and his pace not that far off his teammate's either.

The big step for the Aprilia has come in improving the rear of the RS-GP. At the Barcelona test, riders had described it as 'loose', though they praised the front end. Engineers in Noale had worked over the winter to make a big step forward there, Bezzecchi said. "From Montmelo we improved a lot, especially in traction. Now the bike is a lot more stable." There was still work to do though. "The difference is a bit more in the braking. We still have to find a way to make a smooth bike in all kind of brakings."

The biggest surprise of Friday was the fact that Pecco Bagnaia didn't make it straight through to Q2. At a glance, it looked like Bagnaia had a rough day, only finishing tenth in FP1 in the morning, then missing out on Q2 in the afternoon. But Bagnaia rejected that idea.

"In reality this morning, I didn't use the first exit very well to do a very good lap time," the Ducati Lenovo rider said. "But then the pace with used tires is good, I was lapping in 1'30.1 in the last exit. Then this afternoon, I was happy because I was lapping well, and the pace was quite constant, and even if the rear tire was quite used, the soft, I was just one tenth slower than Marc who was the fastest today. So in terms of pace, I'm very happy. We improved compared to the test, so I'm happy."

This is no idle boasting. The timesheets bear our Bagnaia's story. His pace in FP1 was strong, and he stuck with a single medium rear for the entire 19 laps of his session. In the afternoon, the factory Ducati rider was doing 1'30.0s to teammate Márquez' 1'29.9s. If Bagnaia were to qualify on the front row, you feel he would give his teammate a run for his money.

To do that, first Bagnaia has to find his way out of the quagmire that is Q1. The Italian had terrible luck on his final run at qualifying. First, he hit a yellow flag and had his fast lap canceled, a lap fast enough to have given him ninth place and safe passage to Q2. Then, as he pushed again, he ran into traffic, with Franco Morbidelli one of a number of riders holding up the field. Morbidelli, along with LCR Honda's Somkiat Chantra, was handed a three-place grid penalty for Sunday's race, the first act of justice from newly appointed Chief FIM Steward Simon Crafar.

Bagnaia was fuming about the end of Q2, but not because of being held up. The Italian was angry because his fast lap had been automatically canceled thanks to a yellow flag that had been shown in error by the marshals and Race Direction.

"I'm more angry with Race Direction than for what happened with Frankie," Bagnaia fumed. "Because today they did a very huge mistake. They put yellow flags from Turn 8 to Turn 3 by mistake, nobody had crashed there. And they admit to me, OK, you are right, we did a mistake, but we cannot give to you the lap back because it's like this."

Yellow flags are yellow flags

The explanation for not giving Bagnaia his lap time back was simple. "They said if we give you back the lap time, we will have much more arguing with all the other riders when we cancel the lap time," Bagnaia told reporters. The Ducati Lenovo still felt that this was unjustified, as he had done nothing wrong.

In a rare and welcome statement from Race Direction, Mike Webb explained what had happened. "Race Direction determined that the yellow flag was incorrectly displayed on the lap Bagnaia has had canceled. This was due to human error. We are very unhappy with this unfortunate situation and effect it has had on Pecco’s weekend. When a rider passes a yellow flag, their lap is automatically cancelled. This affected various riders today, but unfortunately it was Bagnaia’s fastest lap of the session."

Canceling a lap was automatic because of the yellow flag, Webb explained. "Laps are canceled due to passing a yellow flag, not necessarily because a rider passes through a sector with a crash. We cannot reverse any cancellation of a lap for any rider who has seen a yellow flag. But we can - and do - apologize to Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team for the human error."

Justice and fairness

It is understandable that Bagnaia should be furious about the cancellation of his fast lap, and finding himself in the Q1 quagmire. But the reason for the yellow flag rule is very simple: to remove the incentive for riders to keep pushing for a quick lap, so that they can react to a potentially dangerous situation in a timely manner.

This is emphasized in the yellow flag protocol handed out to teams and riders at the start of the season. The following sentence is explicitly added to the instructions. "The message is that you cannot improve your time under yellow signals, so there is no reason NOT to slow down."

The reason to make it an automatic is to avoid discussion and debate, and to ensure that riders do actually slow down. By removing any chance for teams to argue the toss, they also remove the incentive to keep pushing and to take risks. And by tying it to the yellow flag, it takes the decision of judging conditions out of the hands of the riders.

On very rare occasions, this will lead to a travesty of justice, as in the case of Pecco Bagnaia at Buriram. But the number of times it happens is vanishingly rare. We are fortunate that motorcycle racing remains a sport where the human is paramount, despite the importance of the bike. But accepting that humans are paramount also means that we must accept that occasionally, mistakes are made.

The mistake by Race Direction does not resolve Pecco Bagnaia of all blame, however. "I lost the first opportunity because maybe we started the time attacks a bit too late in the session," the Ducati Lenovo rider admitted. "We started when there were 12 minutes remaining. So I had just one attempt with the first tire, then with the second one, I just lost the first attempt by their mistake, then by the second one, there was a crash but no yellow flags, so imagine the chaos we had in the last minutes, and then in the last lap, I missed... it wasn't just Frankie, in that moment there were three riders going slow on the line."

At the end of the day, riders and teams have to understand that the track gets more and more chaotic as the session nears its end. Getting a fast lap in early, a so-called banker lap good enough to get through to Q2, is an absolute necessity. Starting late, and hoping that things will work themselves out is a recipe for disaster. Or at least, a recipe for an agonizing and nerve-wracking trip through Q1.

Q1 is stacked for Saturday. You would normally put your money on Bagnaia getting through comfortably, but Brad Binder is in Q1, along with Jack Miller, Maverick Viñales, and perhaps even Luca Marini. "We have to take the positives, and the positives are that we are strong. So this is enough to make me more calm," Bagnaia said. "But we clearly all know how difficult it is to move from Q1 to Q2, so tomorrow let's see." Let's see indeed.

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