Jerez: Bagnaia and Quartararo Check Out

[Hugh Janus]

The entire MotoGP race at Jerez, in one photo: Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo up front and alone, setting a pace nobody else could match. (MotoGP/)

Francesco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo, never more than a second apart, fought an intense duel at Jerez to finish 1-2, respectively, after 25 laps with only 0.268 of a second between them. Despite knowing the slightest mistake could eliminate either man from the results, they rode with a consistency measured in 10ths of a second. Their abilities made chronometers of them.

Bagnaia led every lap. “I was totally concentrated. If I went wide at a corner, I knew that Fabio would take advantage…

“…on the first lap I thought about closing all the doors to Fabio.

“[If Quartararo had been] in front I could have had problems with the front tire. But keeping that pace was difficult. In that heat the rear slid and the front locked up.”

Quartararo shared the same view. “I tried to overtake Pecco [Bagnaia’s nickname] on the first lap because I knew that staying behind him was going to be difficult for my front tire. I tried everything, but he was really fast.

“My front tire was super hot, super high pressure.”

High front tire temperature and the corresponding high pressure are a result of being in the lead bike’s hot slipstream. The combination of exhaust gas and air heated through the coolant and oil radiators create a mobile bakery oven.

“I knew that if I couldn’t overtake him in the first two or three laps, then it was going to be difficult for our front tire, and basically it’s what happened.”

Quartararo remains the only rider on Yamaha able to lap competitively.

Bagnaia had qualified on pole with a sensational lap record of 1:36.170, saying that at Portimão a week before “I was feeling great again with my bike, the feeling was back in the braking.

“It was a perfect lap, maybe the best I’ve ever done in my career. I was able to push hard and the bike followed me perfectly.”

As to why the combination was working so well, Bagnaia said, “…we did a good thing in stopping trying to adapt this bike to me and just leaving the bike the same and riding it.”

“Pecco” Bagnaia set a new lap record at Jerez during qualifying. “It was a perfect lap, maybe the best I’ve ever done in my career. I was able to push hard and the bike followed me perfectly.” (MotoGP/)

During the race, onlookers thought Quartararo was slowing as the gap between the two bikes widened for a time. Quartararo explained: “…during the race I always stayed a little bit behind because it was impossible to ride with the front. It was sliding so much and moving a lot. It felt like chewing gum.”

These men were able to maintain clocklike lap times, neither making a mistake, despite Bagnaia’s rear tire sliding and his front locking, and Quartararo’s overheated front sliding and moving.

Meanwhile, the rest of the field, in effect a separate event, circulated on average four- to five-tenths of a second slower per lap.

Pundits called Jerez “a procession,” but as Marc Márquez (fourth behind the Aprilia of Aleix Espargaró) had said earlier, “Jerez is a narrow circuit where it’s difficult to pass, especially today with devices that lower the bike. Now it’s even harder with aerodynamics.”

Racing’s active fundamentalists look for reasons to deplore what actually happens, even seeking to interfere in the name of “improved competitiveness.” The best example of this was the call, heard a few years ago, for Michelin to deliberately make bad tires, or for Brembo to engineer weak brakes because fans would find it more exciting.

Quartararo remains the only rider who can put a Yamaha up front in 2022. At Jerez he was always in the hunt, but could never get around Bagnaia, due in part to the nature of the track. (MotoGP/)

There is no high form of motor racing more competitive than MotoGP, where every rider comes through the same intense schooling and every bike is a fully engineered factory or ex-factory machine. The major reason for lack of passing and lead changes is this high level itself. When you and your rival have equal skills and equipment, where does victory come from? It comes from qualifying well and getting a strong start.

Back in the two-stroke days there was a long silence between the few factory men at the front and the droning privateers on worn-out RS500s bringing up the rear. And as MotoGP experimented with ways to fill start grids, the dreaded CRTs (Claiming Rule Teams, running Superbike engines in artisanal chassis) were often as much as 10 seconds a lap off the pace.

For years Daytona intoned the litany of close racing. When they achieved it in 600 Supersport, the result was drafting groups of four to 10 riders from which no one had the power to escape.

