[cycleworld.com] - Martín Wins Big in Portimão, Bagnaia Loses Ground

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Jorge Martín took the win at the Grande Premio Tissot de Portugal while Aprilia’s Maverick Viñales took the sprint win. Here’s how it all played out.

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Jorge Martín took the win on Sunday in Portugal. (MotoGP/)At Qatar there was nothing wrong with the image of Francesco Bagnaia (factory Ducati) as having serene confidence in his crew’s ability to solve problems in the time available, giving him only the task of calmly leading, just out of reach, pushing a bit harder if one or another pursuer advanced, then resting his tires. Simple! Start first, lead every lap, finish first.

Ducati has a unique advantage: Eight bikes generating data from which high-confidence setup solutions can be derived. All eight are of a design that has won two titles in a row. Meanwhile, the clamoring others fall victim to the usual misadventures of racing. “I got a wooden tire, my front pressure spiked in three laps, I didn’t feel well, we’re only here for the data we hope to collect.”

Instead: variety! Intense, brilliant Jorge Martín took Bagnaia’s role, staying just out of reach of second-placeman Enea Bastianini (Ducati Lenovo) to win by 0.882 second. And Pedro Acosta, MotoGP’s dramatic new variable? He (on GasGas/KTM) kept his tires sweet this time to come third after passing legendary talents with casual ease.

The Saturday Sprint

Aprilia’s promise—so tantalizing—was realized by Maverick Viñales in winning Saturday’s sprint. “The sprint was pretty fast [3 seconds shorter than last year]. But the rear tire didn’t go down, so I could push,” Viñales said.

Current champion Bagnaia, as expected, led the sprint: “I started well. Was attacking. Then I could open and manage the gap, so everything was perfect.

“But I didn’t consider the fact of the fuel consumption (the bike was light, carrying just half a tank) and that the first corner is a bit strange because the steep downhill makes the rear [light]. And I was braking…the same.

The rear being unweighted at the hill crest, with a light fuel load while braking were too much.

“Then I just tried to avoid a crash by going wide, but I lost everything.”


Francesco Bagnaia’s weekend was turbulent, to say the least. (MotoGP/)Marc Márquez Version 2.0 (now on Ducati) is strong but is still insisting his ambitions are tempered by being on an unfamiliar bike and by no longer being a young trier whose every lap was ridden “like qualifying.” Despite this, he was able to get past Martín for second.

Acosta’s reaction to the sprint? “I’m not fully comfortable in this situation because you see these guys going wide open from the beginning and not caring about anything.

“In Qatar…I struggled a lot at the end of the race.”

On Sunday afternoon he said, “…today I was learning a lot from Pecco on how he was moving his body and how he was playing with the angle of the bike.

“I saw that he plays a lot with his [position on the bike], rotates his feet in a strange way, and gains in the first meters of acceleration. I also tried to do that.”


Maverick Viñales’ win on Saturday shows promise for the Aprilia team. (MotoGP/)Sunday GP

In the race, Martín went to the front, passing Bastianini before turn 1, while Bagnaia, third, yielded to Viñales and Márquez, who attacked him in turn. Bastianini said later, “Jorge was on top, and I was behind Maverick.

“For the rest of the race I tried to overtake Maverick but he was really fast, especially in the last sector, so it was impossible for me to try to attack him.

“I think Jorge was perfect throughout the race.”

With Viñales second, Acosta moved up, passing Brad Binder, then Márquez on lap 8, and got to work on Bagnaia. Acosta’s first try at turn 1 was repelled by the senior man, but Acosta was under him at turn 3.

Aprilia and KTM have taken turns looking like possible real competition for Ducati. The KTM is powerful and the Aprilia so often looks like it could gel into the bike that is tops at everything. Possibly important too was Takaaki Nakagami on Honda, fifth in the sprint. Something cooking? Or a lucky day?

Now Márquez and Bagnaia disputed fifth at turn 5 and both men fell. Some discussion and finger-pointing ensued but no foul was found. Bagnaia said, “When Marc arrived, he tried to overtake. He went wide. I crossed the line. He crossed his line. And we collided.”


