2023 Catalunya MotoGP Report

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Aleix Espargaró was the man to be in Catalunya. Teammate Maverick Viñales finished second, giving Aprilia its first 1-2 finish in MotoGP. (MotoGP/)

This weekend Aprilia riders had the right combination, with Aleix Espargaró earning his second win of the year in Catalunya. Maverick Viñales was second on the other factory Aprilia, and after the two Ducatis of Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco (both Prima Pramac), Miguel Oliveira’s CryptoData RNF Aprilia was fifth.

Riders have learned to expect low grip and crashes at Barcelona and 2023′s event pulled no punches. At the start, present world champion and current point leader Francesco Bagnaia got the jump, but no sooner had he exited turn 1 than a motocross-style pile-up of funneling-in riders was triggered behind him. Enea Bastianini bumped the rear of Zarco’s bike braking for turn 1, then Marco Bezzecchi tangled with Gresini riders Álex Márquez and Fabio Di Giannantonio, bringing a red flag.

In an effort to not lose time at the start of a race, riders are risking quite a bit when heading into the first corner. In Catalunya, Enea Bastianini made contact with Johann Zarco, leading to a multi-bike incident. (MotoGP/)

Exiting turn 2, Bagnaia high-sided violently, landing hard on the track and rotating such that his legs were run over by Brad Binder’s KTM.

Espargaró said, “When Brad hit Pecco he broke the engine [and] I was completely covered in oil.”

Bagnaia said later, “It was a very strange crash,” while Marc Márquez speculated that since the medium rear tire took long to warm on the left side, “This can be the reason” (i.e., a cold tire). All riders know that places lost from the start grid to turn 1 will be costly to recoup—eating up laps and tires. Result? A lot of chips are on the table for those crucial seconds. Now there is talk of moving the start in the future to ease this situation.

The first turn pile-up included Bastianini, Zarco, Marco Bezzecchi, plus Gresini riders Alex Márquez and Fabio Di Giannantonio. (MotoGP/)

Thankfully all avoided serious injury, although Bastianini suffered fractures of small bones in his left hand and left ankle, which required a pair of surgeries. Originally expected to return for Indonesia, October 13–15, Bastianini will not be back on the grid until the Australian Grand Prix, October 20–22, Ducati later confirmed.

The race was quickly restarted. It had been clear all weekend that despite Bagnaia’s inspired riding in the Saturday sprint (he strongly repelled Viñales’ challenges for second) the Aprilias had a big grip advantage. Sirocco winds from North Africa regularly dump layers of very fine dust on Spain—just like a rubber researcher sprinkling fine powder over a friction surface to kill the molecular component of rubber traction to allow isolated study of the hysteretic component. Grip improved from Friday as Michelin rubber “paved over” the dusty asphalt, but it was never good.

Bastianini had a successful surgery on his left ankle and left hand, but will miss the next three rounds, according to Ducati. (MotoGP/)

In the sprint, it was Espargaró first, teammate Viñales third, with Bagnaia between. You know something’s up when someone puts two seconds between himself and Bagnaia in such a short event, as Espargaró did. What is that something? Aprilia team manager Massimo Rivola realistically said, “The RS-GP has characteristics that make it very competitive on some tracks.”

This is one. The Barcelona circuit has long, fast corners that favor bikes with a lot of mechanical grip, while devaluing the super acceleration and braking of the Ducatis and KTMs.

Martín said, “The Aprilias were unbeatable this weekend. I tried [my] best but [with] the Ducati we struggled to turn the bike, get the power down to the ground. The last laps it seemed like I was riding a Supersport.”

Bezzecchi’s view? “The Aprilias are really very competitive, while we suffer from little grip at the rear and no traction.”

Thumbs-up after a scary incident. Francesco Bagnaia was taken to the medical center, and later, the general hospital, for examination. Luckily, no fractures were found. (Ducati/)

In rider-speak, “grip” refers to what it takes to go around corners, while “traction” is what’s required for acceleration.

Bagnaia had earlier said the Aprilias have “traction on the corner exit, which is where [they] make the difference.”

