“It’s not an easy situation for both of them, and a long time ago, I remember what you can feel when you are in that position. You are not enjoying, you just suffering.” That is how Marc Márquez characterized the predicament Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia find themselves in with three rounds to go. “You know that in three races you will know if you are a world champion or not.”
It is hard to overstate just how much pressure both Martin and Bagnaia are under. There are fewer and fewer chances to make a difference, and the risk of a mistake grows exponentially each race. Everything they have done in the 17 rounds leading up to this final stretch has brought them where they are, and the weeks away from home and long flights between countries give them plenty of leisure time to ponder the blown chances and missed opportunities, all the things that could have been.
Just to add insult to injury, this is pretty much top of the lists of questions the media ask at every opportunity. It is a duty of journalists to examine which rider is under the most pressure, and whether Jorge Martin or Pecco Bagnaia are bearing up better under the strain. The fact we also take an almost perverse pleasure in it is neither here nor there.
So of course Pecco Bagnaia was asked whether he was enjoying the battle with Jorge Martin, or whether he only experienced as yet more pressure. Bagnaia did his best to wave away the question. “For me it’s the same as the half of the season, or the start of the season,” the Ducati Lenovo rider replied. “During the race weekend, I want to just work, to be perfect for the race. And right now, I don’t feel nothing different compared to before. Maybe it will change a bit, but right now, it’s not.”
Jorge Martin was a bit more honest in his response to a similar question. “I’m happy to be here and to be competitive,” the Pramac Ducati rider said. “All week I was a bit nervous. In my mind I always try to anticipate for what is to come and I am a bit nervous about it so when I get on the track and everything is normal and I am fast it is like all the ghosts go away, so…I feel fast but for sure Pecco and Marc are quite strong also. It will be a challenging weekend, I feel, but I am in the fight so…I’m ready.”
Martin can afford to be more honest. He is leading the championship by 20 points with three rounds to go, and he was very fast in both the morning and the afternoon, finishing second to Marco Bezzecchi in FP1, and second to Marc Márquez in timed practice, ensuring easy passage through to Q2.
But it is not his single-lap speed that should concern the opposition. Martin’s pace is searing, doing a 1’30.9 on a hard rear tire with 24 laps on it. That is lap record pace on a tire that is two laps shy of the full 26-lap race distance.
Martin was clearly comfortable. “I feel good,” he said. “At the beginning of the practice I was quite impressed because I was with the tire of the morning already, and I was already in third or fourth position so that was nice. I feel that I am strong. Then I went to the hard compound and it was a bit more difficult and it already had 22 or 25 laps and I struggled to make the same pace but I feel OK.”
Martin also appears to be weathering the storm of pressure well. His attitude is calm, focused on one weekend at a time, not letting himself get carried away. “I think all the weekends now are decisive,” the championship leader said. “I want to focus on myself now. If I have the chance to take points I will go for it. If not and Pecco is strong then I will try to lose as less as possible. And that’s it. I don’t want to get obsessed about the points because it is useless. I want to be fast, to be competitive and today was great.”
Pecco Bagnaia had a much tougher first day, and it showed. There were signs of frustration as he had problems with one of his two bikes, and a setup change didn’t work. But he still ended up fourth fastest, with pace that looks solid, if not in the same league as Martin. In the morning, when he put a long run together, he finished with a 1’31.1 on tires with 20 laps on them.
Despite getting lost in the afternoon, Bagnaia ended the day with a positive feeling. “Yes, in terms of feeling when we finished.” Things had been tougher in the afternoon, but it had come good at the end. “We had just a little problem with one of the two bikes during the sessions, but this morning I felt good, this afternoon, as soon as I had to try a different setup, the bike wasn’t working well. So I had to stop, I had to try to adapt a bit the setup on the other bike, but it was impossible. So I struggled a bit with the adaptation, it wasn’t working well. So I just changed again, and before the time attack I feel better again going in that direction. I was ready for the time attack, without doing a very precise lap time I was able to be fast, so a good Friday.”
Both Ducati Lenovo riders struggled with setup issues, Enea Bastianini having a similar afternoon. “At the start of the session, I didn’t push a lot, but at the end I was in the top 6 during that period,” the Italian said. Then he tried a setup change that didn’t work, and they had to revert to the previous setting for the time attack.
