Analysis

Andalucia MotoGP Thursday Round Up: Heroic Return Or Massive Mistake?

Submitted by David Emmett on

On Thursday, June 27th, 2013, Jorge Lorenzo took a flying lap around a soaking wet Assen during FP2, and hit a patch of water at Hoge Heide, the blisteringly fast right-left flick before the Ramshoek and the GT chicane. The Spaniard hit the ground hard, breaking his left collarbone. Trailing Dani Pedrosa in the championship by 7 points, Lorenzo decided to fly back to Barcelona for surgery.

Lorenzo flew to Barcelona on Thursday night, had his collarbone plated in the Dexeus Institut that night, and spent Friday morning recovering. Friday evening, Lorenzo was on a plane again, on his way back to Assen, and contemplating riding. On Saturday morning, race day at the time, Lorenzo was passed fit by the circuit doctor at Assen. Starting from twelfth on the grid – he had qualified for Q2 in FP1, benefiting from the weather conditions – the Spaniard gritted his teeth and suffered through a long race, eventually finishing in a remarkable fifth place.

Lorenzo's story has gone down in the annals of MotoGP history as a feat of epic endurance and willpower. But there were many question marks raised at the time. Was it safe? Was it worth the risk of crashing again, and potentially suffering a worse injury? The case even triggered a change in the rules, with a clause added that riders who had been under any form of anesthesia would not be allowed to practice or race for 48 hours afterwards.

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Jerez MotoGP Things I Missed: Numb Hands, A Possible Second Place, And The Support Classes

Submitted by David Emmett on

An awful lot happened at Jerez on Sunday, when the 2020 MotoGP season resumed/started. So much so that it didn't all fit into the subscriber notes published in the very, very wee hours of Monday morning. You can go back there to read about the delicate balance between risk and reward which riders face in 2020, Marc Márquez' astonishing ride and terrible fall, wrecking his upper arm and his title defense, how Márquez' crash exposes Honda's precarious situation without the reigning champion, Fabio Quartararo's fantastic win, and how Yamaha have turned around their MotoGP project since the nadir of 2018, Dovizioso's first MotoGP podium at Jerez and the strength of the Ducati, how the championship has been blown wide open, as well as how the KTM is now a genuinely competitive racing motorcycle. But here are a few more things to think about.

First, an update on Marc Márquez. After a preliminary examination in hospital, with the swelling of the initial trauma surrounding Márquez' broken humerus starting to reduce, doctors are optimistic that Márquez has not suffered damage to the radial nerve in his right arm. That would greatly improve his chances of a speedy recovery, a pin or plate enough to hold the bone in his upper arm together. Dr Mir, overseeing Márquez' care, told the media that Márquez could be ready to race in Brno.

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Jerez MotoGP Sunday Subscriber Notes: Risk, The Price Of Crashing, The Future Of MotoGP, And KTM

Submitted by David Emmett on

We had to wait 245 days between races, but boy, was it worth the wait. The Moto3 race was the usual closely-fought battle, the new order reasserted itself in Moto2, and the MotoGP race destroyed any preconceptions we had of the 2020 season, while serving up a smorgasbord of some of the finest riding we have seen in a very long time. Motorcycle racing junkies got the fix they had jonesing for, which should keep them sated for a while. And the best thing is we do it all over again next week. Though it is hard to imagine how the MotoGP paddock can replicate the events of this weekend.

In these notes:

  • We told you this would be a tricky championship
  • Marc Márquez being Marc Márquez
  • The deep hole Honda have dug for themselves
  • The win we had been waiting for
  • Yamaha's shake up pays off
  • I thought Ducatis were supposed to suck at Jerez?
  • A whole new championship
  • KTM – a proper motorcycle at last
  •  

It is hard to believe how much happened in the space of just a single day. But here's what mattered on Sunday.

