Normally on Friday I like to examine the pace the riders have set during the day and try to draw some conclusions (erroneous or not) about who might be in contention for the podium on Saturday and Sunday. That seems like a fool’s errand at Barcelona, however.
Jorge Martin was asked if he was worried that there seemed to be quite a lot of riders with similar pace to Pecco Bagnaia and him, unlike at the last race in Sepang. “I think there were so many tires to try, and we didn’t see any riders with a lot of laps on the tires, so we will see in the race,” the Pramac Ducati rider pointed out.
Pace is difficult to figure out when riders are constantly swapping tires, trying to figure out what will be the best choice for the race. Of the ten riders that made it through to Q2 on Friday afternoon, only half of them put 12 laps (sprint race distance or half GP distance) on a rear tire, where normally it would be all ten. Marco Bezzecchi, Aleix Espargaro, Johann Zarco, Maverick Viñales and Alex Márquez stuck with the same tire to do sprint race distance, the rest didn’t.
More importantly for anyone trying to figure out whether it is Jorge Martin or Pecco Bagnaia who goes into Saturday in better shape, the timesheets are difficult to fathom. Bagnaia did one run on a soft rear and one run on a medium rear, and lapped in the 1’40.2s. Martin did two runs (10 laps total) on a soft rear, and then was the only rider to try the hard rear, and lapped in the 1’40.3s. There is not much to choose between the two.
“For sure with new tires everybody is quite fast,” Martin told us. “We will see during the races. For sure tomorrow in the sprint, a lot of riders can be fast, like in last sprint here, but then on Sunday, the difference became super big.”
The other confounding factor is that the grip levels are way below what the riders expected. In the early summer, when we normally come here, the heat makes the track incredibly greasy. So in the cooler conditions, you would expect there to be a lot more grip.
This, for example, is what happens at Jerez, and why the times set at the Moto2 tests in February are usually so much faster than the times set during the race weekend at the end of April, when track temperatures are 15°C hotter. But the opposite is the case at Barcelona.
“Its weird because I thought, we’ve got softer compounds here, the times are going to be insane,” Brad Binder told us. “But it was clear this morning with the first few laps: ****! So slow…! Anyway it’s weird. I did not expect there to be such low grip still. I thought a cooler track, better grip but it was not quite the case. “
The lack of grip certainly wasn’t down to the tires. There was universal praise for the allocation which Michelin have brought to Barcelona to deal with the temperatures. “We are always pushing and blaming Michelin when something we don’t like, but this time I think we have to congratulate Michelin because the allocation is super great. We had many options,” Aleix Espargaro said. Pecco Bagnaia backed him up. “Happy about the tire choice, because Michelin did a very good job this time. They gave to us a lot more options that are working.”
Even with the special allocation – a vindication of the idea that the show would be improved if Michelin didn’t have to pick the tires for each race in February, before the season even started – the track was simply not generating grip. That was particularly noticeable when riders started pushing to get through to Q2. “The problem was that every time you can go faster, but it’s difficult to understand the limit because you feel that the bike is not really pushing the ground,” Espargaro explained. “17° with these MotoGP bikes is very, very difficult to understand. It’s very easy to crash.”
The track was exceptionally hard on tires. The track has no grip, yet was also eating up the rubber from the tires. “It was a very strange condition,” a bemused Marc Márquez told us. “I mean, it’s for everybody the same, on my personal side, I feel much worse than in May. As you see this morning, difficult to understand where is the limit. You can lose the front super quick. Even if you push too much the tires, you destroy it because of the cold temperature. So everything is tricky.”
If we can’t judge the pace, then perhaps we can judge which of the two title protagonists is stronger from their demeanor. The answer to that is pretty simple, as Pecco Bagnaia readily confessed to us, with a lesson from his personal history. “In 2022, it was my first title, and I arrived here in a similar situation to Jorge, with 23 points of gap, and without the sprint. So my goal was to finish 14th. And I was very very under pressure. I finished the race eighth, ninth. I don’t remember. But it’s difficult, it’s very difficult to manage.”
Bagnaia was impressed by how well Martin appears to be bearing up under the pressure. “I think he did a good job, because he finished fifth, he almost crashed twice but he remained on track. He tested many tires, and it’s normal to be under pressure when you’re fighting for a title.”
