Coming into the Motorland Aragon circuit, we knew that this was going to be a track where Marc Márquez would be hard to beat. Anticlockwise circuit, lots of long left hand corners, the closest track to his home, a place where he won five times on a Honda, and the circuit where he won his first GP after a gap of 1043 days, and his first GP on a Ducati. It is a track where he reigned supreme in 2024. This is Márquez territory.
Perhaps we underestimated just how dominant he would be this weekend. Marc Márquez had an advantage of well over a second over the rest of the MotoGP grid on Friday morning, brother Alex only getting within a second of Marc Márquez on his final lap. Alex got a lot closer to Marc in the afternoon, closing to within two tenths of a second. But don’t be fooled by that.
“You think the reality is 0.2?!” the Gresini Ducati rider replied scornfully when asked if he was close to his brother at the end of timed practice. “He didn’t make the last time attack, so I think he has three tenths or something like that in the pocket. This is the reality, and I think we saw it this morning. I think if the distance we had this morning was 0.9 and this afternoon was 0.2, we are in the middle. 0.5!”
Alex Márquez is right. On his first run on soft tires in timed practice, Marc Márquez set a time of 1’46.397. On his second run, he could ‘only’ manage a time of 1’46.793. The thing is, he used the same set of tires on his second run, instead of putting in a new soft rear, and he still set the third fastest lap of that practice session. It is safe to say that Marc Márquez has a margin over the others.
But he is also riding with a certain amount of risk. “He has that margin that he can play a bit with us,” Alex Márquez said on Friday evening. “It is not a new situation because this year he has had some races like Austin, maybe Le Mans and here, in race pace especially, but late in the race it is harder to make that difference. It depends how much you take risk. In some corners, yes, he is super-fast and able to make the difference, but the risks that he takes are high. So it’s something that we have seen in the past and you cannot relax.”
Marc Márquez did not deny that he was taking risk. He could not, because Alex and the Gresini team had proof. “In Turn 9 – 10, they have the data and the videos and everything,” the Ducati Lenovo rider said. “It’s where I am making the difference with them. But at Turn 10, both tires are sliding. The front and the rear.” It was a calculated risk, Marc Márquez insisted. “You can do it some laps, but not every lap. But at the same time I feel comfortable, but it’s important not to exaggerate.”
The Ducati Lenovo rider also tried to play down his advantage. “In this race track as you see in the morning, I went out and by instinct, naturally, the lap times arrived,” Marc Márquez said. “But then, there is a limit there. And then the others are coming step by step, and especially is Alex is close. So let’s see if tomorrow we can keep that smaller distance, which will be closer every time.”
No more mistakes
So this weekend is Marc’s to lose. And he knows it. Because he has crashed out of three of the seven grand prix this season, and got lucky at Silverstone because the race was red flagged and he could restart. But he also knows he could have opened a massive gap over his brother, who he now regards as his main rival for the title this year. The restart meant he could still score points, taking 5 points more than Alex. But it could have been so much more.
He is determined not to crash. Marc Márquez knows that it is very easy to make a mistake, especially with the Ducati GP25, which lacks the front end confidence of the GP24. But he is here to win a championship, and that means not throwing away points that are there for the taking, as he did in Austin and Jerez.
It also means capitalizing on his strengths at his favorite circuits. “Here, everything comes more naturally, but also I need to be with extra concentration to not make any mistakes. Because when you feel good you try to exaggerate on the corners where you feel better and you can do a mistake.”
He was trying to find the fine line between pushing and risking, Marc Márquez explained. “Of course, I always keep focused. But I am trying to understand, push when I feel it. Because sometimes the situation is that you need to push for some laps, but maybe you don’t feel it. So I am trying to concentrate, just pushing when I feel, and avoid those situations. If you are in a situation where you need to push, but you don’t feel it, then don’t push.”
Strangely, the state of the track and the lack of grip may end up helping Marc Márquez avoid making a mistake. There wasn’t a single crash in MotoGP on Friday, and very few in Moto2 and Moto3. “We are all complaining about grip but there were no crashes,” LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco, who ended the day in sixth, told us. “There is this lack of grip but you try to do the same maneuver as before but you get a warning. So, once you have the warning you don’t want to push any more.”
The lack of grip meant everyone is lacking confidence, and so they lack the confidence to throw the bike into the corner. Throw it in a bit too brusquely, because you have an unshakable belief that the bike will save you, and you can easily end up tumbling through the gravel. But on a track like Aragon, nobody dares to take those kind of risks.
What’s more, a less grippy track gives you a lot more warning. On a good track, the tire will grip until it doesn’t, as you find yourself having peered over the precipice and then toppling in. On track with no grip, the bike starts to slide more quickly, but the rate of change is much slower, so you have much more time to react. You run wide more often – just ask Fabio Quartararo – but you have a chance to bring it back.
A lack of feeling has hampered Pecco Bagnaia, and they have reached the stage that they are trying everything. Bagnaia is very conservative about making changes once the season starts, preferring to focus on trying to get the maximum out of the bike that he has through his riding. But without confidence in the front end of the Ducati GP25, he has nothing to lose by trying new things.
For a long time, Pecco Bagnaia was the last holdout on the Öhlins standard forks. But after rejecting the longer forks for a long time, he has finally capitulated and given them a try, first on one bike in the morning and then fully switching in the afternoon.