Risk vs reward

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Jerez MotoGP Saturday Round Up: Risk vs Reward, How to Handle Yellow Flags, And Three Clear Favorites

Submitted by David Emmett on

For a stunning and heartrending reminder of just how difficult and delicate the 2020 MotoGP season is going to be, see Alex Rins' huge crash at Turn 11 during qualifying on Saturday at Jerez. The Suzuki Ecstar rider lost the front at one of the fastest and most treacherous corners of the circuit, and was forced to pick the bike up to try and save it. But as he entered the gravel trap, he realized he was traveling too fast, and decided to drop the bike to avoid hitting the barrier on the outside of the corner.

That is never an easy maneuver at speeds well over 170 km/h, and Rins fell badly in the attempt. After examination in the medical center, he was transported to a local hospital, where an MRI scan revealed that he had dislocated his right shoulder, fracturing the head of the humerus, the bone in the upper arm. He also suffered a tear in one of the muscles of his rotator cuff. Though he has not been officially ruled unfit to race just yet, the chance of him actually lining up on the grid on Sunday is minuscule.

Rins' real worry is the fact that there is another race in 7 days. And then three more races on consecutive weekends, starting three weeks from now. If Rins can race, it will be punishing. If he can't, there is still very little time to recover before the next race, or between the races after that. Thirteen races in eighteen weekends is a tough schedule for the fully fit. For anyone carrying an injury, it is going to be brutal.

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Jerez MotoGP Friday Round Up: Heat, Wind, And Tires

Submitted by David Emmett on

Be careful what you wish for. For four months, MotoGP riders sat at home and twiddled their thumbs, hoping for the racing to return. They got their wish, but there was a catch: the season opener is in Jerez, in July, in the withering heat of an Andalusian summer.

It was positively punishing on track, especially in the afternoon, once track temperatures started to creep into the mid 50s °C. The track gets greasy, and that catches riders out, especially rookies. Alex Márquez was one such rider: the Repsol Honda rider tucked the front at Turn 8, disrupting the plan for the session.

"In the crash, I was too optimistic, coming from the morning with a good feeling on track, you know," the younger Márquez brother told us. "I made a rookie mistake. The grip changed quite a lot from the morning to the afternoon. I was a little bit wide in the entry, but I was on a good lap so I tried to go back to the right line but I was a with a little bit too much lean angle on a dirty surface, and then the front was just closed."

Understanding how the heat affected the track was the key to the afternoon. The track has plenty of grip when temperatures are in the 30s and 40s°C, but once the mercury creeps past 50°C, the grip goes away, turning the MotoGP bikes into a real handful. By the end of FP1, track temperatures had hit 40°C. By the start of FP2, the track temperature was already 54°C, and rising.

The heat is on

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Jerez MotoGP Preview: Four Factors Which Will Matter In Andalusia

Submitted by David Emmett on

Racing is back, at last. After a period of four months, in which the COVID-19 pandemic took us on a journey from concern through despair and back to hope again, the MotoGP paddock is busy once again, preparing for a weekend of on-track action. Not as busy as otherwise, perhaps, the atmosphere is very different from a normal weekend, with no fans, no VIPs, no guests, no media, and half of the team members working from home. But the trucks are behind the garages, the riders are in their leathers, and the bikes are back on track.

So what should we be looking out for this weekend, now that racing has returned? Here are a few things to keep an eye on at this critical opening race.

Fitness first

The narrative back in February, before the opening round was called off, was about how Marc Márquez' shoulder would hold up during the first few races. A year after surgery to fix his left shoulder, he had had to have surgery on the right shoulder, to stop it from dislocating like his left shoulder had. The right shoulder was in better shape than the left was, but the surgery to fix it was almost as invasive and intense as the operation in 2018. Would Márquez be fit in time for the 2020 season?

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Jerez MotoGP Preseason Test Round Up: Getting To Grips In A Brand New World

Submitted by David Emmett on

It has been 143 days since the last day of the MotoGP test at Qatar, and 130 days since the Moto2 and Moto3 classes raced at the opening round of the series at the Losail International Circuit. A large part of the world spent most of that time in lockdown, nobody riding, nobody working on bikes, nobody checking up on equipment at circuits.

