Mugello, Italy

The first person you have to beat is your teammate. It is a truth universally acknowledged in the paddock. After all, they are on the same bike as you, with the same support, so the only difference between your results and theirs is down to ability - in theory at least. Beat your teammate, and your team will prioritize you over them when it comes to contract renewal time, will pay you more money, will send more resources your way. If you're in a factory team, the engineers will listen more carefully to you, and more likely to follow the direction of development you set out.

Teams use this same philosophy to motivate their riders. They encourage internal competition, hoping the two riders will push one another on to greater heights, to risk more for better results. Trying to win a race is motivation enough, but adding the frisson of showing up your teammate adds that little bit extra, the icing on the cake. And reward enough should a rider fall short of winning. So far does this internal competition go that for most teams, the order in which rider quotes appear in the press release is determined by who is ahead in the championship, or who finished ahead during practice, qualifying, or the race.

Six races into the season gives everyone a chance to size up where the riders, and more importantly, the manufacturers all stand. Teams have had a few races to analyze and optimize the setup of the 2019 bikes, plus a test at Jerez to find upgrades and solutions to problems which only emerge during race. Mugello is the third European race, meaning the paddock is back at tracks which they know like the back of their hand. There may still be a long way to go until the title is settled, but the shape of the championship is starting to shake out.

That leads to frustration for the riders who feel their manufacturers are not making progress. At Mugello, the frustration felt by factory Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro boiled over into outright criticism of the Italian factory over the lack of progress being made. Essentially, Espargaro said, they were stuck with an updated version of the 2017 bike, having lost an entire season with the 2018 machine. Espargaro saw the other bikes improving, and pulling away from him on track, and there was little he could do about it.

Aprilia are bringing updates for the RS-GP, but they were not fixing the underlying problems, Espargaro said. The latest update Aprilia brought was a new fairing with revised aerodynamics, using two smaller winglet sections, instead of a single larger winglet. Having a smaller side plate made the bike easier to switch from left to right, Espargaro said, but it did not address the main problems.