“We are trying different things, and it’s not an easy situation because the bike is the same one as the previous races, so we are trying to find different solutions,” the Ducati Lenovo rider told us on Friday. “Today we decided to go with the long forks and the feeling was the same more or less. I didn’t feel anything better just a bit more extension that was helping a bit more, but the feeling with the front is still the same.”
The fact that Bagnaia is trying this is a sign that he and his team are still in the wilderness when it comes to their quest for front end feeling. But the fact that even without front end feeling he was ninth fastest, and his best lap on used tires was pretty much the same as Alex Márquez’ best on old tires, suggests he is not a million miles off.
More stupid season that silly season
Bagnaia was also asked about rumors out of Italy that he was considering getting out of his Ducati contract a year early and joining Yamaha or Aprilia. “That I don’t understand why,” a befuddled Bagnaia told us. “Because when there’s a contract signed, I told to you on Thursday in Silverstone that I will never quit what I signed. This is something that will never change in my life. I want to stay in Ducati, Ducati want me to stay. For this, until the finish of this contract and the next one.”
He could understand why such rumors might start to crop up, Bagnaia said. “It’s true that a rider like me who is, not in crisis, but is in some hard moment, it’s true that people can start thinking ‘maybe he will go’. But it’s not what is happening right now to me.”
The reality is that the situation with Jorge Martin in particular has sent people into speculation overdrive. If Martin can leave Aprilia after barely turning a lap on the bike, then in their fevered imagination, anything is possible.
Such speculations are only fired even further by news that Toprak Razgatlioglu is set to make the switch to MotoGP. As I have written previously, Razgatlioglu is set to join Pramac Yamaha for 2026, abandoning WorldSBK for MotoGP.
It is looking like both Jack Miller and Miguel Oliveira will lose their seats in Pramac, despite Miller outperforming his teammate and Oliveira having a contract for next year. Oliveira is currently the last of the Yamaha riders in the championship, which gives Yamaha the right to let the Portuguese rider go after the first year of his two-year deal. And as Jack Miller pointed out at Silverstone, there are a lot of fast Moto2 riders looking to break into MotoGP. With Manu Gonzalez leading the way.
Friday was a good day for KTM, with three RC16s in the top ten and straight through to Q2, and even Enea Bastianini having made some progress. Brad Binder was pleased they had made progress on his issue with understeer, and that some of his competitiveness was returning. Maverick Viñales, meanwhile, ended the day as third fastest, and with very strong race pace.
Viñales has really found his feet in the Tech3 team, and has taken to the KTM RC16 extremely well. He was comfortable with a medium rear tire, especially once the grip of the rear tire dropped. That gave him confidence that he had a shot at the podium, and maybe even a chance to fight with Alex Márquez for second place.
“At the moment, on paper, it is a fight from third to sixth, even though I think we are not far from Alex (Márquez). It is 0.1, 0.15 maybe,” Viñales said. A tenth is something they can find, with consistency and small improvements. Qualifying fourth would be ideal for the Tech3 KTM rider, he told us. If I can start fourth then it’s the best position I can get. A clean track and our bike starts really fast.”
Fourth is on the right hand side of the track right on the racing line. That is where the track has grip, where the left side – third, sixth, ninth, etc – is much dirtier, and the middle positions – second, fifth, eighth – are in between the two. Start from first or fourth and you have drive at the start. Start from third or sixth and the rear will just light up and spin.
The track is in a strange condition. Normally, a year after a new surface has been laid is as good as the track can get. The bitumen or tar between the stones is starting to evaporate and contract, creating gaps between the stones that can grip the rubber and not overheat it. The edges of the stones have been just rounded off, still sharp enough to bite but not so sharp they tear the tires. The track should be in prime condition.
The track’s location, in the middle of a hot and arid region, of old limestone formed at the bottom of the Tethys Sea, means it is a very dusty place. And dust on race tracks makes they dirty, and it means they lose grip.
Low grip could end up helping the Hondas, as witnessed by the fact that Joan Mir ended up as fourth fastest, with Johann Zarco in sixth. The Honda RC213V normally lacks rear grip, which means that Mir and Zarco are already used to riding in the right way to deal with low grip conditions. And a bike with no rear traction loses less when the track has no grip when compared to bikes which can use the grip of a track to go faster.
Finally, to Yamaha. There is a lot going on in the Yamaha garage, with Pramac, the factory team, and Yamaha Factory Racing wildcard Augusto Fernandez all using different swingarms. Fernandez also has an extra update of the inline four engine to try at Aragon.
Here is where Yamaha’s concessions are a hindrance as well as a help. With a string of new engines coming, the Yamaha M1 may have a base setting for the electronics, but they haven’t got it dialed in completely in every situation. And at a low grip track like Aragon, that meant that the electronics was tying itself up in knots, especially one the riders put a new soft tire in and tried to push for a hot lap. Lap after lap, the Yamaha M1 would run wide at Turn 10 as the electronics struggled to cope.
“The bike is just doing like that for no reason,” Fabio Quartararo complained on Friday evening. “And the problem is, you never know when to expect it. And in our case, it’s not the best when you are on the bike, full lean angle, and you never know if you’re gonna lose it on the edge, or in the exit. So I didn’t make any laps. The four laps I did was cutting and making mistakes. But yeah, we will have to find a solution.”
Yamaha’s electronics engineers have a night to solve the issues. If they do, Quartararo could once again be formidable. If they can’t, it will be a case of gritting his teeth and hanging on. It’s going to get rough.
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