He had it much easier, Bagnaia acknowledged. “Right now, in my situation, I just have to win, so I’m in a different situation. And it was similar in 2022, recovering 91 points. When you are in that situation, that you have to win, it’s easier to remain calm, because it’s the only way possible.” It was an easier situation because your options are simple: you have to win. Yet Bagnaia admitted he would swap places in a heartbeat. “So right now I feel better, but I’m jealous and I’d like to be in his situation!”
Though Martin is doing everything he can to stay calm, the tension is starting to seep through. “I mean, for sure I’m bit more nervous, let’s say,” the Pramac Ducati rider admitted. “But this is completely normal. I want to focus like a normal weekend. Actually, I am really calm. I feel with my family is here, my friends are here, so I can relax with them in the evening and disconnect a bit more than maybe in the Asian tour. So I’m happy about this.”
What made it tougher for Martin is that the race is in Barcelona rather than Valencia. He may be focused on trying to keep everything the same as any other race, but the circuit itself is a wildcard. “I think the most difficult thing is we are racing in Montmelo on a date that we never raced, so we are not used to Montmelo in these conditions, so it’s a bit more difficult. Less grip, less confidence and this maybe in my position is a bit worse.”
Martin’s quest to keep everything the same as normal paradoxically means that even the smallest deviations get blown out of proportion. When he came into the pits in the final few minutes of timed practice, as he focused on trying to set a lap time, he looked very agitated at one point.
His response when asked about this was telling. “Well, there is a lot of noise in the paddock always. So when you want to call somebody, you can only make some gestures,” was the excuse Martin gave for waving his arms around. “So for sure, maybe it seems like I was agitated, I was a little bit, but it’s more that I wanted to speak with Daniele (Romagnoli, crew chief), but I couldn’t. So normally he’s there always, and he wasn’t this time.”
With Martin under such enormous pressure, his perception of ‘usually’ becomes ‘always’. So Romagnoli being in the garage discombobulated the Pramac rider much more than it would, say, in the middle of the season. “So I want everything the same as always, and this wasn’t. So that’s why I was a bit nervous. Then Gino (Borsoi, team manager) tried to take me, and it was even worse! Like, don’t touch me! So I want to keep it normal, keep it the same, just don’t touch me.”
The lack of grip is also disconcerting Jorge Martin. “We spoke before in the Safety Commission, it’s really important to think about,” he said. “I think they are not even planning or thinking about a resurface, but it’s the worst track on all the calendar. It’s not that it’s more unsafe, because we are professional riders, so we must manage it and we are slower. But I think we are missing a lot of show and competitiveness because of the lack of grip. There is no way you can overtake, no way you can use the rear tire, so it’s really difficult to ride. And I think for the good of the show and the sport, I think it’s important to resurface.”
All this leaves Martin feeling much closer to the limit than he would at Valencia, and with much more at stake. It is easy to crash in the difficult conditions, especially when everyone starts to push for qualifying. Temperatures at 11am will be around 14°C, far from ideal for pushing to the very limits of the bike. Mistakes will be very easy to make.
So Jorge Martin has tempered his expectations. “I think I did a good job trying to understand different tires, I tried all the fronts except the hard, but nobody did. But also I was the only one trying the hard rear, so I think I have good information. Maybe I was not the fastest always, but I was always on the top four, top five. So this is my target, to be in the fight for the podium. Maybe a podium is a good target that I can set for myself to be focused and to be on that flow. So I will go for that.”
For Pecco Bagnaia, his objective is simple, to win both races on the final weekend of the year. That starts by winning the sprint race, and he had worked on getting more comfortable in sprint race trim on Friday. “I rode a lot with the fuel tank of the sprint that is smaller,” the Ducati Lenovo rider explained. “And I feel the same as the sprint, because I struggle more to stop the bike like in the sprint race. We tried to do something on the bike to improve that, and we did it, so I’m very happy about it. But I still need something more.”
Bagnaia has an aura of calm around him, in part because he knows that his only objective is to win both races, but also that even if he does that, the championship is still out of his hands. “Jorge absolutely had to do something wrong to let me win, because even if I win, he still has a lot of margin, so he will have to do something wrong,” Bagnaia said.
The Ducati Lenovo rider will have to wait to see if anyone can mix it up with Martin, and maybe steal some points off him. There is a rider who is confident of getting in among the front runners, but given his intense friendship with Jorge Martin, it seems likely that Aleix Espargaro will be more intent on taking points from Pecco Bagnaia than from Martin.
