MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The forecast was for rain at Motegi on Saturday, and rain certainly fell. Fortunately, most of it fell overnight, leaving MotoGP qualifying and the sprint race dry. Well, almost. The constant threat of rain hung in the air, spots of rain hitting visors in enough numbers to plant the seeds of doubt into the minds of the riders. And sometimes, hard enough to actually suck some of the grip away from the track.

If you are going to end up in those fickle conditions, where the track might be a little damp or it might not, then Motegi is the place to be. It has superb grip in the wet, riders managing 1'55s in absolutely torrential rain here in the 2023 race that was eventually red-flagged. But that doesn't make it any easier for riders to wrap their heads around, when drops start to spatter on their visors.

Those spots of rain ended up having a profound effect on qualifying. And they even had an impact on the race, perhaps denying Pedro Acosta his first sprint victory, though Acosta took all of the blame on his own shoulders.

Qualifying didn't play out the way you would normally expect. There was a mass sprint out of pit lane at the start of Q2, as riders feared the rain might return more heavily. There was a very wide dry line, but still damp patches. But the track was dry enough to allow the lap record to be smashed.

The first rider to smash the lap record was Marc Márquez. The Gresini Ducati put in a breathtaking lap to become the first rider to ever lap Motegi under 1'43. Unfortunately for him, he did it partly by just nicking the green on the outside of Turn 4 and exceeding track limits. Even more unfortunately for him, in doing so, he also unwittingly found an issue in Race Direction's system of communicating track limits penalties to riders and teams.