As a rule, it is a good thing when tracks are resurfaced. Bumps are removed, the stones in the aggregate have edges again to provide grip, and the gaps in the asphalt are smaller, giving a larger surface area to produce grip and create less wear.
The trouble is that asphalt, like a fine wine, needs to mature to reach its peak. It takes a few months before the asphalt has settled, the sharpest edges have been taken off the stones, and the bitumen has started to evaporate. It takes about a year for the asphalt to reach peak grip. The color has faded, making it less sensitive to direct sunlight, the stones have reached the right consistency, and more of the bitumen evaporated, opening up the gaps between the stones, so it generates less heat in the tires.
The new surface at Aragon has not yet reached that stage. It is still dirty, the asphalt is closed, and it is very dark. The bitumen is still evaporating, creating patches which are greasy and making grip levels unpredictable. All of this made the morning session for MotoGP – and indeed all three classes – a complete write off.
“Today the conditions were quite difficult, because the track was very dirty,” Michelin’s Piero Taramasso said in his nightly press briefing. “The new asphalt with the oil and a quite high temperature didn’t help with the grip. Also, as soon as you go out from the clean line, you lose grip on the front, grip on the rear, the tendency was a lot of spin on the tire, difficult to put the bike at the lean angle. So the session from the morning we have zero information.”
Aleix Espargaro figured out he was wasting his time quite quickly. He took both his bikes out to check that they were working, and used up the soft fronts he doesn’t like. “With the soft tires in the morning, I just cannot stop the bike. It’s impossible for me,” the factory Aprilia rider said. “And with the medium rear plus a dirty track, I just took both bikes, I tried bike 1, bike 2, and I’m on both, and that’s it. No risk.”
He finished dead last, 3 seconds off Marc Márquez’ fastest time of the session, and 5.4 seconds off the lap record. But then helped make it abundantly clear that the morning session was meaningless by ending the afternoon session as second fastest, four thousandths of a second off the old lap record set in 2022 by Pecco Bagnaia. Márquez went one better by smashing Bagnaia’s lap record, becoming the first rider to lap in the 1’45s around the Motorland Aragon circuit.
One word which a lot of riders used to describe the grip was strange. Luca Marini, ever the most eloquent and analytical mind on the MotoGP grid, explained it best. “It’s just different compared to all the other tracks that we’ve been to this year. Because it was really strange this morning, it looks like the tarmac needs some more years to be ready, but it’s OK.”
Márquez’ lap record was testament to the fact the grip was not low, Marini pointed out. “At the end, the grip is not so low, because we improved the lap record. It’s just strange. Because you go inside the corners, and you feel the bike weaving like this, on entry it’s easy to don’t slide, but then when you touch the gas, sometimes you have good grip and sometimes not.”
That did not make the rider’s job any easier, the Repsol Honda rider told us. “It’s difficult to understand. It’s a little bit special. And especially there is very low grip in the front, that always the grip in the front is never a problem, but in this track looks like the stones in the tarmac are not with enough space, so every time that you lean, the more you lean, the more the tire makes understeering like this and it’s a little bit difficult to turn.”
It would get better, however. “Now the track will improve, and Sunday will be perfect. It just needs some more rubber on the ground,” Marini said.
The lack of space between the stones, the closed surface of the asphalt, meant high grip but also generated a lot of heat in the tires. In the morning, the Ducati riders had been out with the black front wheel rims, the more aesthetically wheels as designed to match the rest of the livery. In the afternoon, however, the factory Ducatis were back to the white wheel rims, aimed at dispersing the heat from the brakes and tires.
Other manufacturers were taking similar measures. Aprilia had brake cooling ducts applied, and the heat shields behind the discs to prevent brake heat from radiating into the wheels and heating the tires.
High tire temperatures are often a problem for the Aprilias, and today was particularly bad, Espargaro explained. “We are seeing temperatures that we normally only see in Mandalika,” the Spanish veteran told us. “Very high temperatures. Not only mine, but also the other factories.”