Was he confident of being able to win this weekend, Espargaro was asked. “What do you think?” he retorted, before qualifying his statement. “So let’s forget Sunday, if we talk about Saturday with soft tires, yes I think I can! I enjoy today and I tried the different front. I tried the rears. I felt more or less OK. And I don’t see nobody super fast, super strong. So I think we have our opportunity. Sunday I don’t understand yet how fast we can go on long distance, but for tomorrow I think yeah, I can have some fun.”
In Pecco Bagnaia’s corner stands Marco Bezzecchi, the Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider showing very good pace as one of the few riders to use a set of tires for two longer runs. Bezzecchi and his team have made a huge amount of progress in the second half of the season, and that has helped them on their return to Barcelona.
“From the first time out we worked a lot during the year and our base setting is different from the last time here,” Bezzecchi said. “This morning I needed to adapt myself. I was riding a bit too aggressive but this afternoon I was a bit more smooth and the bike worked a bit better.”
The cooler temperatures were helping him as well, Bezzecchi admitted. “Michelin brought a softer spec for the rear that is helping a lot in braking, especially in straight braking for me,” he said. “I still feel pushing. Especially in very late braking and the neutral part from brake to gas and overall in the long corners like 3, 4, 9, 12, 13, 14 …but with these conditions where the temperature is lower it is more difficult to put temperature in the tire as well. The grip level is a bit lower than May and this helps me a bit.”
The surprise of Friday is Johann Zarco, who ended up as fourth fastest overall. His best time came from getting a tow from Marc Marquez, among others, but he still had to do the lap himself. Zarco is unique among the Honda riders, Joan Mir explained, as he is the only one of them capable of managing the time attack with a new soft rear. Where the others are struggling with vibration, Zarco’s riding style allows him to push despite that with fresh rubber.
Finally, it is worth noting that Pecco Bagnaia’s calmness came despite an unfortunate incident at the end of FP1 on Friday morning, while the separate practice start session was behind held. Pecco Bagnaia did a practice start then slowed down, then when Maverick Viñales came flying past, he locked the front and crashed.
Both riders felt the crash had been a 50/50 thing. Though perhaps it would be better to say that Pecco Bagnaia thought it was 50/50, while Maverick Viñales felt he hadn’t done anything wrong, and that Bagnaia had managed to crash on his own.
“For me, it’s not who is at fault,” Viñales said. “In the end, practice start is to practice the start, so you arrive to the first corner trying to disengage the devices, so you brake late. I saw Pecco was in the middle, very slow, I don’t know why and I tried to avoid him. I go to the outside, but I gave like two bikes. I don’t even pass close-close.”
Viñales wondered whether he had clipped Bagnaia when he saw the crash. “But then I saw the replay and was plenty of room. I think he got maybe scared or something. He grabbed the front brake and locked the front tire. But it was crazy. To be honest for me it was an incident that sometimes happens.”
Bagnaia had an explanation for why he was going so slow: because he was using an old engine and trying to save on mileage. “I missed the start, because my tire was spinning, and then, we are on the limit with the engines, so I didn’t want to push on that, because you never know. So my mistake I think was to slow down that much,” the Ducati Lenovo rider said.
But he also felt that Viñales should have gone inside rather than outside. “Honestly, when you arrive that fast, you go inside, and it was full of space on the inside. I started to hear him and I thought, OK, he will go on the inside. But as soon as I saw it arriving at enormous speed from the outside, with the bike moving, I got scared. So I lost the front wheel like this.”
Bagnaia had grabbed the brake much harder than he should have, he admitted. “It was like, 2 bar more on the lever, from 11 bar to 13, and I lost it.” The Michelins do not appreciate such abruptness, he explained. “With our bike, but I think with all the bikes, these tires don’t like when you change things quickly, so you have to do things in a smooth way. And I didn’t do that.”
It speaks for Pecco Bagnaia that he was so unruffled by an event that could have worked out really badly for him. He exudes calmness, a real calmness rather than the fake calmness which we saw last year. He knows he has a hill to climb, and he knows that only a double victory will be enough, but even then, he is reliant on Jorge Martin making a mistake.
So while Bagnaia approaches Barcelona with speed born of serenity, it may not still be enough. Jorge Martin is showing the pressure, but still making all the right decisions. He probably won’t wrap the title up on Saturday. But it looks like he will do enough to cruise to the championship on Sunday.
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