Motorcycledaily.com
After the completion of pre-season testing and the first race, MD has to weigh in with its opinion of the state of the MotoGP championship. In short, this looks like another wide-open year with several potential race winners and no clear favorite for the championship.
Maverick Viñales (Yamaha) is in love with Cal Crutchlow. He said as much last weekend, as Yamaha has desperately been waiting for a fast test rider who can provide useful feedback on the M1 … Viñales says that Cal Crutchlow has already solved several problems on his bike, and that his riding style is very similar to Crutchlow’s. In the race last Sunday, Viñales said his corner speed was unbelievable, and his trust in the front tire complete. If this were the end of the story Viñales could well be on his way to the championship. Of course, with Yamaha this is never the end of the story (it seems).
Two identical factory M1’s are ridden by Fabio Quartararo and Valentino Rossi (although Rossi rides for the satellite Petronas team this year, he has a full factory bike). Both of those bikes suffered a tire grip issue from the mid-way point of the race on Sunday, an issue similar to the one suffered by Yamaha at various times last year. Quartararo and Rossi ended up finishing the race in 5th and 12th place positions, respectively. Meanwhile, the most successful Yamaha rider last year, Franco Morbidelli, on an older version of the M1, had a disastrous race in Qatar with a mysterious issue affecting the damping of his rear shock. The bottom line is that Yamaha, despite winning the opening race, still seems to be hit-or-miss when it comes to bike set-up and race-long performance.
Over at Ducati, which had a massive top-speed advantage on the long Qatar straight, there were also grip issues hampering some of its riders, particularly Jack Miller who faded from the lead pack to finishing in 9th position. The other two factory Ducati’s under Pecco Bagnaia and Johann Zarco faired much better while finishing on the podium behind Viñales but, arguably, failed to live up to expectations (i.e., finish in front of all the Yamahas). Nevertheless, these three Ducati riders should be competitive at most of the tracks this year, and one of them may find a way to win this weekend during the second half of the Qatar doubleheader. The Ducatis seem to turn well in addition to having all that horsepower.
The Suzuki duo, including defending champ Joan Mir and Alex Rins, finished 4th and 6th on Sunday while displaying the same characteristic they exploited last year, which is the ability to move towards the front near the end of the race. Rins reportedly burned up his rear tire coming through the pack after a poor start, and Mir nearly had second place wrapped up before the Ducatis of Zarco and Bagnaia won the drag race with him between the final corner and the checkered flag. MD thinks both of these Suzuki riders will win races this year.
Although KTM seemed somewhat clueless during testing and qualifying for Sunday’s race, we suspect they may do better next weekend. Brad Binder finished 14th Sunday, one place behind his teammate Miguel Olivera, while the other KTMs faired even worse (Danilo Petrucci crashed out). Binder said the flowing nature of the Qatar track does not favor KTM, which is set up to work very well with hard braking zones. We suspect, however, that KTM could do much better next weekend. We will see.
Honda is an interesting subject at this point. New factory rider Pol Espargaro finished in 8th position last Sunday, less that 6 seconds behind the winner. Not a bad showing for his first race on the Repsol machine. Nevertheless in interviews, Pol sounds like he may be putting too much pressure on himself. He openly admits that his goal is to win the championship this year … a very tall order, indeed. He could surprise us, but we don’t expect him to do any better at Qatar next weekend. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if one of the LCR Honda riders beat him next weekend, even though both Alex Marquez and Takaaki Nakagami suffered DNF’s on Sunday. Nakagami, in particular, looks like he is developing a good rhythm on the Honda, and he was very fast at times near the end of last year.
That brings us to the dramatically improved Aprilia being ridden by Aleix Espargaro. After some very impressive test results, Aleix delivered a 7th place finish on Sunday, just 5.9 seconds behind Viñales. In the process, he finished just in front of his brother Pol on the factory Honda. Apparently impressed by the performance of the new Aprilia, former Ducati star Andrea Dovizioso has agreed to test the bike in a few weeks, just before Round 3. With the other Aprilia rider, Lorenzo Savadori, still struggling (he finished in last place last Sunday — roughly 23 seconds behind the rider in front of him) will Aprilia sign Dovizioso to replace him this year? We wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
We don’t see any of these riders dominating the championship this year. We could be wrong, of course, but if a healthy, race-ready Marc Marquez shows up for Round 3 and contests the remainder of the 20 races this year, we suspect he will take another title.