As the two leaders grew small in the distance, Jack Miller (factory Ducati) was stalked by Márquez in company with Aprilia’s Espargaró. Márquez, not yet on terms with his Honda’s altered front behavior, lost the front at turn 13 (he had crashed twice in one lap during practice). “I was completely on the floor, both wheels were sliding, then suddenly the bike picked up.”

We’ve seen this marvelous “uncrashing” from Márquez before, how he somehow uses a combination of an elbow plus turning in to lift his bike upright.

Vigilant Espargaró instantly passed both men while they were busy. “I knew that with 40 minutes [elapsed in the race so far] they were both going wider, and I knew that they would make a mistake.

“I was very angry because I had a lot more pace, but they braked very late and were stopping in the middle of the corner.”

This is the problem of the rider whose bike can give high corner speed. There in front of him, and right on his line, the point-and-shoot rider apexes at the lower speed that enables his quicker rate of turning.

“When I overtook Jack in the last corner I saw Marc going wide [as one will when low-siding]. I passed both of them with, I think, five laps to go and I was more than half a second faster in the next few laps.”

On the last lap, here came Márquez, up the inside of Miller at turn 8 to take fourth.

Marc Márquez (seen here following Ducati’s Jack Miller) noted that “Jerez is a narrow circuit where it’s difficult to pass, especially today with devices that lower the bike. Now it’s even harder with aerodynamics. (MotoGP/)

Those who yearn for Márquez to return to his dominant form must remember that not only has he experienced problems with double vision and a prolonged healing process from his arm injury resulting in compromised physical condition, but he must also adapt to the 2022 Honda.

“I’m still struggling a lot with the front. The turning is slow… As soon as I try to push a bit more, then it’s easy to crash.”

“When Honda decided to make a big change on the bike I agreed.”

The changes that were made included moving more weight onto the rear tire and increasing stability to enhance fast-corner performance.

On Friday Márquez had said, “The new Honda is more comfortable on wide fast circuits like in Qatar, in Malaysia or Indonesia, but on small ones where we have to curve quickly from one side to the other, we struggle.

“With this new bike you need to ride in a different way. Yesterday [Friday] we tried to adapt the bike in a radical way to my riding style, but I cannot ride this bike like this. So today [Saturday] we came back to the way that the bike wants you to ride.”

When Márquez faltered, Aleix Espargaró pounced, and was rewarded with third overall. (MotoGP/)

Think back to when Jorge Lorenzo, the supreme corner-speed stylist, climbed aboard the point-and-shoot Ducati. It took him 18 months of self-discipline to learn to ride the bike “its way,” but then he won races. Eighteen months is a heavy price to pay late in one’s career.

This makes it clear that there are limits to how fast riders can adapt to change in their machines. Riders and teams must consider this, for otherwise, serious man/machine conflicts, and the time they cost, arise.

When Lorenzo was elevated to MotoGP legend, Márquez was asked how he would rank him. He said, “I don’t want to insert him in any ranking. I don’t like them. Every rider has his year and his time.”

I strongly agree.

So where was everyone else? Why two races instead of one? Randomness continues. This rider gets a poor start or gets out of phase with a yellow flag and qualifies below his ability. That rider was really fast until the race, when there was little grip. Is there really such a thing as a dud tire? How wide is the range of optimum tire temperature? The narrower that range is, the greater the chance that small variations on Sunday afternoon can trip somebody up.

Aleix Espargaró was seen practicing starts, but not all poor starts are the rider’s fault. How does the clutch’s friction material change as temperature spikes, and how does that affect the material’s grip? Some lining material loses grip as it heats up (fade) but other material is “fierce”—its grip rises steeply with temperature. The result of the latter can be acceleration-destroying wheelies. When Yamaha had trouble with starts, it made a thorough study and came up with a clutch material that gave riders predictable control. Something similar afflicted the first carbon brakes; as they warmed up they were full of bad surprises.

Battle resumes in two weeks at Le Mans.

Despite being a Spanish rider on a Spanish track, and having finished fourth at the last GP in Portugal, Suzuki’s Álex Rins finished a dismal 19th at Jerez. (MotoGP/)

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[boboneleg]

It was a pretty boring race but not boring as this bot