The combination of good grip and closed asphalt was generating a lot heat in the tires, Espargaro explained. “It’s not really spinning. This is the problem. The way that the tire is working, it puts a lot of stress, a lot of energy in the tire, and we are getting really really high temperatures.”
The combination of relatively low wheel spin, low tire consumption and high tire temperatures made tire choice very difficult, Espargaro explained. “The (wear) prediction for the medium tire based on this morning is less than 50%. So it’s not really this, it’s more about the temperature.” Which leaves riders trying to figure out whether they can risk running the soft on Sunday, or whether they will get more performance out of the medium.
It should come as no surprise that the rider who was best able to exploit this “strange” and unpredictable grip was Marc Márquez. “Today it was my conditions,” the Gresini Ducati rider said. “I mean today was a bit slippery, no traction, losing the front. And I was enjoying.”
Unpredictable grip is where Márquez operates best. There have been countless races where a drying track or a track spitting with rain has seen the six-time MotoGP champion be several tenths, or even seconds a lap faster than anyone else. Argentina 2018 comes to mind, where Márquez was given a ride-through penalty after stalling and restarting his bike on the grid, and he came through the field so much faster than everyone else he was effectively using them as riding berms. Which earned him another penalty, this time for irresponsible riding.
Márquez ended the day with a relatively small margin, a ‘mere’ 0.272 seconds over Aleix Espargaro. That was down from just under half a second in the morning, and in terms of race pace, the Gresini Ducati rider is a half a second or so faster than absolutely everyone else.
That extra speed allowed him to change his plan for the weekend. “Because I have the speed from the beginning. Then when you have the speed, all the plans are working well. And then you can work more with the used tires. You can concentrate less for the time attack and it’s easier to work,” Márquez told us.
Confident = fast, fast = confident
That speed gave him confidence, and his team had done a great job to help him, giving him a good base from the start. But Márquez did not expect to keep the advantage he had after Friday. “The key of the weekend will be understand the track, the track conditions are improving, improving. And this I predict will make everything closer again.”
Was that speed starting to make him think about winning? “Today, yes. Today we are first, we are the fastest.” He didn’t want to put too much pressure on himself, but he could see he was comfortably fastest on both used and new tires.
“I expected to be fast because it’s a race track that I like, but not with that gap,” Márquez said, almost surprised. Before attempting to dampen expectations again. “But it’s only Friday, and then tomorrow we’ll have the next target that is the qualifying practice. Try to be on that front row, maximum second row. And then from that point the next target will be the sprint race.”
But Márquez could see that things were going well. “Today we were super competitive and the target tomorrow is keep the same feeling.” More importantly, this was the second weekend in a row that he was feeling comfortable, and at two tracks with very different layouts. “For me, the most important thing is that in two consecutive weekends, Austria and here, I had a very good feeling. In Austria I already said that. OK, I finished fourth, but the feeling was super good with the bike. And here again, I felt super good.”
Pecco Bagnaia immediately pointed to Marc Márquez as the favorite for victory. “At the moment he is the man to beat, absolutely. In terms of time attack, in terms of pace,” the Ducati Lenovo rider said. He had gotten off to a difficult start, losing the morning session to poor grip, but was happy with the improvements made in the afternoon.
“For sure Marc at the moment is quite, quite strong. In Sector 2, Sector 4 he is making the difference,” Bagnaia told us. “We are closing the gap because in Sector 1, Sector 3 right now we are very strong, but we’re just missing this thing and for tomorrow we have to do another step. But I think we can close the gap.”
Bagnaia pointed to Sector 2 and Sector 4 as the places where Márquez was making the difference, but more specifically he is fast in the two very long double lefts which top and tail the Motorland Aragon circuit. Turns 8 and 9, and Turns 16 and 17 is where Márquez is fastest.
