Bagnaia Wins in Austria

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Francesco Bagnaia rocketed off the line in both the Tissot Sprint and Cryptodata Austrian Grand Prix. (MotoGP/)

On a stop-and-go track that strongly favors the enduring Ducati virtues of powerful acceleration and braking, Francesco Bagnaia (factory Ducati) won everything: qualifying, Saturday’s sprint race, and Sunday’s 28-lap Grand Prix. Further, in his postrace commentary, he outlined the education of a champion—the process of learning the tasks, gaining confidence that inevitable setbacks will be overcome, and then managing a multitude of variables while riding away from the competition.

Other riders—most notably second-placer Brad Binder (factory KTM) but also all those who are capable of very fast laps (Mooney VR46 Duc’s Marco Bezzecchi and his new lap record in FP2) and even the occasional win—could not this time muster the kind of high-level integrated performance management that Bagnaia displayed.

In sprint and final, Bagnaia’s starts were unmatched, causing Binder to later give him an appreciative punch on the shoulder, saying, “Hey, you bast*rds did something on the start, eh?”

Bagnaia didn’t deny it, later saying, “It’s something that helped me in the first part of acceleration. That was the moment I was losing the most because [the KTMs] can be super aggressive in the first part of acceleration…”

When asked what it was he said, “It’s something that I prefer someone above—in Ducati—to speak about…”

Many-time champion Valentino Rossi acclaimed Bagnaia for “making no mistakes.”

Bagnaia disagreed: “I made two mistakes at the first corner. I got a bit carried away and touched the green on the exit.”

Bagnaia and Binder pulled away from the group behind, looking to be a tense stern chase in the making.

After the sprint race, Bagnaia spoke of the process of bike setup through the weekend: “The new bike lends itself to this type of work because it has more grip than the old one, so it turns less and is more nervous. It always needs work to set it up; sometimes it takes more and sometimes less time. Succeeding gives me confidence because for better or worse we always find the right direction. We never get lost.”

Although Bagnaia says that his new bike is more difficult to set up, his team has been getting it right. (Ducati/)

“This season started well with two victories at Portimão. Then I made some mistakes, which made me realize that I have to have fun on the bike.

“Last year I learned how to keep calm and work, thinking about the race.”

The last thing a rider needs is extra program steps, forced by anxiety into his thought process. To be calm is to shed such extra steps. To have fun is to be free to enjoy the elevated mental state of racing.

His plan for Sunday? “It will be impossible to do like today (the sprint) at the start of the race. I simply thought about pushing without worrying about the tires…considering the compound we have here. Tomorrow will be a different race—very hot and 28 laps are a lot. It will be essential not to let anyone pass me because the increase in tire pressure is a big problem and can become dangerous…”

Leading the race is the best way to protect the front tire from the hot slipstreams of other bikes.

He continued: “This morning I followed Viñales. It wasn’t very hot but the temperature and tire pressure were already over the limit…”

Michelin, MotoGP’s spec tire provider, sets minimum pressures for the tires (1.88 bar for the front, 1.68 for the rear) below which it believes tire failure from the heat of flexure to be a real danger. The higher the tire pressure, the smaller its footprint and grip become, and the riders know this. They also know from direct experience that at 1.9 bar front tire locking during braking begins to occur more often, and at 2.0 bar it is a serious problem.

Therefore Bagnaia knew that to preserve front tire performance he had to get away first and remain in the lead. “It was very important to get off to a good start and be first. I knew KTM’s potential, but Ducati brought me something new that helped me. What was it? An invisible part!

“At that point I braked very late for three or four corners to give Brad no chance to pass me, and then I pushed like hell.”

Behind the leaders, a turbulent phalanx of riders entered turn 1, triggering a chain reaction of contacts that delayed the pursuers.

A smashup at the start of the sprint race gave Brad Binder and Bagnaia space from the pack. (MotoGP/)

“I’m not thinking about it. I’m focused on being consistent. Staying in front is my goal and I’m always succeeding.

“In the first phase (of the race) I was just trying to figure out how many riders could stay at that pace in the low 30s, and I tried to be a little slower than what was possible.”

This is fundamental to consistency, because all riders know that the faster they must lap, the more and greater mistakes they will statistically make. Therefore it is essential to keep mistakes to manageable size by keeping a margin, a reserve of lap time.

“The last few laps were very difficult for the rear tire because I no longer had any traction and was spinning a lot.

