MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

Ducati may have swept the podium and stolen the headlines in Argentina, but behind the triumphant trio of Marco Bezzecchi, Johann Zarco and Alex Marquez there was plenty of fascinating detail to examine. There were surprises, such as Franco Morbidelli outperforming Fabio Quartararo on the Yamaha throughout the weekend, the Aprilias failing in the wet where they had been so strong last year and in the dry, and Jack Miller sealing another strong weekend for KTM. We also had 17 riders lining up on the grid, after Joan Mir was ruled unfit after his crash in the sprint race on Saturday.

But let's start with conditions. Racing in the rain is always difficult enough, but the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit presents an additional challenge. Though the track had been cleaned up by the time the race started, both with blower trucks and by having two days of grand prix machines circulating, there was still a lot of mud and dust around the circuit. Add in a morning of heavy rain, and the spray coming up from the bikes ahead wasn't just water, it was a mixture of water and dirt.

"It was not easy, because the first laps with all the spray, being back there in the back of the grid is not ideal!" GasGas Tech3 rider Augusto Fernandez said after the race. "The visibility was zero. Like zero. Same as closing your eyes." If you started at the back of the grid, you needed to ride with more caution than at the front. "Everybody in the back was expecting the rider in front to brake. So we took it easy in the back."

Visibility in his first MotoGP race was worse than in Moto2, Fernandez said. "For sure, a lot worse." But at least the MotoGP riders were a little more careful than in the junior classes. "Also I have to say, the guys are not as crazy in Moto2 at the back, so we are for sure more mature and nobody wants to destroy the race of anybody. So it was nice, also to see in these kind of conditions."

The rain and the dirt made visibility a real problem. "Honestly one of the worst I have had," Maverick Viñales said. "From Turn 3 to Turn 7 I could not see anything but this is wet conditions. When you have dust on the ground then it goes on the visor then you go all the lap like this."

An additional issue was that the dirt blocked the view through the bubble screen on the bikes. So tucking down behind the bubble meant you couldn't look through it to see what was ahead of you, a factor which came on top of the normal issues of riding in heavy rain.

"The visibility was shocking the first couple of laps, honestly," Jack Miller said. "The problem was the windscreen was filthy, so you couldn't see a damn thing out of that, so you're sort of sticking your head up down the straight trying to see. Kept my tear-off for about three laps and then ditched that, just wiped it with my hand. I came through the sequence of corners at 9, 10, 11, and through 10, I was on the lean angle and I was like literally flat, took my hand off just to give it a wipe, it was just like motocross a little bit. But it was like that. Every 3 or 4 laps you had to give it a wipe just because there was that much sand and dirt in the water."

Steamy business

Adding to the problem of vision was the issue of fogging. This is usually more of an issue when riders swap brands than when they stick with their previous helmet manufacturer. Both Alex Rins and Aleix Espargaro, who dropped their previous brands, ran into problems. The issue is that the heat coming off the bikes generates steam, Espargaro explained. "Also for the helmets it's not easy because the bikes give you a lot of heat and you cannot open the air ducts because if not, the dust goes inside," the Aprilia rider said.

Jack Miller, another rider changing, had only praise for his helmet. "The helmet worked mega, it didn't leak at all." It was his first race in the new helmet. "We knew that was going to be always the test, but with the mask and so on, we're able to put most of that to bed."

Visibility was just one of the problems from starting further down the grid. But once the field split up a little, that relieved the worst of the spray and dirt, easing the situation a little. The upside to a rain race is that there is such an enormous variation in lap times that bigger gaps are easier to close down, as we saw with Johann Zarco.

In a dry race, a gap of 6 seconds is insurmountable. But when lap times can vary by as much as two seconds or more, huge gaps can be closed down in just a few laps. This lap time differential makes it much easier to pass as well. Which is how what looked like being a second disaster in a row turned into something a fraction more hopeful for Fabio Quartararo.