The tension which has been building up around the possibility of racing at Valencia after the devastating storms there defused after the MotoGP Safety Commission, the body in which the riders talk to Dorna and the FIM about everything of concern, from track safety to sporting regulations and more. Any journalist with a rider’s phone number was messaging them the instant they emerged from meeting.
Which is how we found out that Dorna and the local authorities in the Valencia region had decided to cancel the 2024 Valencia round of MotoGP, set to take place from 15th-17th of November. Half an hour or so later, Dorna issued a formal announcement, stating that the round had been canceled and they were seeking an alternative location for the final event of the season. To the palpable relief of everyone concerned.
The stakes for the riders were very high, such was their repugnance at the idea of racing in a region which was so obviously in need of everything but a motorcycle race. “I don’t think it’s right to race in Valencia,” Pecco Bagnaia told Italian media. “I really hope they take into consideration the fact that on an ethical level, given what’s happening, it’s not the right situation and it’s not the right thing to do. Even at the cost of losing what is my maximum objective, which is to win the title, I’m not willing to race in Valencia.”
Marc Márquez summed up the general feeling. “Thinking right now about a GP in two weeks has no meaning, has no sense. It’s not only, we’ll help! It’s not about money. It’s about hands. It’s about time. It’s about people that have lost everything, they don’t have a house.”
So now we wait to find out where MotoGP will be racing, a decision that will likely be made soon enough. And so everyone can go back to focusing on the reason they are there at the Sepang International Circuit, which is to race.
Pecco Bagnaia ended the day as fastest, topping both FP1 and afternoon practice. It was his best Friday since Assen, where he won both the sprint race and Sunday GP. His approach had been much more aggressive, precisely because this is a track, like Assen, that he loves, he said. “Like Assen, I know that when the track is going this well, to me it’s easier to go fast.” And fast he went.
His approach was little different to Friday, putting a new medium rear in at the end of FP1 to allow him to put as many laps as possible on that tire to assess wear for the Sunday race. An issue with the front of his bike meant he spent more time in the pits in the afternoon than he wanted to, but he still ended up with 15 laps on a used medium before he went chasing a lap time.
“We decided to go with the medium rear already in FP1, to start in the Practice with a much worse situation,” Bagnaia explained. “Because I know that the consumption of the rear tire in this track is huge, and it was important to start in the worst situation to already have a drop and try to be competitive the same. And it worked very well.”
Just how accurate that is is open to question. Trying to read the pace Bagnaia set with used tires put him in the mid 1’59s on old tires. On Jorge Martin’s second run on the medium rear, he did a 1’59.4 on his 12th lap on the tire, then a 1’58.9 on his 14th lap. On paper, Martin looks a lot faster.
Bagnaia was certainly trying to exude confidence in his debrief. He said he was on a par with the rest of the field in the first sector, was slower than the rest in the second sector, and faster in the last two sectors. A glance at the timesheets does not appear to bear that out, but the teams have much more accurate information than we have.
Or possibly we are entering the time of mind games. We saw a little bit of that during FP1, when Jorge Martin exited the pits behind Pecco Bagnaia, and Bagnaia slowed right down until Martin passed him. Unsurprisingly, they had radically different views of the event.
“I exited for a normal run, it was just coincidence that I was behind him,” Martin insisted. “But for him it was a big issue, so he stopped in the middle of the racetrack. And I stopped behind him because there was no sense to tow him. So then I saw it was too much, and I was getting a bit bored, so I just went for my normal run and do my work.”
You will be shocked to learn that Pecco Bagnaia saw it differently. “Nothing,” was how the factory Ducati rider dismissed the incident. “His team decided to start him behind me and I just don’t want to let him see what I’m doing.”
