MotoGP

[Joe]

On 4/3/2025 at 10:13 AM, GuzziMoto said:

I believe Marc misunderstood the rules and thought he would have to start from the back of the grid. But he was banking on another mis-understanding of the rules, hoping ten other racers would follow him off the grid. He was confusing the situation with another situation, if more then ten racers pull down pit lane at the end of the warmup lap the rules say the race start will be postponed. That rule was added after most of the grid pulled into pitlane after the warmup lap at, I think, Argentina a couple years ago (but I could be wrong about the specific location). However, that rule was strictly about riders pulling down pitlane at the end of the warmup lap, to prevent a debacle like that from happening again.

The rules Marc did not know as well as he thought actually meant he would go out on the warmup lap and start the race from his original grid spot, but then have to do a drive down pitlane to add to his race time the equivalent of lost time as if he had swapped bikes to his other bike to get off the rains and onto slicks. This article covers the various possible scenarios pretty well; https://www.crash.net/motogp/feature/1066604/1/marc-marquezs-cota-motogp-grid-gamble-wrong-reasons-right-decision

I don't see what happened as a sign of Pecco getting on equal footing with Marc. What happened was Marc made a few mistakes, the new Marc we have seen went away for that race and the old Marc surfaced. He outsmarted himself trying to outsmart everyone else, and was lucky he didn't face the consequences he was supposed to. And he wanted to crush the field to show his dominance, but he failed. He had the win, the race was his to lose, and he lost it. I hope at the next round Pecco pulls himself up on equal terms with Marc and beats him straight up. Then it will really be on.

 

Love Pecco and glad he won the race, but Marc was legitimately the fastest Factory rider on the track.

[GuzziMoto]

On 4/4/2025 at 10:25 AM, Joe said:

Love Pecco and glad he won the race, but Marc was legitimately the fastest Factory rider on the track.

No argument here on that. But you do need to be more then the fastest guy, you also have to be smart. And while Marc of late has been smart, he clearly wasn't in that race. He had a decent lead but was still pushing, still riding at and over his limit. And it led to his crash. Pecco has done similar in the past, but seems to have learned. Marc has done similar in the past (at that very track no less) and while mostly he seemed to have learned, that time he threw that out the window in what seemed like an attempt to dominate the race and show everyone that he is the superior racer. And that failed. They don't pay points based on how much you win by, or even how many laps you led. That was Marcs track, that was not a race Pecco was expecting to win, or probably even challenge Marc. The race was Marc's to lose, and he did.

It will be interesting to see how things go now that we are getting to tracks that don't favor Marc like the first few races have, now that we are getting to tracks that may even favor Pecco. Will the Marc of old surface? And how will Ducati deal with that? Or will he rise above his old ways. He didn't at COTA.

[p6x]

32 minutes ago, GuzziMoto said:

He had a decent lead but was still pushing, still riding at and over his limit.

I really have a hard time believing that he was pushing. There wasn't any reason to justify that he had to.

One of the (plausible?) explanation was that he lost the bike by going over the curb, which (according to pundits) in the USA are not coated with anti-skid paint.

Now, I completely trust that he is quite the astute man, on top of being an incredible pilot. The way he did a 180 degrees with his career, by leaving mighty Honda (including an even higher salary to stay) for a second fiddle team. this was a very bold move.

I am not underevaluating Francesco Bagnaia, but when it comes to being a snake, Marc Marquez will prevail. It is being whispered that Valentino Rossi is 100% mentoring Francesco on what traps may lie ahead of him.

[GuzziMoto]

4 hours ago, p6x said:

I really have a hard time believing that he was pushing. There wasn't any reason to justify that he had to.

One of the (plausible?) explanation was that he lost the bike by going over the curb, which (according to pundits) in the USA are not coated with anti-skid paint.

Now, I completely trust that he is quite the astute man, on top of being an incredible pilot. The way he did a 180 degrees with his career, by leaving mighty Honda (including an even higher salary to stay) for a second fiddle team. this was a very bold move.

I am not underevaluating Francesco Bagnaia, but when it comes to being a snake, Marc Marquez will prevail. It is being whispered that Valentino Rossi is 100% mentoring Francesco on what traps may lie ahead of him.

He absolutely did loose it by going over the curb on the inside. But that was because he couldn't keep his bike on the actual line. He ran wide out of the previous corner, being a "left, right, left sort of corner that means being wide out of the previous corner meant he was actually way too tight going in to the corner he crashed in. That put him way over the curbing on the inside. He had numerous slides and it was clear he was pushing hard. Running wide and offline like he did was simply what that led to.

The racer that followed his brother around all race saving his tires and keeping his powder dry was not the racer we saw at COTA. He was trying to make a point. That sort of victory was not going to cut it at one of "his tracks".

