MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Normally on Friday I like to examine the pace the riders have set during the day and try to draw some conclusions (erroneous or not) about who might be in contention for the podium on Saturday and Sunday. That seems like a fool's errand at Barcelona, however.

Jorge Martin was asked if he was worried that there seemed to be quite a lot of riders with similar pace to Pecco Bagnaia and him, unlike at the last race in Sepang. "I think there were so many tires to try, and we didn't see any riders with a lot of laps on the tires, so we will see in the race," the Pramac Ducati rider pointed out.

Pace is difficult to figure out when riders are constantly swapping tires, trying to figure out what will be the best choice for the race. Of the ten riders that made it through to Q2 on Friday afternoon, only half of them put 12 laps (sprint race distance or half GP distance) on a rear tire, where normally it would be all ten. Marco Bezzecchi, Aleix Espargaro, Johann Zarco, Maverick Viñales and Alex Márquez stuck with the same tire to do sprint race distance, the rest didn't.

It has been hot and humid at Motegi. Humid enough to rain in the morning, chasing everyone back into the garage for 20 minutes in FP1. That disrupted everyone's practice plans, forcing a rethink of the afternoon session and leaving a lot of questions unanswered.

Questions such as, will the soft rear go the distance on Sunday, or should we use the medium? A lot of riders used the medium during the limited running in the morning, but the tire just didn't want to work for most people in the afternoon. "If you see everyone that put a medium tire in PR, they make 3 laps and come in and put a soft," Pedro Acosta said. "This is not easy to understand. And even the soft is going to be difficult to finish the race with."

That puts a lot of pressure on Saturday morning, to work out whether the medium rear is a better tire for the race. "Last season with this tire they made the whole race and they were fast, and it was not an issue," Acosta said. "But I don't know why, but this soft tire will not finish the race. But the medium, I don't know how is the level of grip, you know?"

The return to Misano has been a return to the current Natural Order in MotoGP. Despite a damp start in the morning, by the afternoon, the timesheet gave a very clear picture of the lie of the land. I will let Marc Márquez explain.

"We know that always in the Covid times, the second GP [at the same track] was always super tight. And in fact everything is very tight, everything is fast, everybody is fast," the Gresini Ducati rider told us.

But that closeness belied the fact that there are two riders who are a cut above the rest at the moment. "It's true that when it's better grip conditions, the pattern of this year is it looks like Martin and Bagnaia do a step, and in fact today, they were much faster than us."

A cut above

The timesheets bear this out. On Friday afternoon, Pecco Bagnaia did a lap of 1'30.902 on a set of medium tires which had 14 laps on them, just over half race distance. Jorge Martin did a 1'30.844 on a set with 12 laps on them.

Nobody else got close. Marc Márquez did a 1'31.3. Enea Bastianini a 1'31.4. Maverick Viñales did a pair of 1'31.6s, and Pedro Acosta matched that on a used soft rear. Bagnaia and Martin have four tenths on the rest of the field, and will be battling for victory at the head of the field. There will be a larger group behind fighting over the last place on the podium, most likely with Marc Márquez at their head.

Marc Márquez' return to victory and the collision between Alex Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia ate up a lot of attention at the Motorland Aragon GP. Understandably so. Márquez winning after 1043 days and leaving the safety of the Repsol Honda factory team for the impoverished Gresini Ducati squad is huge. And the 13 or 16 points Bagnaia lost as a result of the crash could potentially end up making a difference in the championship.

But there was a lot more happening during the MotoGP race at Aragon. Pedro Acosta returned to the podium during a sprint race for the first time since Mugello, and for the first time since Austin in a Sunday grand prix. Though Acosta earned his sprint podium, his Sunday podium was gifted to him when Bagnaia and Márquez crashed out ahead of him.

Yet this podium is significant. It is the result of reverting to a setup with which Acosta had booked so many successes earlier in the season. A disastrous outing at their home GP at the Red Bull Ring had convinced KTM that something needed to be done, and by abandoning the changes which offered potential advantages for a setup they understood and knew would be more consistent allowed Acosta to ride like he wanted to again.

Back to the future

Once upon a time, pretty much every race at the Red Bull Ring ended in a thrilling last lap, last corner battle. Two or three riders would make it to the final lap and then throw everything into gaining that last bit of advantage coming onto the straight and across the line.

Pecco Bagnaia put an end to that last year, stamping his authority on the Austrian GP. The factory Ducati rider won the sprint race by over 2 seconds, the main race by over 5 seconds. Bagnaia seemed to be able to bend the Red Bull Ring to his will, and leave the rest of the field for dead. It wasn't even close.

On the face of it, the 2024 sprint race looks very much the same. Pecco Bagnaia's advantage this year was even bigger - 4.6 seconds over Jorge Martin. But that is in no way the complete story. Bagnaia is in fantastic shape, and is very hard to even stay with, let alone beat in Austria. But his margin over Martin had much more to do with the Pramac Ducati rider than with Bagnaia himself.

Forced error?

At the event Dorna had chosen to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the FIM Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing World Championship (that's MotoGP to you), MotoGP put on a show. Leaving aside the arithmetical arguments (2024 is the 76th season, but Silverstone was the 75th British Grand Prix, so debate naturally subsided), the event was a proper celebration of the sport.

There was a nod to history - Les Graham's AJS Porcupine, the bike which won the first ever GP world championship back in 1949, took pride of place on the grid. And the bikes were all decked out in retro liveries, paying homage to the past of the manufacturers, teams, and riders in the sport. Some going back further than others, perhaps, but that, too, is a reflection of the sport.

We were all loving the liveries until the start of the race. All of a sudden, we were cruelly reminded of just how much we rely on our visual memories when trying to figure out who is who. So when Brad Binder had a problem with a badly slipping clutch off at the start, holding his hand up to warn those behind him, we were suddenly cast into confusion.