Joan Mir (Repsol Honda) said after the sprint, “I brake, I go in with the others—no problem. But the moment that I open the throttle, I stay in the same place. And they just go.”

The Aprilias just went. Where is the grip and traction coming from? I suspect that they have focused on developing corner speed, as Yamaha did in its best years with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. Because this requires making the chassis more flexible laterally, allowing it to act as suspension when the bike is at high lean angle, it detracts from the stiffness required for high braking stability. The more flexible the chassis is made laterally, the more it can follow the ups-and-downs of the pavement surface in corners, narrowing the constant variation in tire loadings that a wavy or choppy surface causes.

Jorge Martín found it hard to manage traction in the same way as the Aprilia riders, but still managed a strong third-place result on Sunday. (MotoGP/)

The reason Casey Stoner began to lose the front when Ducati deployed its extremely stiff carbon chassis in 2009 can be seen from a graph of tire grip versus applied load. This curve slopes upward, softens to a hilltop, and then falls. To achieve high corner speed the rider must try to push both tires to their “hilltops” but on a laterally stiff chassis the applied load is varying so widely as the tires rise and fall over irregularities that it’s dangerous to push to the peak. Grip will be lost during the low-load part of each variation, warning the rider “You are at the limit.” Trying to push on regardless results in slides that warn of gravel in your future.

With a flexible chassis, tire load variation is less, allowing the rider to push tire operating points closer to the “hilltops” of the tires’ grip-versus-load curve and thus reap the benefit of higher grip.

The result at Barcelona was a top five crowded with Aprilias.

At Misano next weekend the Ducatis and KTMs will be back in their element, braking and accelerating as they do so well.

Aprilia’s Massimo Rivola said, “The RS-GP has characteristics that make it very competitive on some tracks.” After this weekend, it’s safe to say Catalunya is certainly one of them. (MotoGP/)

Thus we can view the present “strengths of the powers” as high-level gambling as to which general type of bike—the corner-speed type or the point-and-shoot type—yields maximum points over a season. Marc Márquez in his winning seasons made corner speed look downright obsolete, and at present, Ducati is working in a similar way, but has included improvements in turning ability. That is something Andrea Dovizioso advocated for so long.

Meanwhile, the two former MotoGP powerhouses, Yamaha and Honda, have lost their original sharp focus—Honda’s on point-and-shoot, Yamaha’s on corner speed—such that neither has advantages in the present series.

The riders are told the folks at their factories are “working hard” to come up with improvements, but so far there seems to be a shortage of ideas. Technicians and engineers can test lots of things, draw graphs, and write learned reports to be handed up to top management, but it’s hard to move forward without ideas.

The highlight of Brad Binder’s weekend was a fourth in Saturday’s sprint. Binder joined the restarted race on Sunday, but ultimately retired from a technical issue. (KTM/)

Suzuki on its best days in MotoGP appeared to have made some progress toward a bike of broader capability. Where has that knowledge gone?

We must also remember that factories have a history of cherishing their own design traditions more than victory itself. Think of Honda’s “years in the wilderness,” 2004 to midseason 2010. Or Ducati’s years of doldrums after 2007. Or the succession of Yamahas that failed to produce rear grip. This is how we do things, and that’s how we intend to keep on doing them…

Result? Years of blowing through millions of dollars just to be marked “present.”

Yamaha (and Honda) has yet to find an answer to its problems. (MotoGP/)

Meanwhile, some riders are resorting to extremes such as the shoulder-dragging experiments of Martín and Fabio Quartararo. In video or stills these riders have gone as far as they can in the direction of pushing the bike upward by, in effect, “lying on the track.” This is side-horse gymnastics at its most intense! Sixty-seven years ago John Surtees was doing this to a lesser degree on the MV Agusta 500-4 as a means of getting onto the “meat” of the tire contour in order to accelerate. If he didn’t do this, Surtees said in his little book, the result was spin, i.e., “staying in the same place,” as Mir put it.

Let’s hope the bruised and the injured are soon whole and healthy. Onward to Misano.

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