“…the second part of the season will now be very tough but we will try to be calm and enjoy every moment like we did this weekend.”

What was the invisible part? It could be as simple as a pin which at the start prevented the front suspension from extending, and thereafter disengaged. This would add the mass of the front wheel to the torque the engine had to overcome to wheelie, allowing a stronger yet wheelie-free launch. It would not be illegal because it does not alter ride height.

Note that although wheelies are crowd-pleasing and many people associate them with high performance, they limit acceleration because the higher the front of the bike rises, the easier it becomes to lift it even higher. When a drag bike wheelies enough to force the rider off-throttle, it spoils the run. Rossi said in 2004, “The wheelie is the enemy” because an uncontrolled wheelie spoils the drive off the corner. Bagnaia also mentioned that the Ducati’s clutch is carbon, whose grip is extraordinary when hot but tricky when cold.

Binder said, “I knew from yesterday that we were looking for drive grip.

“I tried to keep him honest in the first half of the race but there was a moment where the rear grip just said goodbye…and I knew I had to be clever and just bring the bike home (in second place).

Just like many of the riders on Sunday, Binder has issues with rear grip. (KTM/)

“The team made another huge step from yesterday to today and I could brake so much later and so much harder.”

The day before, after the sprint, Binder had noted, “…it was really tough following (Bagnaia) the first three laps because [my] front pressure went through the roof.

“It started locking like hell so the places where I could catch up [are] where I was losing.”

Rear grip is the most common issue:

• Miguel Oliveira (DNF): “…no rear grip on Sunday.”
• Raúl Fernández (DNF): “…no rear grip from the beginning”; “a lot of spinning”; “…going wide.”
• Takaaki Nakagami (P18): “I mainly struggled with the rear grip.”
• Aleix Espargaró (P9): “I began to feel a drop in the rear tire and I had to manage fuel consumption.”
• Luca Marini (P4 VR46 Duc): “The bike slides a lot in the rear.”

Now for fuel consumption.

After the bad old days of the 20-liter fuel allowance MotoGP bikes have generally got on well on 22 liters, but downforce aero is now pushing even that limit. It takes power to push wings through the air to generate downforce. Playing with arithmetic and picking numbers out of a hat, if the average downforce is 40 pounds, the wing array’s lift-over-drag ratio is 5-to-1, and the average lap speed 90 mph, then the average drag force is 40/5 = 8 pounds, so the work performed per second is 8 times the average velocity of 132 feet/second, or 1,056 foot-pound/second. This is 2 horsepower. This is an underestimate; drag force increases as the square of speed but the horsepower required to overcome that drag rises as the cube of speed. If this back-of-the envelope is under by a factor of two, that’s four extra horsepower operating for 45 minutes (0.75 hour) or 3 horsepower-hours. Using the ancient wisdom of 0.5 pound of fuel per horsepower-hour as four-stroke fuel consumption, that will drink 3 x 0.5 = 1.5 pounds of extra fuel, which is roughly 9/10 of a liter. On higher-speed circuits this is already a problem.

More proof that teams are concerned comes from Bagnaia, who said, “My formation lap was very slow. I…put neutral on the downhill section after the corner and then switched off the engine as I came out of the last corner—to consume as little fuel as possible.

“When you’re in someone’s slipstream it’s not a problem, but when you’re ahead of everyone you must reduce the power a bit.”

Marc Márquez has said he will ride less aggressively in order to gather data for next year’s Honda. (MotoGP/)

Great racing, eh? If you don’t control front tire pressure you may suffer Raúl Fernández’s fate: a DNF from front wheel vibration and braking problems. His team manager Wilco Zeelenberg said, “The wheel became so hot that the [balance] weights came off because the glue melted.”

And you’ll want to carefully monitor your fuel so your engine doesn’t sputter out short of the flag. Race as slowly as possible because fuel consumption rises as the cube of speed.

Marc Márquez (P12) has now finished a race and is saying that he will concentrate on riding at less than ten-tenths for the rest of the season to gather data for planning next year’s Honda.

The top five were Bagnaia, Binder, Bezzecchi, Marini, and Álex Márquez (Gresini Duc).

Championship Points Standings

1. Francesco Bagnaia - 251
2. Jorge Martín - 189
3. Marco Bezzecchi - 183
4. Brad Binder - 160
5. Johann Zarco - 125<br/>

Barcelona is next, September 1–3.

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