MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

What was the verdict on the first day of a historic Indian GP? "So fun," Jorge Martin said, speaking for pretty much everyone on the grid. "I really enjoy riding here. It was so, so fun." That fun translated into outright speed as well. "Straight away in the morning I felt good. then in the evening I was super competitive trying to improve some problems I had. The pace is good. the lap time was great also. So I’m very happy."

The Pramac Ducati rider wasn't the only rider to be impressed. "Really good," Marc Marquez agreed. "Better than everybody expected." The fears about safety had been allayed, which allowed the riders to get on with figuring out how to go as fast as possible without worrying about the consequences. "I think they did a very good job the last two months, and it’s true that we can improve a few things for next year but as riders we can give thanks because we can be in a normal way and just think about riding."

Nearly 80,000 fans (technically, 71,000 paying spectators and 8,000 people in the VIP Village and paddock, some of whom might even have been fans) crammed into the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli on Sunday to see a feast of Italian racing. They got what they came for: three Italian bikes on the podium, eight Italian bikes in the top ten, two Italians on the podium.

The only thing they missed out on was an Italian winner. In Moto3, it was the Colombian David Alonso who won a fierce final lap battle to take victory. In Moto2, the Spaniard Pedro Acosta controlled the race pretty much from the start. And MotoGP, Jorge Martin led a replica of Saturday's sprint race podium, the Pramac Ducati rider making it two Spanish wins on the day. Local fans had to make do with hearing Il Canto degli Italiani twice on Saturday, when Mattia Casadei and Nicholas Spinelli took victory in the two MotoE races, and Casadei was crowned MotoE world champion.

There are days when you are reminded that racing is not quite as important as we like to think it is. Saturday was one of those days. The news that Mike Trimby, IRTA CEO, had died on Friday night affected everyone in the paddock. To say that Trimby was a giant of the sport is an understatement. The only person who has had a greater impact on the shape of MotoGP and motorcycle racing in its current guise is Carmelo Ezpeleta.

And arguably, Trimby did more to make motorcycle racing safer than Ezpeleta, because he was elected by the riders as a safety representative, and went on to form IRTA, which had the political clout to improve safety because they had the power of collective bargaining. And Trimby had the moral courage to use that power to force race promoters and circuit owners to make drastic changes to make the racing safer. There are riders alive today who probably wouldn't have been if Mike Trimby hadn't taken the stance that he had.

The contrast with Barcelona is stark at Misano. Not just in terms of grip – it is absolutely night and day between last weekend and this weekend – but also with the weather. Where in Barcelona the weather was fickle, with spots of rain constantly threatening, at Misano the sun comes out in the morning and the sky stays blue until sunset. The only confounding factor is the wind.

That was causing Luca Marini problems in the afternoon. "I expected a little bit better in FP2, but with the raised temperatures I struggle a lot with the edge grip, and especially also with the wind," the Mooney VR46 rider said. "I made a lot of wheelie, and exiting from the corner for me was really really difficult, and we need to work a little bit if the conditions will be the same tomorrow in the sprint, especially because I think here the wind in the morning is every time a little bit lower and also the temperature will be better. But for the races, we need to find a little bit better compromise."

There was a lot to chew over at the Barcelona round of MotoGP, and Misano is nearly upon us. So here's a few more things that we learned in Barcelona that matter: Maverick Viñales becoming the first rider to break the new tire pressure regulations; Honda's continuing problems; Fabio Quartararo going back to the future; and what the Misano test might bring, and what it definitely won't bring, and what that might mean for the future of Marc Marquez.

There were a number of records broken at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, including the first ever Aprilia 1-2 in MotoGP. But there was also a less commendable record set: Maverick Viñales because the first MotoGP rider to be punished under the new tire pressure regulations. The factory Aprilia rider was found to have completed less than 50% of the race with this front tire pressure above the minimum set by Michelin, nominally 1.88 bar. As it was his first transgression, he received a formal warning. The next time he is found to have broken the tire pressure rules, he will be handed a 3-second penalty.

MotoGP championships are hard to win and incredibly easy to lose. Yesterday, Pecco Bagnaia rode a stupendous race to finish second behind an unstoppable Aleix Espargaro in the sprint race. Today, Bagnaia took off at the start, and saw his race finish after just two corners. He highsided in front of a storming pack, lucky that his teammate Enea Bastianini had messed up the first corner and wiped out five other riders, clearing out the field somewhat and putting the rest on a state of high alert.