Bastianini improved enough to finish timed practice in third, but with old tires he struggled with the front. “I suffered a bit with the used on the front, and it was very strange the feeling. Also on entry, on the edge,” he explained. That went away with a new tire.
Where he is still struggling is with braking, Bastianini explained. “Compared to other riders, I’m missing the brake point. Because I can’t brake very very hard like every Ducati rider, I’m locking a lot the front.” This was a problem he had suffered many times during his career, he said, and it was something that has proved fixable in the past.
What he needed was better feedback from the front, so he could try to avoid the front locking. “Today the information was good, but not the best. It moved a lot , and when I checked the data, I saw many times the front lock, my front lock is double compared to other riders, and I don’t know why it happens. But for the rest, I’m confident to be fast,” Bastianini told reporters.
Marc Márquez had been fastest in the afternoon, and his pace had been formidable. He was happy with the work on Friday, but did not expect to be this far ahead for the rest of the weekend. “Of course happy, because starting the weekend on the way is always important,” the Gresini Ducati rider said. “It’s true that the pace is good, it’s not the fastest one like in Australia, I think Martin is faster than us. Bastianini, when he is fast on Friday it means he will be super fast during all weekend. But let’s see what we can do.”
Márquez’ chief concern is the fact that on the older bike, he is immediately up to something close to the maximum potential of the bike. But the riders on the Ducati GP24 have more room for improvement as the weekend goes on. “I have this potential or advantage that from the initial moments, I’m riding very good, very fast. But then I’m there. And the others, step by step are coming.”
Márquez pointed to Enea Bastianini for a comparison. “For example Bastianini is completely different to me. He starts struggling a lot, and then he comes back. So let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”
The Gresini Ducati rider was at least pleased that he had made a massive improvement over the season, and was now much more consistent. “In the first part of the season I was always struggling on the Friday and the way to improve during the weekend was a lot. Now on Friday I’m already with a good base, riding in a good way, so the way to improve is same. And tomorrow, even for me it will be difficult to improve the lap time of the practice, because it’s already a lap record. And if I can do 1’29.1 again, I will sign now on this table.”
From the first day, it looks like Buriram will be another all-Ducati affair. There are some signs of hope – Maverick Viñales ended the day as fifth fastest, while Pedro Acosta shrugged off a painful shoulder to end practice seventh – but the fact there were seven Ducatis in the top ten is ominous. Small comfort perhaps that the top ten is covered by just over half a second, Johann Zarco taking a very smart tow from Marc Márquez to displace Brad Binder by just a thousandth of a second.
Maverick Viñales may have been fast, but he was far from happy. “I’m in Q2 so that’s fantastic. A relief,” the factory Aprilia rider said. “But I struggled in the FP and also on the Practice at the beginning of the sessions with the hard tires.”
The hard rear didn’t seem to have any grip on the edge of the tire, Viñales explained. “It’s a long time that I don’t have this feeling of low grip, icy feeling on the entry of the corners. It’s a feeling I really hate. I don’t like. So I think it is common with the Aprilias and the others are suffering less.” Things improved a little with the medium compound, but there is still a lot of work to do.
Viñales couldn’t understand why the tires felt they way they did, when they were the same construction as used at Mandalika. ” I expected more grip on the edge, because in Mandalika when you are leaning as soon as you touch the gas it is like ‘whoah!’ You have a lot of grip. Here is it the opposite. It is like making a highside,” he explained.
Luca Marini, the brains of the paddock, had the kind of incisive explanation we have come to expect from him. “the medium is a little bit strange, because in the edge is made for when there are not so many corners on that side. Because here we use a lot the center of the tire so the center is very strong, but then on the side it’s quite soft. So it’s a track where you will never feel it, because you always feel here that the edge of the tire is already ready since the out lap, but the track has really poor grip on the edge. So the tire feels ready but the track is still no good.”
When Pedro Acosta dislocated his shoulder and damaged a ligament, there was concern he would struggle until the end of the season. But the GASGAS Tech3 rookie was fast and relatively comfortable at Buriram. He needed a few laps to be up to speed, he said. “The shoulder feels good, it took us a few laps to warm it up properly, but once done, the pain was manageable. FP1 was about understanding how we could ride with the shoulder, maybe adjust the bike so I can feel more comfortable on the bike for the brakes.”
