[cycleworld.com] - Viñales Sweeps COTA MotoGP

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Aprilia’s Maverick Viñales captured all the top honors this weekend at COTA: pole, lap record, the Tissot Sprint, and Sunday’s GP.

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Maverick Viñales chased down 10 riders to take the win at COTA, GasGas’ Pedro Acosta was his last victim. (MotoGP/)Human minds are always seeking a pattern. When it looked as though Francesco Bagnaia would repeat last year’s ascent to consistency, we were stunned by Jorge Martín’s leap from King of the Sprint to actually winning on Sunday. As first practice for this weekend began it was natural to imagine a Martín repeat. But no! Instead, two forces in MotoGP, each known for inconsistency, came thunderously together: Maverick Viñales and Aprilia. They won everything with apparent ease while Mr. Consistency, Bagnaia, came fifth and New Superman Martín was fourth.

Viñales started ninth, advanced steadily, and took 13 laps to get to the front. So much for those who croak that “MotoGP has no passing!” He won over Pedro Acosta by 1.7 seconds. In the meantime there was plenty of cut-and-thrust.

Another set of reasonable expectations was dashed when Marc Márquez, now on a modern motorcycle (Duc), ran in the front group but crashed out. For years, winning at COTA was his standard performance. In the sprint his brake lever had come to the bar, requiring multiple pumps. Confidence-inspiring!

In the race it was something else: “We had a front-end problem under braking. I wasn’t comfortable and I struggled. The crash came because of that and there was nothing I could do.” Could it be that his intensive braking caused occasional bottoming?

Bagnaia had said, after a poor sprint result, “So we will change just the rear tire and I think everything will be OK.”


Heading into turn 1, most thought that the regulars would be on the podium; turns out racing is unpredictable. (MotoGP/)Instead, after battling in the front group for six laps, “…I started to experience some issues. The bike was moving a lot at the front and I was feeling some vibrations at the rear, so I had to ride defensively.”

Viñales, whose professional life has been such a roller coaster, set pole, a new lap record, won the sprint, and capped all that with Sunday’s win. He said, “It’s been a lot of long nights thinking and overthinking what I have to do to be back winning races.”

As if to demonstrate the coherency of his thinking, he said, “The bike is very competitive in long corners, going into the race in terms of traction, but there are still three points on the track where we have a margin, such as braking at 12, and three right-hand corners where I struggle to pull the bike up quickly.”

He had earlier explained finding the right weight “balance I needed to go fast with this bike. We found the right grip on the front.”

Martín, fourth on Sunday, had two falls prior to that; being thumped by Mother Earth put a dent in his new perfection. Earlier in the weekend: “Maybe I was too aggressive in the corners and made a mistake. I then returned to the track with the soft tire on the second bike and I lacked confidence. In fact, I ended up falling again.”

As with other Ducatis and the Hondas, there were “vibration” issues as well.

This year’s talent explosion, Pedro Acosta, was second on Sunday. “You cannot imagine how much fun I had today! This morning in the warmup we decided to go with medium (tire) and then in the race when I led (laps 10, 11, and 12) I was trying to manage my tires, not to make a stupid mistake or [do] anything crazy.”

He commented on Márquez’s fall on Sunday: “I think he fell because in that part of the track on the inside there are always small patches of wetness…”


Acosta mixed it up at the front for the entire race, finishing second. (MotoGP/)Third was Enea Bastianini (Duc Lenovo), another surprise to the “not enough passing” complainers. After a good start he had the now-usual front-tire temperature trouble while in the pack. After that, his race was like that of Viñales: working his way forward.

“In the second part—which is kind of my specialty—I managed to bounce back and be fast, which allowed me to finish on the podium.”

Márquez fans want to know why he didn’t win on the track he “owned” for so long. Back in that era, Ducati were trying to win by outdoing Honda in their narrow realm of superiority: late and very hard braking, and early lift-and-accelerate. Now Ducati has abandoned that two-dimensional approach (as former Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso urged for so long) by building in more and more apex speed capability. Doesn’t that work for Márquez rather than against him, now that he, too, is on Ducati? It’s not so easy for riders—even the most brilliant—to shift styles. He spent years in intimate conversation with the Honda that was built to talk only to him. The Ducati speaks with an unfamiliar accent and it takes time to reestablish quick, unambiguous conversation.

To his great credit, Márquez was in the thick of it before crashing out. Not bad to be able to take years off (albeit involuntarily) and then come back, switch bicycles, and still be “in among ‘em.” He is one of the great men of this sport.


Marc Márquez took his turn at the front, showing that he’s not washed up or out of the fight. (MotoGP/)To underline the apex speed capabilities of the Ducati, man-on-the-scene Matt Oxley recently showed us a photo of a Ducati with the right upper fairing removed. The engine-hangers are not tubes, round or square; they are long triangles of thin sheet metal, essentially decoupling the engine’s lateral stiffness from the steering head.

Back when Suzuki was still racing its inline-four, there was speculation that the engineers had cracked the problem of how to combine braking stability with the lateral compliance required to keep the tires hooked up at high lean angle. It took the secret with it when it left the series. Now it appears Aprilia has made fresh discoveries of this kind.

There is wide speculation as to what will change now that Liberty Media, owners of F1, have added MotoGP to its portfolio. That’s all it can be—speculation—ranging from no change (other than whatever is coming in 2027?s tech rules) to assertions that MotoGP must become breakfast cereal in the interest of wider viewership.

No one has so far clarified the “unusual vibrations” reported last time, but Johann Zarco, Bagnaia, and Martín all used the word, and Bagnaia even uttered “chattering.” This is another open file that must become a bit thicker before we actually learn anything.

Who can blame Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha, 12th on Sunday) for signing a two-year contract? Viñales has made winning on three different marques look, well, achievable, but switching bikes means learning a new language. Years ago, Dale Singleton said to me, “Ah’m jist gittin’ th’ money, Kavin,” and that’s what critics say Quartararo is doing. It’s his business. This weekend he said being out of it has allowed them to try really different ideas rather than continue as before, hoping some little tweak will bring back 2021. Let’s hope a fresh look revives the program.


Viñales battled back from 11th place after being bumped out of the way on the start. (MotoGP/)The Hondas, too, are out of it, raising the reasonable question: Might the Japanese pull out of the series, at least for a time? Unknowable, but in the past Honda has hung in there with a less-than-stellar F1 car until it could reclaim the podium. Staying power.

One problem that the long-sought close racin’ brings is magnification of details. Not so long ago there were “the aliens” (three riders with superhuman powers) and the rest. Today, the mandated spec ECU and software have brought all riders closer together, making the details more important. Compressing practice to make room for the Saturday sprint denies the teams time formerly applied to creating a solid setup for Sunday. All this magnifies the element of chance, generating surprises.

Surprises bring viewers and spectators. Viñales! Aprilia! What next?

Jerez in two weeks.