What do Qatar and Assen pre-2016 have in common? Confusion over days, times, and the rest. From 1926 until 2016, when the Dutch TT was held on Saturday, everyone in the grand prix paddock would refer to race day as “Sunday”, because the schedule of a race weekend was so deeply ingrained into their brains.
Something similar happens at Qatar. Brad Binder is typical of how riders explain the day. “Really tricky this morning. This afternoon felt so much better. Or this afternoon, tonight, whatever you want to call it, it was much better,” In the end, Binder found a better way to explain it. “In the dark it was good.”
That’s one of the biggest challenges at Qatar. FP1 happens in broad daylight, with high air and track temperatures. Timed practice happens after dark, when track temperatures plummet. The difference in air temperature between FP1 and PR was just 3°C. Difference in track temperature was 15°C. Plus, on the first day of practice, the track is very dusty, and it takes a couple of sessions to clean up and get rubbered in.
What all this means is that the times set in FP1 have little bearing on the weekend. Everyone bar Maverick Viñales, Marco Bezzecchi, and Augusto Fernandez ran a single medium rear tire for the full session, choosing to focus on setup rather than anything else. But that pushes a lot of work, especially in terms of tire choice, into a quite limited time frame in timed practice. You have very little time to get it right.
So any time you can spend on old tires is a win. The fewer runs you make with a fresh soft rear chasing a spot in Q2, the more time you can spend on trying to win. So it is really rather bad news for the rest of the MotoGP grid that Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Márquez only did a single run on a soft rear tire on Friday evening. Both Ducati Lenovo riders went out on their penultimate runs with about 15 minutes to go and pushed for fast laps, just dipping into the 1’50s. They then came back and switched to used rears and went back out to put more laps and get more data.
That caught a few riders out. “The last run, I thought I had timed it perfect,” the Red Bull KTM rider said. “I jumped behind Marc and he was on an 8-lap medium apparently. I only figured that out when I got to like Turn 4, so I lost my whole first lap because obviously I caught him really quickly.”
Both Bagnaia and Márquez could afford to do just a single hot lap because they knew they had the speed to be straight through to Q2. The two Ducati Lenovo riders were doing 1’51.7s on used tires, which was only a few hundredths off the time that Johann Zarco squeaked through to Q2 in. Based on times on Friday (and with the usual it’s-only-Friday caveat), Bagnaia and Márquez look like carving the weekend up between them.
As predicted, Pecco Bagnaia has made a big step forward at Qatar. He arrived here with a lot of confidence, but that confidence didn’t come from the win in Austin, he insisted. “In terms of confidence, it helped to be competitive in Austin. To be close to Marc, who is the fastest ever in Austin, was improving the confidence. So it’s more the speed that has given me confidence compared to the win,” he said.
In Austin, he had found added confidence in braking, and at Qatar they had made another step, Bagnaia explained. “Braking, entry,” was where the improvement had come, he said. “I was able to enter with more confidence, to let the bike enter and to let the bike turn. So the biggest step is making life easier for me when I’m braking, because I have to fight less with the bike. I have a lot of confidence to enter with the brakes and release it and let the bike turn. That was something that I was struggling a lot with in Argentina. In Austin, I was improving, but still not 100%. So this was the biggest step.”
This was his best session and his best Friday so far this year, Bagnaia said. But he was able to push to the limit of the bike, and that was what had given him confidence. And that confidence meant that he believed that the weekend would be between his teammate and himself. “I think we, me and Marc, in terms of pace we are the strongest. It’s difficult to understand and analyze a pace, because today we had to try the tires, but for the first time, I’m very close.”
Bagnaia did have a rather strange problem during the timed practice. At one point, he came in and pointed at his right footpeg, and his mechanics went to work to try to fix something.
It was all his own fault, Bagnaia admitted later. “It’s something that I have to improve, but I use the foot on the ground a lot. So I wore down the rubber, and in my time attack, I lost quite a bit in the last sector in Turn 15 because I tried to use the rear brake but my foot slid, and I didn’t use it, and I was wide, and I lost a bit of time.”
