MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

By rights, the Italian Grand Prix should be the biggest event on the MotoGP calendar. Arguably the most spectacular track in the most spectacular setting on the calendar (though Phillip Island might rightly want to dispute this assertion), in the middle of Tuscany, one of the most beautiful parts of the planet.

It pretty much was once. In 2016, over 100,000 people turned up to watch Jorge Lorenzo pip Marc Marquez at the line to win the race. The following year saw a crowd of 98,000. These were among the biggest attendances of those years.

So it came as something of a shock last year when I was able to drive straight into the track on Sunday in 15 minutes. Gone was the customary 45 minutes spent sitting in traffic, slowly crawling toward the narrow two-lane country road which inexplicably serves as the main entrance to the legendary Italian circuit. Gone too were the masses of fans thronging that access road, swarming toward the track with chairs, ice boxes, and backpacks. Worst of all, the packed hillsides were also gone. At 43,661, the crowd was not exactly sparse, but it certainly wasn’t the same seething yellow mass that it was in previous years.

Local hero

Shortly after the French Grand Prix at Le Mans, controversy erupted surrounding statements Pecco Bagnaia had made during his media debrief on Sunday evening. Bagnaia had crashed out of the race on lap 5 after a collision between himself and Maverick Viñales.

Though the crash had been a racing incident, both riders conceded, Bagnaia raised a recurring theme in the 2023 MotoGP season, especially since the introduction of sprint races on the Saturday of a grand prix. With the field so close together, and overtaking so difficult, it was becoming ever more imperative to be aggressive at the start of the race, and try to pass as many other riders as possible before your front tire pressure became too high to risk a pass.

What motivates a rider? Winning championships, winning races, and making money are three big factors that go into the decision-making process. The news that Toprak Razgatlioglu will leave Yamaha at the end of this season has left more questions than answers about what motivates the Turkish star.

The paddock rumour mill in Catalunya centred on a proposed move to BMW. It’s fairly sure that there will be more than a million reasons why he chose the German manufacturer. Toprak is a unique rider in many ways. His motivation has always been to be a Superbike star, and while he has recently flirted with the prospect of a move to the MotoGP class, the chances of that are limited.

His Yamaha MotoGP test didn’t go as well as he had hoped. Arriving to Jerez to find a bike that, rumour has it, didn’t quite fit his frame left him feeling that the chips were falling against a move to the premier class. That test could have proved crucial to Toprak deciding to leave Yamaha. Having seen that the Japanese manufacturer didn’t back him to the hilt he might have felt slighted. That’s the feeling that led him to leave Kawasaki in 2019 to switch to the blue bikes.

The Suzuka decision

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.

Yesterday, I wrote about the stupendous crowds at Le Mans for the 1000th motorcycle grand prix. The circuit and event were the right place to celebrate such a memorable occasion. But the fans who packed the circuit at Le Mans got their money's worth in terms of racing too. The MotoGP race was spectacular and tense in equal measure.

It was also a very messy affair. Of the 21 riders who lined up at 2pm on Sunday – Raul Fernandez had tried to ride after arm pump surgery, but that had proved impossible – only 13 made it to the checkered flag. It was a war of attrition.

Why all the crashes? A lot of reasons. There's a lot of hard braking at Le Mans, and more right than left corners. Temperatures can be relatively cool, and tires can cool off quickly. And riders found themselves caught between choosing a softer front tire and suffering in braking, and going for the medium or hard front and nursing the left side of the tire through Musée and Chemin aux Boeufs.

Great occasions deserve great celebrations. Running a series like grand prix motorcycle racing, Dorna has a lot, but not everything in their control. What they did have in their control was the timing of the 1000th grand prix, and the choice of which circuit it would be held at. A massive number like 1000 needs a grand stage, so holding it at Le Mans, with its packed grandstands, seems like a good idea. If the Finnish Grand Prix at the KymiRing hadn't been canceled, then it would have been at Jerez. That would have worked too.

The stage was perfect. The 2023 French Grand Prix at Le Mans saw the largest ever attendance of the MotoGP era: a total of 278,805 spectators counted over four days. And on Sunday, the biggest ever crowd for a MotoGP event at Le Mans: 116,692 spectators packed the grandstands, the grounds, and every spare scrap of space.

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