On Friday evening, I like to sit down with the analysis sheets from MotoGP practice and FP1, look at who has used what tires, who has strong race pace, and who is flying under the radar. Armed with that analysis, I head off and pick my MotoGP Fantasy team, swapping out anyone who isn’t already in Q2, and trying to find the best bargain to maximize my points.
The fact that my Fantasy team is in an extremely modest 10,000th position out of the 63,000 players in the overall MotoGP Official Fantasy league (and 342nd out of 1180 in the MotoMatters league, and 996th out of 3339 in the Alpinestars Paddock Pass Podcast league) suggests that my analysis is not exactly startling in its brilliance.
Nonetheless, poring over the analysis timesheets is an extremely useful process to judge who has been testing what, and how they are doing. It is not entirely predictive, but it does give you a good sense of the relative strengths of the field.
Not today, however. Friday at Brno was a literal washout, the results confounded by any number of factors. FP1 started on a wet track, but dried out enough for everyone to switch to slicks, while tiptoeing around the few damp patches at the bottom of the hill. The track still drying, the later you crossed the line the better your time, pretty much, making it hard to discern who was genuinely fast.
Record pace
We did get an idea of just how much quicker the new asphalt is. In Moto3, Alvaro Carpe smashed the lap record held by Alex Rins (!) from 2013 by nearly 2 second on a track that was far from idea. In Moto2, Joe Roberts destroyed Alex Marquez’ 2019 record by 2.4 seconds in just 4 dry laps, before the rain came toward the end of timed practice. And on the drying and extremely sketchy track in the morning, Marc Márquez came within a hundredth of a second of his own all-time MotoGP lap record from 2016.
That sits at 1’54.596. You get a strong feeling that when the riders head out for Q2 on Saturday morning, after a full session of dry practice (and it will be dry, on both Saturday and Sunday, the forecasters promise) we are going to see low 1’52s. Maybe even a 1’51. Which is pretty incredible.
That, of course, is down to the additional grip of the circuit. Raul Fernandez was typical of the effusive praise heaped on the new surface. “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing,” the Trackhouse rider raved. And no, that is not a typo or a copy error. Those are the exact words Fernandez used.
If FP1 took place on a drying track, FP2 started fully wet and never really got dry enough for slicks. The start was delayed by 20 minutes after a downpour in the second half of Moto2 practice dumped so much water on the track Moto2 was red flagged, and it was deemed too dangerous to proceed.
I can personally attest to how hard it rained. And I learned a valuable lesson about both how large the Brno circuit is and how the weather can differ from one end to another. I set out to walk all the way around the interior of the service road halfway through Moto3 practice, and got a good look at the Moto2 field for the first half of their session.
Once I got around halfway down the hill, near Turn 8 in the stadium section, I felt a few spits of rain, but nothing to perturb most riders. And yet the track had gone quiet, the jumbotron screens showing riders all sitting in the pits. Puzzled, I walked on to the bottom of the hill, between Turns 10 and 11, noting that the rain was starting to get heavier.
It was at that point I realized that the reason the Moto2 riders were all sat in the pits was because at the top of the hill, there was a proper downpour, and it was moving my way. Torrential rain proved a powerful motivator to maintain a rapid pace up the hill, refusing a lift from the circulating photo shuttles because I am both stupid and stubborn in equal measure. I returned to the media center drenched and bedraggled, but much wiser about the nature of the track.
I was struck by just what a stunning circuit Brno is, reminded of the first time I walked the track 15 or so years ago. And by just how busy it was on a Friday, the crowds rivaling the Sunday attendance at some circuits (I’m looking at you, Silverstone). This is a popular event, a fantastic circuit, an incredible location, with a charming city next door.
But the return of Brno and the addition of Balaton Park in Hungary spell trouble for the Austrian GP. The PR staff of the Red Bull Ring have added extra promotional events to try to boost their flagging ticket sales. The Spielberg circuit used to draw crowds from all over Central Europe, the Balkans, northern Italy and beyond. Faced with a choice between Brno, Balaton Park, and exorbitant prices for the scant accommodation around Spielberg, those fans are choosing to skip Austria in favor of other, much better options.
Back to MotoGP at Brno, and poring over timesheets. A fruitless exercise, most riders acknowledged. Friday hadn’t quite been a waste of gasoline and rubber, but there wasn’t that much in it. They hadn’t learned much because conditions kept changing.
There hadn’t been enough dry time to work on setup, but there had been enough time to work on gathering data to work on setup on Saturday, Johann Zarco told us. “No time to do set up, but at least enough of laps to get information and prepare something for tomorrow,” the LCR Honda rider said. “We will have two bikes tomorrow ready for dry and maybe with different setup so this is the main thing.”
Jack Miller had enough dry time to realize the setup of the bike wasn’t right for the Brno circuit. “We’re a bit out of sorts with our spring rates, and how we want the bike to sit just because of the unknown of the track,” the Prima Pramac Yamaha rider said. “There’s a lot more grip than you imagine. The bike’s sitting a lot deeper in the stroke, so you just kinda gotta set everything up a little bit differently. ” A stiffer rear to cope with the forces unleashed by the changes of direction at the chicanes would be necessary, Miller said.
One thing we can be fairly certain of is that Marc Márquez is outstanding in the mixed conditions. He was fastest on Friday morning in FP1, six tenths faster than the nearest rider. And he was fastest in the wet timed practice on Friday afternoon, setting his best time on still wet track on soft rain rubber, rather than toward the end on a drier like most of his rivals.