That is exactly why you go testing before the resumption of the 2020 MotoGP season at Jerez. To give everything a good shake down, make sure that nothing vital falls apart on a race weekend. The fact that the Jerez circuit suffered a power cut which delayed the restart of the afternoon MotoGP session for the best part of an hour is a case in point. A reminder that everyone needed time to get back up to speed again.

"The boys were a bit rusty," Jack Miller told us. "Everyone is getting back into everything, into their own jobs in the box and also for us riders. We’ve been off for four months. It’s quite useful to shake off the cobwebs."

Burning up

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2020 MotoGP Season And Jerez Test Preview - Racing Returns At Last

Submitted by David Emmett on

It is hard to believe, but it is here at last. After a layoff of over four months due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Grand Prix racing motorcycles will be back on track in just a few hours time. At first it seemed like there would be no racing at all in MotoGP, as race after race was canceled, but as the pandemic started to burn itself out in Spain and Italy, Dorna and the FIM started searching for a way ahead.

As the weeks passed, the cancellations ceased, and plans were laid for a new season. Hugely curtailed, and limited to just a handful of tracks, and with the way the series would be run radically reconfigured to make it as safe as possible. 13 races to be held over 18 weekends, teams limited to a much smaller presence, a limited number of TV crews, and journalists excluded entirely. Everything to avoid MotoGP becoming a catalyst for the further spread of the disease, and races having to be canceled once again.

So on Wednesday, bikes take the track again for a day of testing for all four classes – MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, and MotoE – before the season kicks off in earnest again on Friday. On Sunday, we should be racing again, at last.

Unknown unknown unknowns

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Risk vs Reward: Is Motocross Too Dangerous For MotoGP Riders?

Submitted by David Emmett on

Andrea Dovizioso at the 2020 Qatar MotoGP test - Photo by Rob Gray, Polarity Photo

66 million years ago, an object somewhere between the size of Mt. Everest and the country of Luxembourg (or the island of Puerto Rico) slammed into what would become the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico at a speed of 20 kilometers per second, or 72,000 km/h. The impact that an asteroid of that size moving at that speed made was unimaginably vast: scientists estimate that the energy released was around 100 million times that produced by Tsar Bomba, the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever built. The devastation that impact caused, helped along by wide-scale volcanic eruptions and climate change, killed a large percentage of life on earth, wiping out virtually all land and amphibian species larger than 25kg in body weight.

It could happen again. Objects from outer space hit the earth with alarming regularity. 50,000 years ago, a nickel-iron meteorite 50 meters across struck Arizona, creating the aptly named Meteor Crater. In 1908, a slightly larger object exploded a few kilometers above the forests of Siberia, near Tunguska, flattening 80 million trees. And in 2013, a 20 meter object lit up the skies above Chelyabinsk in Russia, eventually detonating some 30 kilometers up. The ensuing explosion and shock wave destroyed windows and damaged buildings in an area a hundred kilometers long and tens of kilometers in length.

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Andrea Dovizioso And Michael van der Mark: Different Series, Similar Story?

Submitted by Steve English on

Andrea Dovizioso on the podium at the 2019 round of MotoGP at Spielberg, Austria - Photo Cormac Ryan Meenan

A strange week in the rider market took another turn with the threat from Simone Battistella, manager of Andrea Dovizioso, claiming that his rider would sit out 2021 in search of the right opportunity the following year.

It’s a brave gamble to take, but with Dovi set to be 36 years old by the time the season starts in 2022, it looks like a hollow threat. If Dovi sits out a year at this stage of his career, he would find it very difficult to get back on a competitive bike in the MotoGP field.

As things stand who has more leverage? Ducati, with Jack Miller under contract - not to mention having Johann Zarco, Pecco Bagnaia and a host of other riders waiting in the wings - or a 34-year-old veteran threatening to call time on his MotoGP career?

Youth vs experience

The answer seems pretty much self-evident. Speak to MotoGP managers about riders, and they will tell you that age is a big factor, preferring youthful potential over age and experience. This is one reason managers give when you ask them about signing riders from the WorldSBK paddock: they are too old, is the general consensus, with teams preferring to take a risk on a young rider from Moto2.

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