[p6x]

On 4/7/2025 at 12:40 PM, GuzziMoto said:

He absolutely did loose it by going over the curb on the inside. But that was because he couldn't keep his bike on the actual line. He ran wide out of the previous corner, being a "left, right, left sort of corner that means being wide out of the previous corner meant he was actually way too tight going in to the corner he crashed in. That put him way over the curbing on the inside. He had numerous slides and it was clear he was pushing hard. Running wide and offline like he did was simply what that led to.

The racer that followed his brother around all race saving his tires and keeping his powder dry was not the racer we saw at COTA. He was trying to make a point. That sort of victory was not going to cut it at one of "his tracks".

I do not disagree with your statement. He may have wanted to hammer in a statement to Bagnaia, he has had lots of experience when he was battling with Rossi, psychological warfare is unfortunately very important too, whether you think you are immune to it, or not. 

This is where the Valentino mentoring will help Francesco Bagnaia. While Bagnaia is possibly not as strong as Marquez in this department, he has the "Italian family" around him, which is something you have to live to understand. It is a bit patriarchal, but once you get it, you appreciate it. I lived for months with a Sicilian family, and felt adopted. Not anything I ever experienced with my own family.

Anyway, Qatar is being built up in the same manner as the three first GPs, by putting Marquez at a disadvantage. He finished fourth last year, on a GP23 which was said to be really inferior to the GP24.

We will know soon enough.

[GuzziMoto]

Yeah, we will know soon enough. Bagnaia has his own history of making mistakes like that. But he has mostly learned his lesson, that is why he has two titles. But at the level they are riding at everyone makes at least some mistakes. You just can't go as fast as they do and not make at least the occasional mistake. The question this year likely will come down to who makes the fewest mistakes, more then who is the fastest. It should be fun to watch it unfold.

[p6x]

I must say that I am disappointed that Jorge Martin self shot himself in the foot before the season started. I can accept that he got some bad luck during the opening tests, but he did not have to make matters worse by injuring himself even more.

He is also penciled to race in Qatar, which may be another mistake, even if he is announcing that he may not finish the races, the intent being getting back in the saddle.

I am looking at Piaggio as a bunch of amateurs, owing to their mistake in COTA, when Bezzechi's electronics put the bike in engine preservation mode; twice! it seems their team is plagued by this kind of errors which obviously aren't compatible with winning a championship.

Even the root cause of Jorge Martin crashes was fishy when they outwardly accused the tires, and Michelin seemed to show them they weren't at the correct temperature. Martin was the only one who crashed twice like that.

If we believe the media, the KTM have not resolved any of the issues they knew they had, that leaves us with nothing but yet, still Ducati above, below and beyond...

The only positive is Honda and Yamaha seem to be making some progress.

Edited Wednesday at 09:24 PM by p6x

[GuzziMoto]

Yes, in the end the challenge to Ducati may come from Honda or Yamaha. I know everyone was always slamming Honda and Yamaha, but I think they were never that far off the pace. It looked worse then it was because there were so many bikes / riders that were so close together pace-wise. So being a second or two off the pace put you so far back. But in terms of how much performance they needed to gain to be near the sharp end of the field, it just wasn't that much. And given the resources of Honda and Yamaha, along with the concessions that were made for them, it was always a fools errand to believe they weren't going to catch up. It may take them a little while, but they will catch up.

Aprilia has always struggled, they simply lack resources. And, as mentioned, they do shoot themselves in the foot periodically by doing things like loading the wrong map into a bike. I put that down to having too few people handling too many tasks. They probably don't have a guy whose one job is to make sure the right map is loaded at the right time. He likely has other jobs, making it easier to mess that job up. But I don't know that for sure, just a guess. It also could be that guy is just not good at his job, but maybe he is family....

[p6x]

4 hours ago, GuzziMoto said:

Aprilia has always struggled, they simply lack resources. And, as mentioned, they do shoot themselves in the foot periodically by doing things like loading the wrong map into a bike. I put that down to having too few people handling too many tasks. They probably don't have a guy whose one job is to make sure the right map is loaded at the right time. He likely has other jobs, making it easier to mess that job up. But I don't know that for sure, just a guess. It also could be that guy is just not good at his job, but maybe he is family....

I am not certain, and I may be wrong, but Piaggio is probably very strong financially. Probably not as strong as Ducati, but at least KTM? but the mistakes they keep making are sort of beginners'... surely, they must have check lists?

[GuzziMoto]

15 hours ago, p6x said:

I am not certain, and I may be wrong, but Piaggio is probably very strong financially. Probably not as strong as Ducati, but at least KTM? but the mistakes they keep making are sort of beginners'... surely, they must have check lists?