Marc Márquez and Bagnaia both went down, colliding midcorner. (MotoGP/)This describes the common outcome of a pass attempt: The attacking rider makes the pass, then runs wide, opening an inside path for a repass.

Marc said, “For me, it was a mistake from Pecco, but not just the incident. Because in the end he tried to come back [inside] and, OK, was too optimistic, but contact can happen.

“And he was suffering a lot with the tires, especially with the rear tire.”

No one—no matter how calm—is immune to misadventure.

Viñales, second, who had been able to close somewhat on Martín, hit a gearbox problem. “From the sixth lap I could tell that something wasn’t working right with the gearbox. [Upshifting] from fifth to sixth it didn’t go in.”

Despite this, his lap times remained good just using fifth and extra revs. “All the race I thought I could fight for victory [but] every time the gearbox got worse and worse.”

The final result was a high-side out of turn 1. Viñales noted that the gearbox never locked up, which is among the greatest of rider fears—because pulling the clutch cannot release the back wheel.

Binder (fourth) said, “Every time I tried to push on I would lose the front. When I picked up the gas I had a lot of pumping [weave].”

Martín said, “I was really committed to take the lead and I knew it was the key today. Being in the lead on lap 1 was the key to the win.

“I was able to manage the rear tire a bit in the first few laps, and the small gap.

“Then as soon as I started to push I saw that the gap was always the same. But I knew that I had some margin to slowly make the gap bigger and bigger.”

Then he uttered a forbidden word—chatter—to describe what he and others had encountered in preseason testing and at Qatar. Some are saying it’s not the classic 20–25 cycle chatter of the 1980s, but more like rear wheel hop. Here is another if: If there is a tuned mass damper in the oddly shaped Ducati seat backs, it is probably tuned to pull energy out of 20–25 cycle chatter, and so could be useless against a different frequency. The normal chatter frequency is associated with the frequency at which the tire as a whole can oscillate from side to side on its rim, with its flexible sidewalls acting as the “spring.”

Martin continued: “We need to understand why, but we suffer much more when we push at the beginning than when we can be smooth in the first laps.”

Bagnaia said, “Today I had chatter. It started on lap 7. We didn’t expect it.” He went on to describe his efforts to cope with the speed of the leaders. “I tried to have different lines. I tried to have the same corner speed as them. But I was always going wide.”

Valentino Rossi’s 2006 season was delayed by chatter, as the big new Michelin rear tire requested by Honda that year (a low-pressure “footprint monster”) chattered on his Yamaha, keeping him off the podium multiple times until a solution could be found.


In his second Grand Prix start, Pedro Acosta secured a podium finish. (MotoGP/)Aside from the rear tire’s action as a lateral spring, there is also the designed-in lateral flexibility of the swingarm as a possible source of a grip-and-release cyclic behavior.

Stefan Bradl, a frequent stand-in when a rider is out of action, had interesting things to say about how a MotoGP lap time is achieved: “The MotoGP bikes have so much power. The best way to use it is to get the bike upright and spend as little time as possible on the tire flank. You want to finish the corner in the shortest possible time. You can straighten the Ducati up a little and you’ll feel it moving forward. The Honda has to be much more upright to find the grip, up to the point where the aerodynamics come into play.”

Remember Dani Pedrosa doing just this? Getting the turning done in a hurry at a sharp apex, suddenly pushing the bike up and shooting away?

Bradl continued: “The decisive factor is how you accelerate out of the corners, how much grip you have from second to third gear and in the first part from third up to fourth gear. That’s where the lap time comes from.”

Portimão’s events suggest a possible hectic season for everyone: Ducati’s chatter/hop, Pedro Acosta looking like a second coming, Martín trying to put perfection into mass production, and the rest opportunistically ready to scale the podium if only, by some accident, one of them gets everything just right—the ride, the setup, the tires. Could be just the thing for spectators.

The USGP at Austin/COTA is next, April 12–15. What the hell—enjoy now, pay later. Drive impulsively to the airport, give ‘em your credit card, and go.