Bagnaia was asked if the uncertainty around the Valencia GP made any difference to his approach. “Honestly not. I know that the important thing is to win. I have to win in any case,” he said. Even now that a 20th GP will be held at some point, his fate is still out of his hands. All Bagnaia can do is try to win all the races, and hope that someone can take points off Jorge Martin.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t look to be the case. But there is little he can do, Bagnaia explained. “We already knew before starting the race weekend, I already knew that in the worst situation, Jorge is finishing second, because we are a little step in front of all the others. I really hope that Enea will do a step tomorrow to close the gap a bit. But I also know that he will not help me. So I need to be a little bit faster than both.”
Bagnaia’s problem is that it’s not at all clear that he is quicker than Martin over race pace. The Pramac Ducati rider looks stronger on used tires, and spent most of the afternoon practice on top of the timesheets, while Bagnaia languished mid table. It was only at the end, when Bagnaia responded to Martin dropping into the 1’57s that the factory Ducati looked competitive.
Martin tried to respond, but lost the front at Turn 1. “I was quite OK on my time attack, I almost crashed on my lap, then I went on the straight and I saw I was second,” the Pramac Ducati rider said. “So I said, OK, I will try to improve a bit more. But it was too much already in the first corner, and I just crashed.”
Better to crash in practice than in the race, Martin insisted. “I think it’s also positive that I crashed today, because I can see the limit and understand why I crashed. So it’s good to crash today.” This is also the Marc Márquez approach to racing, where you crash in practice to understand where the limits are. But it’s also a very good excuse.
But Martin is looking comfortable and has strong pace. The most important thing was not to change a winning formula. “I like this track, I like the bike, it’s working really good. Even if the afternoon was a bit too hot at the beginning of the practice, I was feeling competitive always, always in the top. I feel confident with our work, as always. I just want to do the normal things, I don’t want to change anything because we are battling for a championship. I mean, I’m fast working like this, so I will keep this type of work.”
One of the reasons for Martin’s crash was the fact at Sepang, the rear tire is pushing the front a lot in braking. “I think we are struggling a little bit with engine braking for the moment,” Martin explained. “We have quite a lot of grip from the rear tire. With the Ducati bike you need to slide on entry, if not it’s pushing a bit the front. So that’s why I crashed.”
It was a warning from previous crashes, Martin said. The problem is that with the extra grip, the rear tire comes back into line quite aggressively, and once it does, it hooks up and loads up the front tire. “All the crashes I had during races, like Germany, Jerez, and Mugello, the three were the same, it was when the rear was coming back, it was pushing the front. So I’m trying to be really precise on that.” Relief was to be found in the engine braking, Martin believed, by improving the electronics.
Such relief is not available to everyone on a Ducati. Sepang is once again a shining example of how the GP24 deals with the 2024 Michelin rear much better than the GP23. Or indeed, any other bike.
Marco Bezzecchi explained his problems with the rear pushing the front. “To be honest, before the time attack I was quite satisfied because I started with a used tire from this morning. My pace was not too bad. We tried some changes on the bike that helped me a bit, but still when I put new tires, the sensation is always the same. I can’t turn the bike, I have a lot of rear pushing, similar to the test. The only difference is that I’ve got used to the bike during the season, but the sensation is almost the same. Better of course because we work a lot during these races, but the main characteristic is the same.”
These are problems he has had to resign himself to since the beginning of the year, Bezzecchi said. “it’s not easy of course, but it’s all the year that we are struggling. It’s ugly to say, but we are used to this. In the last couple of rounds the Fridays were a bit better, at least in the time attack I could save a bit the situation. Today that was not possible.”
At least the top of the table was not a Ducati whitewash, as happened in Thailand. Yes, there were three Ducatis at the top of the timesheets – the three strong GP24s of Bagnaia, Martin, and Enea Bastianini – but there were also an Aprilia, both Yamahas, and the KTM of Jack Miller in the top ten. The two Gresini Ducatis of Alex and Marc Márquez were the only GP23s, Marc Márquez just sneaking through to Q2 in tenth.
