MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

If you had made your MotoGP fantasy picks for the Le Mans grand prix on Friday evening, as I did, you would have been all in on Jack Miller and KTM. The Australian was fastest in both the morning and afternoon sessions, and his pace looked good too. Teammate Brad Binder was third in the morning, seventh in the afternoon, and on pace for another strong result.

Or so it seemed. Qualifying went reasonably for Miller, the Red Bull KTM rider ending up in fourth, just behind polesitter Pecco Bagnaia. Brad Binder had a tougher time, struggling with the front tire locking, and ending up in tenth on the grid.

In the sprint race on Saturday, Binder made up for his poor qualifying by getting one of his trademark rocketship starts and steaming through to finish second, behind an unleashed Jorge Martin. Miller chose the medium front, on the advice of KTM and Michelin, and ended up losing the front at Musée, always a tricky spot when the left-hand side of the tire isn't quite up to temperature. But both riders had shown real potential.

Perhaps the sprint races are starting to calm down a bit. Sure, there were only 17 finishers – Raul Fernandez withdrew on Friday because of his arm pump surgery, and Jack Miller, Augusto Fernandez, Jonas Folger, and Fabio Quartararo all crashed out – but there were no injuries, no riders taking each other out, no excessively enthusiastic attempts at a pass ending in collisions. It was hard, close, clean competition.

Surprising, then, that once again all of the drama is around the standard of stewarding. After the meeting the Stewards had on Friday with the riders, explaining how each contact would be punished and laying out the guidelines they use to assess which penalty to apply in which situation, they went on to apparently throw their own guidelines out of the window and – correctly – not penalize any of the several riders who touched other riders while making hard passes. This left half the riders furious, the other half delighted, and everyone dismissing the role of the Stewards as pointless. It felt like they span the great Wheel O' Penalties again, and we all got lucky when it came back saying "Free Pass".

It has been a busy day at Le Mans. Not just for the riders, trying to handle the new MotoGP schedule. But also for the marshals and corner workers, having to deal with the usual crashfest at Le Mans. And consequently, for the mechanics, who are seeing their handiwork returned to the garage with a variety of pieces missing, crushed, or broken.

It is ever thus. There were 36 fallers in Le Mans on Friday, down a little from last year, when there were 38. And there were a bunch of riders who went for the double: Marc Marquez, Diogo Moreira, and Ivan Ortola crashed in both the morning and the afternoon, in MotoGP and Moto3 respectively. In Moto2, crashing twice in the same session was all the rage. Rory Skinner, Sean Dylan Kelly, and Sam Lowes all hit the gravel in Practice 1, Aron Canet repeated that feat in Practice 2.

For comparison, at Jerez, there were just 20 fallers on the Friday. And there were 50 crashes over the entire weekend. At Le Mans, we are nearly at that number and there are still two days to go.

Down you go

The Grand Prix Motorcycling World Championship hits its 1000th event at Le Mans. The grand prix paddock assembles for the 1000th time in France. The fact that it is tempting to say that this will be the 1000th round of MotoGP is both ahistorical and a fascinating glimpse into just how much MotoGP has changed over the years.

In 1949, the first year of the official Grand Prix world championship, the series consisted of a number of separate events, all of which long predated the new FIM sanctioned championship. Big international races had existed almost since the dawn of motorcycling. The Isle of Man TT, which was home to the very first GP in 1949, held its very first race in 1907. The Dutch TT at Assen – held on Saturday, July 9th in 1949 – had been in existence since 1926, after the original race had moved from further east in 1925.

The winners of those first races? Freddie Frith was the very first winner of a motorcycle grand prix, winning the 350cc Junior TT on a Velocette single. Harold Daniell won the 500cc race, the Senior TT, aboard a Norton, another four-stroke single.

Flirting with death

What we should be talking about tonight is the return of MotoGP to the place that houses its soul, and the explosion of passion and racing that emerged from the Circuito de Jerez. But despite a tense race with a scintillating last lap that played out in front of the largest crowd to pack the Jerez track for perhaps a decade, the main topic of conversation is the level of stewarding. MotoGP at Jerez looked like the pinnacle of motorcycle, surrounded by adoring fans, and overseen by a bunch of amateurs.

The circuit was a cauldron of emotion from the crack of dawn. I walked down to Turn 10 to watch the warm up, to get a sense of who had drive out of that crucial corner, but to be honest I was captivated by the crowds. There was an intensity that has been rare in MotoGP since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, only seen at Le Mans, the Sachsenring, Assen. It felt like the old days.

The new MotoGP format was supposed to bring a little more excitement to a weekend, and it has certainly done that. If anything, it has brought a little too much excitement at some points: Of the 22 riders who turned up on the Thursday before the season opener at Portimão, only 17 started the race a week later in Argentina.

The sprint races themselves have made for fantastic viewing, mainly because they have encouraged riders to try to make more passes. The problem is, the MotoGP manufacturers – or rather, the European manufacturers which are dominating MotoGP – are doing everything in their power to build bikes that are hard to overtake. So the only way to get past is to take a lot more risk, especially on the opening lap.

I say 'only way', but in fact there is another way to get to the front without taking any risks in passing. And that is to take risks during qualifying. And to take risks in qualifying, you first have to take risks in the two practice sessions on Friday, to ensure a spot in Q2. If you are starting on the front row, you have to worry a great deal less about what happens behind you.

Though it is always a pleasure to have wildcard riders to spice up the grid, you expect them to add a bit of color, and then ride around in the vain hope of a top ten. What you don't expect – at least, not since the demise of the 500s at the beginning of the century – is for a wildcard rider to turn up at a circuit and top the first session of practice immediately. Shades of Norick Abe at Suzuka in 1994.

I had been tipped about Dani Pedrosa by someone who was at the private MotoGP test at Jerez before Austin. Word was he was fast, and looking determined. That tip proved to be golden, the KTM test rider, entered as a wildcard at Jerez, ending the morning session of practice as fastest, and third fastest overall on the first day.

"Very happy and a good day," Pedrosa said in his usual understated way. "Unexpected obviously. Happy for the team and for the fans. It was a surprise, this morning especially. I had a good feeling. It is my first ’36 in this track. I am happy to improve the lap time with my age! It’s nice."

They say that the season only really begins when MotoGP returns to Europe and the paddock assembles again in Jerez. The first few races, usually flyaways, present too jumbled a picture to make complete sense of the MotoGP season. With everyone back at a track where they have thousands of laps and petabytes of data, the real strengths and weaknesses come to the fore.

Critics of this idea point to the fact that in 2023, the season started in Europe already, the first round of the season having taken place at Portimão in Portugal. But anyone who has ever been to Portimão (or frankly, seen it on TV) will know that the Portuguese circuit is like nothing else on the calendar, the elevation changes and mixture of slow and fast corners giving it its unique character. Add in Argentina – a fast flowing track that only really get used once a year, and has probably the lowest grip surface of the year – and Austin – the most physically demanding circuit of the year, replete with bumps and sketchy asphalt in places – and you have three races which are a long way from being typical of the season.

Jerez feels like the real start of the season for other reasons as well. A track and event steeped in history, with one of the loudest and most passionate crowds of the year. An ancient Spanish city which exudes motorcycling passion and culture. Great food, great wine, and a warm and welcoming local populace. This is how the start of a MotoGP season is supposed to be.