Riders like Bagnaia are dragging their foot on the ground, not so much in an attempt to help stop the bike, but more as a way of adding balance with their leg dangling off the peg. But dragging your foot along the tarmac at 355 km/h will wear through a set of Alpinestars Supertech Rs in very short order. It is a good job he doesn’t have to pay for them.
Marc Márquez was very happy as well. “For being Qatar, I’m super happy, especially because I expected to be a bit far from Pecco and Alex on this first day, but it was the opposite in FP1,” the factory Ducati rider said. “It’s true that in the afternoon everything was more close but I feel super good.”
This has always been one of Márquez’ worst circuits, so to be close to Bagnaia in pace was a very positive sign. “I mean, it’s a tricky circuit for me historically,” he said. “And it’s one of the circuits that you mark to try to defend, try to be not very far from the top guys. And at the moment we’re very close. So I’m super happy.”
Why is this such a difficult track for Marc Márquez? Because it is the opposite of where his strengths lie. Short corners and fast left handers is where Márquez makes up ground, and Qatar is awash with long right handers. “It’s true that the long right corners are against my riding style, against my instinct. It’s where I’m struggling more and here is full of those long right corners, a lot of time,” he said.
It meant he was having to work more at being fast. “I try to adapt my riding style to the track and it’s what I do,” Márquez explained. “It’s not riding by instinct, the way I normally like. In Thailand, in Austin I ride by instinct. And the lap times are coming easily. Here they are coming in a good way, because the pace is there with used tires. But I need to always think more about how to ride and not ride like instinct.”
Neither Pecco Bagnaia nor Marc Márquez ended the day as fastest. That honor fell to Franco Morbidelli, who put in a remarkable lap to come up just shy of the outright lap record. The Pertamina VR46 rider was happy, as being fast over a single lap was the objective he and his team had been working toward. “We’re working very much on the speed with new tires, and today we were able to pretty much do a good job.”
After a couple of difficult years, many people had written Franco Morbidelli off. Ahead of the weekend, all the focus was on the Márquez brothers and on Pecco Bagnaia, so Morbidelli topping the timesheets had come something as a surprise. He was viewed as something of an outsider.
Not that Morbidelli cares, particularly. “Doesn’t really matter to me,” the Italian said. “I’m a guy that likes outsiders, sincerely. And in 2020 I was an outsider, in 2017 when I won the world championship I was an outsider. I’ve always been an outsider over here, because I come from a different world. I didn’t go through Moto3. I’m used to that outsider label. But I like outsiders, when I look at sports, I always cheer for them.”
Morbidelli’s team owner and current endurance car racer Valentino Rossi is also present in Qatar. Rossi, who was pretty decent on a racing motorcycle before he retired, has been helping the riders in his team and the other members of the VR46 Racing Academy.
That help has made a difference, and the way the riders speak about how he helps is revealing of just how Rossi came to win nine world championships and 115 grand prix. “We spoke a lot right after FP1, and we spoke again before FP2,” Franco Morbidelli said. “We spoke about lines and the way to face the practice. So definitely his energy is super helpful for the team and super helpful for the riders, and especially for me.”
VR46 teammate Fabio Di Giannantonio explained the difference having Rossi there made. “Having him in the garage is always super, and it makes the difference, because his analysis is so precise, he always gives you the right word, the right analysis to study for the next run, the next practice. So this precise analysis allows you to do all the maneuvers more easily, somehow. So it really helps you to go faster with less effort.”
The big news ahead of the weekend was the return of Jorge Martin. The Aprilia rider is riding again at Qatar for the first time since breaking his right hand at the Sepang test, and his left hand in a supermoto training crash just before Buriram.
Riding a MotoGP bike again was an incredibly significant step for the reigning world champion. He had been apprehensive before leaving the pits, he admitted to journalists. “Before exiting today, I was really, really scared, or nervous, because I didn’t know what to expect,” Martin said. “The last feeling with the bike was terrible. So I was really scared to have the same feeling, but as soon as I went on the track already first lap, I was just touching the elbow on the ground. I was feeling again. So I’m happy.”