The older of the Gresini riding brothers was not surprised he was struggling. This has always been something of a bogey track for the Spaniard, even in his Honda heyday. “The day has been difficult. Here in Malaysia I tried to start in an optimistic way, but one more time here we’re struggling more than usual. We need to work more than usual to arrive on a good level.”
What was he missing? “Everything!” Marc Márquez replied. “It’s a circuit where I struggle more than usual. There are 2 circuits on the calendar, where I struggle historically, which is here and Montmelo. Let’s see if we can keep going.”
Maverick Viñales was the surprise package of afternoon practice, the factory Aprilia rider having been second in the morning and then fourth in the afternoon. His time in the afternoon had come only with extreme effort, he explained. “Every meter on the limit!” was how Viñales put it. “But it’s OK, until I’m on the bike and can do it, it’s fantastic, it’s always a nice feeling when you feel like that on a quali lap.”
A single fast lap is good, but Viñales doesn’t have race pace. ” Homework tomorrow is the rhythm. I haven’t been very precise and fast in terms of rhythm. It was very tough for me to put one lap after another. It was one lap, mistake, one lap, mistake, so I was not able to put 5, 6 laps in a row, and this is the homework we have for tomorrow.”
He wasn’t surprised at being fourth at Sepang, a track he is historically strong at. But he was surprised at how much he had been able to improve, given his slow race pace. “I’m not surprised, because I know I can be very fast here in Sepang,” Viñales explained. “But I’m surprised that it’s coming from 2’00.6 to 1’58.1. How much you can really take out the lap time when you put new tires and you put the bike in time attack mode.”
Going 2.5 seconds faster meant completely rethinking your lap, Viñales explained. “I’m surprised especially for the flexibility of getting a reference very quick, because it’s totally different how you ride for a 2’00 and a 1’58.1. So I brake like 30 meters later. So to really adapt very quick, this was the toughest thing to do today.”
The biggest surprise in the top ten has to be the presence of the Yamahas. Not just one, but both of them. And it wasn’t down to the new engine Yamaha have brought to Sepang. Alex Rins got to use the new engine, but Fabio Quartararo’s new power plant failed after just a lap and a half.
“We tried the new engine with the long exhaust and we had an issue and broke the engine,” Quartararo explained. “I don’t know if it is broken or not but it stopped in the straight and we could not fix for this weekend. Basically I used the same bike as Thailand. This result does not come from the new engine.”
Alex Rins did set his time with the new engine. “The lap time I focused on the new engine and did it with the new engine because the set up on that bike is more our base one,” Rins explained. “The base is a little bit different. So we need time to analyze which bike because it was only one engine and we need to analyze which bike was going better or not.”
This could be more than just a flash in the pan. Fabio Quartararo was positively optimistic on Friday. “A really good day, especially because know we struggle a lot in the time attack but the first lap of the practice was pretty good,” the Frenchman said. “We had the yellow flag but we made a 1’58.9 with race pace mode so was really good.”
The Yamahas are also more comfortable with the hard rear, which uses the same heat-resistant casing as in Mandalika, where the medium rear is the standard construction. “This morning I was really impressed with my lap times with the hard because we were on the top for a long time with this tire and we were really, really happy. I mean myself, because the conditions were bad with the grip and I still managed to be fast. So I was happy.”
Will the Yamahas feature during the sprint race? We will have to see. They won’t trouble the podium, but for both Rins and Quartararo to be inside the top ten, and to have a respectable race pace is a sign of real progress. They have worked hard to get here. “I have talked more to him than my Mum this year. I am little bit tired of him already!” Quartararo said of performance engineer Max Bartolini, who has made a significant contribution to Yamaha’s improved form. And that work is paying off.
But it looks like we are in for an all Ducati GP24 podium on Saturday. The only question is in which order. Pecco Bagnaia is putting on a brave face, but if you dig into the numbers, it looks like it is nothing more than that. Jorge Martin may have a chance to get a bit of a firmer grip on the title on Sunday.
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