MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

After the sprint race on Saturday in Argentina, I wrote about how Marc Márquez' victories are the natural consequence of putting the best rider on the best bike. On Sunday, he rather proved my point, even though brother Alex made it considerably tougher for him than he had in Thailand. Tougher or not, the outcome was the same: Marc Márquez took another win with a comfortable margin, making it a clean sweep of the first two races. At both Buriram and Termas de Rio Hondo, the Ducati Lenovo rider took pole, sprint win, GP win, and a new lap record.

Once again, Márquez dropped behind his brother Alex after a few laps, before passing him again at the end. But this time, it wasn't because of tire pressure or a sign of control. At the start of lap 4, Marc made a mistake and outbraked himself going into Turn 1, running wide and allowing Alex through. And then the elder Márquez brother found himself stuck behind the younger, incapable of getting past again. Until 5 laps to the end.

There is an entirely unsubstantiated rumor, which I have personally decided to believe regardless of the evidence, that Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta worked hard to prevent Ducati from signing Marc Márquez to the factory team. After two sprints and a GP, you have to concede that he would have been right to try to interfere. So far, Márquez has looked pretty much unstoppable. Exactly as you would expect when you put the best rider on the best bike.

At the end of every Friday practice, the riders like to remind us that it is only Friday, and we shouldn't read too much into the times. Fat chance, of course, but they have a point. But "it's only Friday" takes on extra potency at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit, given the changing nature of the track. Especially after it rained heavily overnight, and the track started the day wet and took a long time to dry out. High humidity and low temperatures add another layer of complexity, just to liven things up.

The track started off cleaner than expected. "Yesterday when I made the track walk, I thought that the track was more dirty," Marco Bezzecchi said at the end of the first day. "But when I rode the bike this morning, to be honest it was much much better compared to the past times we came here."

The track may have started from a better base, but the grip levels were still changing on pretty much every exit as more and more rubber got laid down. That makes working out where riders stand relatively complicated, though we can take a stab at it by looking at the timesheets.

MotoGP is back at Termas de Rio Hondo in Argentina, so what better way to start than with news about Austin, Texas? The reigning world champion isn't in Argentina, and wasn't scheduled to be in the pre-event press conference, but he called in anyway, phoning in from his car. His recovery from the scaphoid injury he suffered in a training crash wasn't proceeding as quickly as he hoped, he said, and he wouldn't be able to ride at the Grand Prix Of The Americas in Austin, Texas. And probably not in Qatar either.

"I'm really suffering," Martin said. "It's not my moment, I'm struggling to recover as fast as I would like." He would skip Austin and maybe also Qatar, and would really like to test himself before he returned to racing. "I would like to make some kind of test before coming back to racing, because I'm not feeling really good. And I know Massimo [Rivola, Aprilia Racing CEO] is also working on that, let's see if we can make it possible."

A test is going to be hard. Martin is able to ride a production bike, but Aprilia is in category C as far as concessions are concerned. That means no testing for contracted riders (i.e. riders on the official MotoGP entry list for 2025) outside of official IRTA tests. The first IRTA test is at Jerez. And if Martin is going to ride at the test in Jerez, he might as well try to ride at the weekend.

Patience is a virtue

The vagaries of politics meant that MotoGP missed out on going to the Termas de Rio Hondo in Argentina in 2024, and the vagaries of politics mean we are going back again in 2025. Probably for the very last time, as next year there will be a race in Brazil, at Goiania, and possibly another near Buenos Aires, where Dorna Chief Sporting Officer Carlos Ezpeleta visited in February.

The vagaries of politics are why Termas de Rio Hondo was built and then upgraded to host MotoGP in the first place, the regional government hoping to attract tourism and economic activity to a relatively remote part of Argentina. That makes it one of the longest and most tiring journeys for everyone in the MotoGP paddock, and also one of the most expensive. And given the diminishing returns from all forms of journalism, it means there are fewer reporters on the ground than there are working class people on an F1 grid.

MotoGP riders learned a new English word last Sunday at Buriram. Typical of this was Joan Mir, who had crashed out shortly after the halfway mark. "I have burns," he explained to journalists, before turning to the Honda HRC Castrol press officer to ask "como se dice? (how do you say that in English), before journalists jumped in with the word "blisters". "Ah, the tire also!" Mir joked.

Blisters were a common theme. Official air temperature of 36°C (measured in the shade) meant there was little respite for rider nor machine. The combination of blazing sun, 300 horsepower, and hot air meant that the heat produced by the engines was not being dissipated to the air, but heating up frames and chassis as well. Temperatures of metal parts were reaching nearly 100°C.

There is no better setting for Round 1 of the Superbike season than Phillip Island. With the Bass Strait dominating the horizon it offers a truly unique setting. It also all but guarantees that we’ll have classic battles with the drive to the line, a slipstreaming battle separated by thousands of a second...it was just a shame that Nicolo Bulega didn’t get the memo.

Toprak threatens to walk away from WorldSBK

As ever the WorldSBK paddock is centred around Toprak Razgatlioglu. Last year it was for his stunning championship winning upset. This year it’s because the Turkish star is upset.

Coming to Australia it was clear that BMW would be on the back foot. A late change, mid-January, in the regulations saw them unable to capitalise on their former Super Concession status and upgraded chassis parts. The change in regulations was small but incredibly significant; a manufacturer developing a new bike can only use Super Concessions if they are still eligible. In the past BMW would have been able to continue to use the upgrades with their new homologation.

A couple of decades ago, when Valentino Rossi was at the height of his powers, Rossi's crew chief Jeremy Burgess was interviewed. Burgess explained that if he was shown a photo of Rossi riding, he could identify what lap Rossi was on.

Is this some kind of weird superpower? Not really. Burgess was looking at Rossi's position on the bike, and dozens of tiny telltale signs of how he was adapting his riding to the bike and tires as they changed during race, as the fuel tank emptied and the tires wore and degraded.

If you have the kind of intimate knowledge of a rider's talent and habits that a crew chief does, you can spot those subtle changes. Or if you are an ex-rider and have been watching a particular rider for a long time, you can pick up on those signs too.

We are off and running. The first points in the 2025 MotoGP season have been handed out, and we have a championship. So far, it is running pretty much as it did last year: three Ducatis on the podium and a race that was spaced out and predictable pretty much from the start. But that didn't stop the Saturday Sprint race at Buriram from being interesting, if not exciting to watch.

The atmosphere more than made up for the lack of on track action. The grandstands were once again packed with enthusiastic and loud MotoGP fans, vindicating Dorna's decision to start the season in Buriram instead of Qatar. That may not suit European broadcasters - a 9am CET start time is less attractive to TV audiences than either 3pm for a race in Europe or 6pm for Qatar.

(And yes, I am aware that the 3pm Buriram time is much more convenient for viewers in Australia, and to an extent on the West Coast of the US. The trouble is, TV audience sizes in those countries are nowhere near what they are in Spain, Italy, France, and the UK.)