Analysis

It's groundhog day. The MotoGP paddock is back in exactly the same place and doing exactly the same thing it was doing a week ago. The coronavirus-curtailed 2020 season is big on repetition, and as a result, on disorientation. With no distractions at the track, everyone is starting to go a little stir crazy. What things will be like at the second race at Valencia, in the middle of the third run of three back-to-back races doubling up at some circuits, heaven only knows.

What does change from last Friday was the work to be done. Better weather and a weekend's worth of data mean that most teams are much closer to their base set up. (But no everyone: there are a few riders who are a bit lost, and grasping around for a solution). That leaves the teams free to experiment with the tires they weren't sure about a week ago, riders swapping between the soft and medium rears, for example.

"Not too much difference," Jack Miller said. "It is what it is. Don't get too focused on what worked the week before. You've got to keep an open mind. For example, I'm leaning towards the medium tire this weekend, but we need more analysis."

More time to work

The smaller classes delivered once again at the Austrian Grand Prix as a dramatic Moto2 encounter, which had one hair-raising moment, resulted in an added dimension to the championship fight, while Moto3 produced the sixth closest top 15 finish in the history of the class. Here are some of the big talking points from Moto2 and Moto3 last weekend.

The Crash

Had it not been for Johann Zarco and Franco Morbidelli’s terrifying collision in the MotoGP race, the sight of Hafizh Syahrin smashing into Enea Bastianini’s stricken machine on the exit of turn one would have been the takeaway image of the Austrian Grand Prix.

There were elements of Days of Thunder as the Malaysian was flung from his machine at well over 160 km/h, with parts of his Speed Up bike disintegrating around the oncoming pack. Dominique Aegerter, enjoying a replacement ride for NTS, narrowly missed his head. “Scary,” said the Swiss rider. “The debris literally flew around my ears. I was really lucky.”

This wasn’t the first time the Red Bull Ring’s turn one has witnessed such a spill. Remy Gardner’s collision with Alex Marquez so nearly ended in disaster at the same point a year ago, when Jorge Martin avoided hitting the Australian at 130 km/h by a matter of inches.

It was one of those days. We had a fascinating FP4 session for the MotoGP class, where a clear pattern emerged for the race, followed by a thrilling and action-packed qualifying, yet barely anyone is talking about that at all. And all because early on Saturday afternoon, the bombshell dropped that Andrea Dovizioso will be leaving Ducati at the end of the 2020 season.

Though the news itself did not quite come as a surprise, the timing and nature of the announcement caught us all a little off guard. Ducati had said they had hoped to make a decision after the two races at the Red Bull Ring. But Dovizioso's manager Simone Battistella had already said he was having a meeting with Ducati management on Saturday, and Sky Italia TV tracked him down as soon as Battistella left the Ducati truck to ask how the meeting had gone. Battistella told them, and all hell broke loose.

"It’s normal to have a lot of questions and I’m a bit disappointed but this moment is not the right moment to speak about all the details," Andrea Dovizioso would tell us when we finally got to talk to him during his media debrief, held via Zoom. A debrief that was 20 minutes late, and started right in the middle of the qualifying press conference traditionally held at 5pm on Saturday afternoon. It was late because of all of the TV interviews Dovizioso had to do to explain himself, before doing it all over again for the written press.

No mood to talk

A short hop over the Alps – or rather, a short drive south, and then west between the Alps, to avoid the slow but spectacular progress over the mountain passes to the north of Spielberg – and the MotoGP paddock reassembles at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. From one of the best tracks on the calendar, plagued by financial problems, to one of the best-funded tracks on the calendar, plagued by the fact that, well, frankly, it's not a very good circuit for motorcycle racing.

The setting is spectacular, nestled at the foot of the hills rising from the valley of the river Mur and heading up to snow-capped peaks a couple of kilometers skywards. The circuit sits on a slope at the bottom of those hills, making for a surprisingly steep climb up to Turn 1, then up the hill to Turn 3, along the hillside to Turn 4, before rolling down through a huge Omega right-left-right combination to get back to the bottom of the hill, and the straight which runs along it.

But the circuit belies its heritage, as a spectacular but treacherous mountain circuit crossing hills and woods. And like many mountain circuits, there is little room for mistakes, with runoff limited at Turn 1, Turn 3, between the barriers from Turn 3 to Turn 4, and at the bottom of the hill into the final corner. In the dry, it is all just about manageable. But in the wet, it can be a terrifying place.

Hard rain is going to fall