He had started the weekend with very modest ambitions. “The target was to try the physical condition on the MotoGP. And I was able to make the whole day. So this is already a success. I feel good and I feel we are better than what I expected.”
The problem for Martin is the pain, however. “I think overall, I feel a lot of pain, but at the end of the day on the left corners I just supported myself… I feel the pain, but I can go through it,” the factory Aprilia rider explained. “But then I’m really tired because I do everything with my right side. So I struggle even more on the right corners, in FP1 I was able to make 2 laps and then I needed to stop. In the evening I was able to make four or five laps. So I think the step was huge.”
Martin is running into an issue with the Aprilia that is familiar to anyone listening to Maverick Viñales last year. “Now the main issue for me is the braking, I feel the braking going into the corners is not constant let’s say. Sometimes I feel something, sometimes it’s different. So I need this consistency from the bike,” Martin said. This is pretty much identical to what Viñales was saying for most of 2024, that he couldn’t get a consistent feel in braking, it would change from lap to lap and from corner to corner.
The most likely contender is the electronics of the Aprilia, as Marco Bezzecchi has a completely different, but still related issue. “The bike is really aggressive when I go on gas, so I’m always upsetting the bike for the next corner, and this is a track with long and all corners going into the next one,” the Italian said.
Bezzecchi believes it is a combination of electronics and several other aspects of the bike. “We are trying to answer this since Montmelo, but I think it’s always a mix. It’s a combination of things, of course. But all the Aprilia riders are complaining about this, so I think it’s just a mix, and we have to try to find a good setting on everything to try to make a sweet bike.”
The problems both Bezzecchi and Martin describe are part of a wider picture. Trackhouse Racing’s Ai Ogura pointed out that no two Aprilia riders have the same problem, they each seem to struggle in their own way. “Comparing data, where I struggle, where Bez struggles, where Raul struggles, it’s all different,” Ogura said. For him, the rider was a big part of this equation. “I think it’s not from the bike, it’s from the riders.”
Aprilia’s problems are not as worrying as KTM’s however. All of the KTM riders complained of severe vibration from the rear, though confusingly, it started once the rear tire started to wear. For Enea Bastianini, the vibration started after just two laps on a tire, while for Brad Binder, it didn’t start until later. “For me it’s about lap 4, 5. Around there it starts, and it seems to just get a bit bigger from there.”
For Binder, the solution was to find more grip, as the more grip he had, the less vibration. “When we have extra grip, it’s less. So if we can somehow find some grip, I think it will go away.”
Maverick Viñales was trying to find ways to ride around the vibration. “Maybe by being less aggressive when you flick the bike into the corner. I am trying different things,” the Tech3 KTM rider said. But it was a limit, Viñales said, and stopped him from being as fast as he wanted to be. That meant accepting it and trying to work around it. “But if this is the limit then we have to go with it and try to evolve this extra.”
Pedro Acosta also had chatter, but he was still relatively happy after securing direct passage to Q2 and getting some of the feeling with the front back. “It has been many days that I have not been enjoying the bike, and today I really enjoyed it. So for this: happy,” the Red Bull KTM rider said.
The bike was just working, Acosta said. “Everything was on point and I did not need to think to ride. I was just riding and everything was coming. The best place I have made on a Friday of ’25. Everything was easy. I only have to think about riding and not about problems.”
The front locking which had plagued him in Texas was gone, Acosta said. “Day and night, for this. I understand that if braking is my strong point and strong point of the bike and you take that out then it’s a mess. You multiply the problem let’s say because everybody knows that turning is not our strong point. This is clear. When you have tools to play – like braking is not so good but you have turning – then you can play around. But if you don’t have both you are in handcuffs.”
Practice is one thing, of course, but racing is another, and Saturday is another day. The track should improve as the riders remove the dust and lay some rubber on the asphalt. The fact that qualifying will take place in the heat of the day complicates issues, but even then, Lusail is wide enough to overtake, as long as you are close enough to the front. As of Friday, it would be foolish to bet against either Pecco Bagnaia or Marc Márquez. But then we all thought Marc Márquez was going to walk the race on Sunday at Austin, and look how that panned out.
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