Can he sustain that on a fully dry track on Saturday? If there is one thing we have learned from 2025, it is that betting against Marc Márquez is a sure fire way to lose money.
Connections
Márquez didn’t have it all his own way, however. In the morning session, after waiting in the pits for the track to start drying, the Ducati Lenovo rider got as far as pit exit before his bike died on him, the engine failing to respond when he disengaged the pit lane speed limiter and opened the throttle.
The team suspected a fuel pump failure. At least, that is what we can surmise from the fact that they hurriedly swapped fuel tanks, taking out the one in the bike and replacing it with a spare. After buttoning everything down again, they put Márquez on the bike and released him into pit lane, but again, as soon as he opened the throttle, the bike died.
In the meantime, they had swapped his spare bike over from a dry setup to something resembling a wet setting, and Márquez went on to claim top spot on a drying track. And they traced the issue back to a faulty electrical connector that wasn’t seated properly, the Ducati Lenovo rider explained.
“It was a very stupid thing,” Márquez said. “A connector that was working well but it didn’t connect well. With the vibrations it went out and it was like an electronics issue. Then they found the connector and the bike was working well.” Actually locating the issue had been time consuming, he acknowledged. “We have a lot of connectors on the bike and it’s difficult to find which one.”
Márquez’ brother and main championship rival had a rather torrid timed practice. Despite his doctors impressing upon him the importance of not crashing, to spare the recently plated metacarpal in his left hand, Alex Márquez crashed. “It was a small one, luckily. But nothing, I felt good, I felt normal.”
The crash had left the Gresini Ducati rider stranded in Q1, with just over 7 minutes to go in the session. Alex Márquez jumped the barrier at Turn 7, where he had crashed, and jumped on the back of a scooter behind a marshal. That took him to the start of Turn 3, where the precipitous drop behind the corner means the service road is too narrow for scooters, and Márquez jumped off the scooter and sprinted round the back of the marshal post. On the other side of Turn 3, he sequestered another scooter, and rode that back to the pits at maximum speed.
Once behind the box, he sprinted in the back door, through the garage, and jumped on his second bike. Fortunately, that had the medium wet rear fitted, the best tire for the conditions. An out lap and then a fast flying lap put him into ninth, and safely through to Q2.
The fact that the second bike was there waiting for him when he returned to the box was no coincidence. “That is a thing I always take a lot of care about,” the Gresini Ducati rider told us. When I was in Moto2, I saw it from the outside many times in Marc’s box. They were always ready with both bikes. And it’s something that I always ensure, to prepare the other one. Because I know that this can happen, so it’s important to be ready.”
The other rider still in with a shot at the title, however far fetched, is Marc Márquez’ Ducati Lenovo teammate, Pecco Bagnaia. Bagnaia, though, is not in Q2, missing out for the first time since the start of the season. That had been a failure of strategy, the Italian said.
“I was in the box when the others were improving,” Bagnaia told us. “Every time I was entering, I was in the top 10. But then in that precise moment I was out. So then in the last moment, the only possibility to be in the top ten was to go with the medium tire. But we decided to go with the soft. So was the incorrect strategy.” The choice of the soft had been a team decision, which Bagnaia had not entirely agreed with, but had gone along with nonetheless.
The extra track time from being in Q1 had no real benefits and did not outweigh the negatives from missing out on Q2, Bagnaia told us. “Honestly, it’s already a complicated season, where my feeling is not the best, and if we are complicating the situation even more, it can become a shame. Like it was today. I think the potential to be the top 10 was clear and it was there, and we just did all the incorrect decisions to improve.”
This seems to be the story of Pecco Bagnaia’s 2025 season. He is always missing out on something at every round this season, it seems. Just putting together a weekend where everything goes right might be the first step in Bagnaia finding his mojo again.
Finally, to arguably the star of the show. Jorge Martin took to the track, and immediately impressed. He is straight through to Q2 after finishing in fifth on Friday, and looked very comfortable on the bike.
P5 is not a realistic position for him to finish, Martin warned. He was missing the ability to post consistent laps on a drying track, always running a little wider than intended. But he was happy about the fact that his first day back at a MotoGP event since his Qatar crash had gone much better than expected.
That was in no small part down to the fact that Aprilia had pushed the Grand Prix Commission to change the rules to allow Martin a one-day test on the RS-GP. “I think I should say thanks to Aprilia, because they pushed a lot for that (test),” Martin explained. “This was super important. I remember in the test with no cameras or people I was able to ride really slowly, smooth, to feel the bike and get the position. Now that we have the position I feel like it’s my bike already. This is fantastic. For sure we have a lot of work to do. I don’t want to be super optimistic. We have to still work on the position but the feeling’s good, the base set up is good, I can say we’re in a good moment.”
After months of absence, and a dramatic press conference yesterday, things started to return to normal for Jorge Martin and Aprilia at Brno. He was trying to enjoy the bike, he said, and gauge where the limit was.
The grip of the new Brno surface certainly helped here. “As soon as I exited I felt a lot of feedback from the tires,” Martin told us. “I could feel when I was closing the front, when I had to move the body. For sure I cannot be really optimistic when I go into the corners because I don’t know what’s going to happy, I need to start feeling everything again.”
It looked like he was managing to do just that on Friday. And that has to be good news for the championship.
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