Normally, he didn’t need any time to warm up, he told Spanish media. “Normally, I never warm up before putting my leathers on, and today it cost me three, four, five laps to wake up a bit and get into my rhythm.”
His shoulder wasn’t a hindrance to riding, but he couldn’t ride as freely as he wanted, Acosta said. “The shoulder will not be a limitation, but it depends on how I ride. If I am more precise, I suffer less. But if the bike starts to move, I get more tired and I have more pain.”
Can Acosta be a factor? His pace on used tires was good, posting a 1’30.1 on a tire with 14 laps on. That should be good enough in the sprint race, but the question is whether he can last on Sunday.
It proved to be a tough day for Yamaha. Both Alex Rins and Fabio Quartararo struggled much more than expected. For the Frenchman, the day had worked out precisely the opposite to the way he expected. “I expected better for this GP,” Quartararo said. “To be honest, I didn’t expect to be that far, especially on one lap. So a little bit disappointing about today. But I didn’t expect to be that fast on the pace, but I didn’t expect to be that slow in the time attack. So we have to figure out why.”
There were a couple of areas where they were struggling, he said. Or rather, one issue that was affecting both acceleration and braking. “It’s the same issue as usual, the grip from Turn 1, Turn 3, from slow corners we have no rear contact, and this is what his clearly missing. Especially on one lap.” Quartararo explained.
The issue was clearest in braking. Quartararo was entering the hard braking corners with his rear wheel high in the air. “This is mainly one of our biggest problems, that the bike is moving a lot, pitching a lot. I didn’t want really to make this kind of braking. Because to lift the rear tire that much is just losing time. So the bike, as soon as you want to brake harder is pitching a lot and we are braking only with the front tire. The rear tire is never helping us to stop, even when we have the rear on the ground, the rear has clearly zero grip, even on the braking. So when I say we miss grip, I mean without traction but also in stopping performance,” the Monster Energy Yamaha rider said
Pit lane is pit lane
Finally, to a nasty incident during the Moto2 free practice session in the morning. Tony Arbolino crashed, and then insisted on pushing his bike down the very long entrance to pit lane, which stretches from the outside of Turn 11 down past Turn 12 and into the pits. The marshals were trying to get Arbolino and his bike off the track and behind the barrier, but the Marc VDS rider was refusing, knowing he would lose time if he had to get his bike back into the pits from the service road.
Yellow flags were being waved while this was going on, and two riders passed Arbolino safely. But then RW Racing’s Zonta van den Goorbergh took the pit lane entrance, and was traveling at speed. The first section of pit lane entrance is not limited to 60 km/h, and Arbolino was just approaching the line where the speed limit applied. Van den Goorbergh braked, but too late, and clipped the back of Arbolino’s bike and rammed into his leg.
Both riders were penalized. Arbolino was given a three-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race for ignoring the instructions of marshals and not pulling off onto the service road. The penalty for Van den Goorbergh was much harsher, the Dutchman forced to start Sunday’s Moto2 race from pit lane.
Look to the helpers
The FIM Stewards gave a very clear and full explanation of the penalties on Friday afternoon. Van den Goorbergh had been speeding through an area where the yellow flag was displayed with a disregard for safety, in an incident the Stewards characterized as entirely avoidable. They placed particular emphasis on the fact that he had severely endangered a marshal with his actions.
That penalty was entirely justified, but Arbolino deserves his share of blame too. By refusing to obey the instructions of the marshals, he put them in a position of danger as they tried to help him with his bike. All too often riders ignore marshals or disregard their instructions, their only concern getting back on the bike or back to the pits as quickly as possible so they can get back to racing or qualifying.
That may be understandable from the perspective of the riders, but the marshals are there to help and assist riders, to keep them safe and reduce the risks they face from other riders as much as possible. They are the backbone of the sport, the foundation which makes racing possible. Marshals are only human, of course, they can be power mad, interfering, and irritating. But their responsibility is to make the racing as safe as possible. For that, they deserve to be respected, and need to be obeyed.
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