Piaggio is a pretty big company. But Aprilia is a pretty small part of Piaggio. So it does not get the resources for this that it needs. A classic example is that for much of the time until now Aprilia fielded two MotoGP bikes as required by the rules but they basically had one good one made with the best parts and the other was made with the parts that were left over. When you are custom making parts there are always going to be differences in quality of each part, some will be better and some will be worse. If you have the resources, you throw away the ones that are worse. But if you can't afford that you keep all the parts you make, and then decide which bike you use the worse parts on, saving the better parts for the A bike. Aleix rode the A bike for many years, with whomever was the B rider riding the B bike. There was always a massive difference in performance between the two bikes (actually two sets of bikes, if you want to be correct). It was a massive step for them to start actually fielding two sets of equal bikes. And now they are building four sets, although how equal they are remains to be seen.

From what I have heard, as well as what I have seen, a good judge of a teams financial resources is how many people work for it. And Aprilia, for a factory team, has the fewest number of people working for it.

[p6x]

It makes me wonder why Piaggio is even keeping Aprilia in MotoGP, if they are not "All in!"?

The kind of errors they have committed make them look like a "B" stock team, and defeats the purpose of racing to win the championship. Besides, they probably have invested a lot of money on Jorge Martin, so what is the point to have a capable pilot if you are going to cut his legs with miscellaneous issues?

Anyway;

Guess who is at the top of FP1 this morning? and we are not going to take it as an indication for the next practice, because as we know, FP1 means nothing...

[GuzziMoto]

1 hour ago, p6x said:

It makes me wonder why Piaggio is even keeping Aprilia in MotoGP, if they are not "All in!"?

The kind of errors they have committed make them look like a "B" stock team, and defeats the purpose of racing to win the championship. Besides, they probably have invested a lot of money on Jorge Martin, so what is the point to have a capable pilot if you are going to cut his legs with miscellaneous issues?

Anyway;

Guess who is at the top of FP1 this morning? and we are not going to take it as an indication for the next practice, because as we know, FP1 means nothing...

I would think that Aprilia are the ones driving their participation in MotoGP, not Piaggio. I would put that down to Aprilia doing what it can with the amount of independence it has within the larger Piaggio family. And to be fair, given how much less they spend they certainly are punching above their weight. They are getting better results then either Honda or Yamaha despite spending way less then either of those guys. So, while they do make some mistakes here and there that don't make them look great, I would say more often then not their performance in MotoGP makes them look better then they should given what they spend. As they say, fortune favors the brave. Or, no risk no gain.

At this track the entire Friday, both first and second practice, are somewhat meaningless as the track is covered in sand and needs to be cleaned and rubbered in from bikes doing laps. It won't be until tomorrow that we start to see who has what. Friday will favor riders who like low traction situations. But it likely won't stay that way all weekend, the traction should improve.

I think Martin is just testing the waters since he was denied the ability to do any private testing to see if he is race fit and ready to race. Also, racers race. He won't be the first racer to push coming back early. Racers do that whether they are top level pros or club racers. He has to start coming back at some point, might as well be now.

[p6x]

2 minutes ago, GuzziMoto said:

At this track the entire Friday, both first and second practice, are somewhat meaningless as the track is covered in sand and needs to be cleaned and rubbered in from bikes doing laps. It won't be until tomorrow that we start to see who has what. Friday will favor riders who like low traction situations. But it likely won't stay that way all weekend, the traction should improve.

I agree that the Qatar track is particularly dirty given the lack of activity outside the F1 and MotoGP. But there are still 6 Ducati in the 7 top riders. I am not taking anything for granted, but I will not be surprised by who will make pole position tomorrow.

[GuzziMoto]

I won't be surprised at what brand takes pole, I am pretty sure that will be Ducati. But I am way less sure about which rider will be on that pole winning Ducati.

There are even more reasons why FP1 was not very meaningful. In addition to the track being dirty and slippery with a distinct lack of grip, FP1 is also held during the day while the sun is up. Where as racing and qualifying will be held after the sun goes down. But FP1 was interesting. One thing was that the top 10 were covered buy 9 thousandths over one second, 1.009 seconds, but the gap between Marc and second fastest was over a half a second (0.513 seconds). Clearly Marc was pushing harder in the slippery conditions then anyone else was willing to push, especially because being fast in those conditions really wasn't going to matter over the course of the weekend. That may bode well for Marc, or it may not. 

I certainly wouldn't bet against Marc, but I also would not bet on him. It could easily go either way.

[p6x]

21 hours ago, GuzziMoto said:

I won't be surprised at what brand takes pole, I am pretty sure that will be Ducati. But I am way less sure about which rider will be on that pole winning Ducati.

The unsurprising outcome has happened. Hopefully, the races are going to be not as predictable as the qualifying. I was not 100% certain it was going to happen like this, but I am not surprised at all. There is a strong message there, contradicting all the pre GP discussions.

Tonight is going to be different, but maybe not that much.