Turns 8 and 9 is where Jorge Martin feels he is losing out most to Márquez. “He has a lot of confidence in Turn 8 and 9, and I’m losing four tenths to him in one corner,” the Pramac Ducati rider said. “I saw a bit of his data and he’s leaning a lot, it’s crazy compared to the rest of the Ducatis. So for sure he’s taking some risk also. So I guess I’m riding quite OK, it’s just one corner. So I’m pretty happy that it’s only there, and I can solve it. If you are losing everywhere, it’s more difficult, but if it’s just one place, two corners, it’s I think easier for me to improve.”
Martin was keen to impress upon us that he was not overly concerned with how much advantage Márquez had. “For sure we have to improve a little bit, it seems like Marc is a little bit the strongest. But I think that my fight is not with him at the moment, and just trying to do my best, trying to close that gap, because he’s the fastest,” the Pramac rider told us. Martin cares much more about where Pecco Bagnaia is than where Marc Márquez is.
In terms of pace, Martin looks a fraction stronger than Pecco Bagnaia, but there is still practice on Saturday morning and the sprint race for Bagnaia to close the gap. You sense that both Bagnaia and Martin are using Márquez as a reference, but neither believe the Gresini Ducati rider is the real target. They are happy enough to let Márquez win, and are focusing mainly on one another. “I mean, Aragon, he won a lot here, so it’s normal for him to be fast,” Martin said of Márquez.
Johann Zarco impressed a lot of people by putting the Honda directly into Q2, the first time that has happened since Marc Márquez managed that in his last outing for Repsol Honda at Valencia last year. Zarco had put together a perfect lap, Joan Mir explained, getting all of his best sectors right on the same lap. But both Mir and Repsol Honda teammate Luca Marini acknowledged that Zarco is getting the best out of the bike at the moment.
“At the moment, I think that Johann is the rider who has the better feeling, the better confidence with the Honda since the beginning of the season,” Marini explained. “Looks like he can brake and enter better than with Ducati. Because in the past, every time he was very slow in entry and braking, and he was losing a lot of time in braking, while with Honda, braking is not so bad. He is doing a good job in braking, but still keeping his strongest point which is the exit. He’s the best rider in the exit of the corner, so in this track with these long corners and this small corner with full acceleration, he is riding very well.”
There were four Aprilias in the top ten, the strongest outing for Aprilia with both the factory and Trackhouse teams making it directly through to Q2. The RS-GP seemed to be good on new tires, but were lacking a bit in terms of race pace. Only Aleix Espargaro was anywhere near Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin, but he relied on the grip of the soft rear tire to make the difference. That should work in the sprint race, but it is an open question whether it will last for the entirety of the Sunday GP.
The KTMs seemed to be the opposite of the Aprilias, the bikes working well on used tires but unable to make the difference on fresh rubber. Circumstances worked against them, Jack Miller’s big crash on his last fast lap showed. He ran into traffic, had a big vibration in Turn 4, then crashed out trying to make up ground at Turn 16.
The whole session had left Brad Binder frustrated. “Disappointed to not go through because we had the pace but yeah sometimes **** happens.” The good thing was that they would get another shot at it on Saturday morning.
The problem, according to Pedro Acosta, is that the KTMs cannot exploit the extra grip of a new tire. “The thing is that we maintain the percent of grip that we have…and we don’t improve,” the GASGAS Tech3 rider told us. “The grip was not bad at all. Also, the pace from Brad I checked – the only one before coming here – was not bad to be honest. Difficult to say to why we cannot adapt. When we go for a time attack we have more power, less control and everything…but it doesn’t matter if we take that out we will make the same spin with ten laps on the tire. Difficult to say where the bike is not working well because it feels quite nice.”
Everyone expects the track to change more on Saturday, as the bikes lay down more rubber and the track cleans up. The heavy rainstorm which hit the track as I left the circuit on Friday evening may dash some of those hopes, washing away some of the rubber and washing more dust and dirt onto the track.
The field will be closer on Saturday. But you would be foolish to bet against Marc Márquez. It feels like Márquez’ 1000+ day victory drought is about to come to an end.
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