The fates smile on Bagnaia on Sunday at Montmeló. Brad Binder was unsighted by Maverick Viñales and Miguel Oliveira, and so had no warning that Bagnaia had crashed in front of him. Yet he managed to deflect his bike just enough that he merely clipped Bagnaia's leg, rather than hit the Italian. Amazingly, though Bagnaia was removed to the medical center by ambulance and examined both there and in a local hospital, he came away with no fractures, just a lot of bruising.

On Friday it was clear that the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was an Aprilia track. Aleix Espargaro smashed the pole record on Friday afternoon, and he and factory Aprilia teammate Maverick Viñales ended the day first and second, with Espargaro well clear of the rest.

Come qualifying, and Miguel Oliveira got himself into the mix. First with a blistering lap in Q1 to get through to Q2, then an impressive lap in Q2 to put himself on the front row, his first since taking pole at Portimão in 2020. Aleix Espargaro looked to be on course for pole position, and Maverick Viñales was close to making it a clean sweep of the front row for Aprilia.

Aleix Espargaro may have had his sights set on pole, but Pecco Bagnaia had other ideas. "This morning was a bit bitter because I finished second, which is great for the two races, but I felt a little bit like I lost," the Aprilia rider said after the sprint race. "I gave everything, but Pecco was better. It was an amazing lap record. I was a bit angry." Bagnaia had added insult to injury by slicing five hundredths of a second off Espargaro's lap record from Friday to take the pole record for Ducati.

As wonderful as the layout of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is, the track surface is something of a disaster. Or perhaps the surface is itself is OK, but the combination of this surface with a lot of corners that seem to go on forever mean that the edge of the tire overheats quickly, instantly destroying any grip the track might have had.

Most likely, it is a combination of the two: the track surface has no grip, and to add insult to injury, the bikes are spending a lot of time on the edge of the tire, where they have least grip, with a touch of throttle egging the rear tire on to start spinning, and the Mediterranean sun heating the asphalt to make things even harder.

Whatever the explanation, the MotoGP riders really don't like the lack of grip the track has. "I think this track is over the limit by two or three years," Pecco Bagnaia said after practice on Friday. "It is already very slippery and a bit dangerous in some parts because you can’t find the traction. You are there spinning a lot and you cannot find the traction. It is very difficult to manage it, impossible to manage it actually if you want to go fast."

Watching Pecco Bagnaia as he sat in the press conference, you could see he was just exuding confidence. The reigning MotoGP champion and current leader in the standings knows he is the man to beat, and his body language shows it. He is happy, comfortable, and fast because of that. At every track we go to now, Bagnaia is the man to beat. Even at a track where his best result is only a sixth. His best result so far, that is.

How has Pecco Bagnaia transformed himself from being a good rider capable of winning to being the best rider in the first half of the season? "It’s not just one reason in my opinion," Luca Marini said. The Mooney VR46 rider should know, as he can study Bagnaia's data to try to improve his own speed.

"I think he’s improved a lot as a rider, when he went to the factory team," Marini explained. "You can see on the data, he’s upgraded his riding style. He worked on his weakness and the factory team helped him a lot to do this. He works with Gabarrini, who in my opinion is one of the best crew chiefs in the history of this motorsport with a lot of experience… they have a very good synergy."

Dorna and the FIM announced at the end of the summer break that from Silverstone onward, they woulds start to enforce the minimum tire pressures mandated by Michelin. That enforcement would be delayed at the first round after the summer, the British Grand Prix, as both the sprint race on Saturday and the Sunday grand prix were classed as wet races. The sprint race started on a wet track, the grand prix started as a dry race, but the rain flag was shown, making it formally wet.

The agreement with Michelin was that minimum tire pressures would not be enforced in case of rain, as the conditions changed the stress on the tires and the load put into them considerably. So tire pressures were not checked at Silverstone.

Last weekend's Austrian Grand Prix was a different kettle of fish. Spielberg was caught in the heatwave which has gripped southern Europe, and the weekend was dry bar a few Alpine storms, which thankfully left the races pretty much untouched. The Red Bull Ring is also one of the tracks which most stresses the front tire, with a lot of exceptionally heavy braking, a lot of it uphill.

Punishment coming?