Was the San Marino GP Really a Snoozer?

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Jorge Martín led every single lap in Misano on Saturday and Sunday. (MotoGP/)

“Not a very exciting race” was a common comment Sunday afternoon. Jorge Martín, long respected for fast single laps through practice and qualifying, lapped at impressively constant 1:32s on Misano’s high-grip asphalt. He was opposed by injured men with a lot to lose—Francesco Bagnaia, the point leader (now it’s Bagnaia with 283 points versus Martín at 247 and Marco Bezzecchi third with 218), rode into third with a painful leg hematoma and other evidence of last week’s crash. Also managing pain and limited energy was Bezzecchi, second.

On Bagnaia’s heels and working hard to displace him from the podium was Dani Pedrosa, age 37, considerably unsung in his racing years but now a test rider for KTM. Just get out there on that promising-but-untried rad new carbon chassis and put that model into the top five against men 10 and more years your junior. Aprilia’s Maverick Viñales was fifth.

Martín said, “…I felt a lot of pressure from the Italian riders…

“I was hearing their engines but I was calm.

“We were not pushing a lot on the first laps—I was trying to keep some margin…to keep the body fresh.

“As soon as I saw 0.3 [on my board] then I started to push, full gas, like quali, risking a lot on the braking and a lot of front lock[ing], but it was worth it as I was [soon] up to 2.3.”

Riders have found that adhering to Michelin’s tire pressure rule (a minimum of 1.88 bar [27.6 psi] for the front tire) can lead to grip loss whose first symptom is front wheel locking during braking.

Bagnaia’s hope was to make top five in both sprint and race, so as to limit loss of championship points. “I tried to stay with Martín for as long as possible, but…the fact that I was riding only with my arms—and the front tire pressure—didn’t allow me to do it.

Francesco Bagnaia kept the point loss to a minimum at Misano. (Ducati/)

He described saving himself: “I just tried to breathe a bit and have a bonus of performance in the last two or three laps so as not to give a chance to Pedrosa to overtake me.

“I only lost 14 points instead of a possible 37.”

Not exciting?

Bezzecchi said, “I tried, but Jorge was very fast. I started well and I was then in the slipstream for a long time.”

Slipstreaming another bike exposes your front tire to the heat plume from its 280 hp exhaust gas plus the hot air from its coolers—in effect you are behind a 500 hp furnace.

He continued: “I struggled on the front tire and the bike became very physical to handle.

“I overtook Pecco and perhaps the adrenaline effect ended there (hand pain had become a hard distraction).”

On Saturday the sprint finish order previewed Sunday’s top four. Bezzecchi had said, “At the beginning I felt incredible. With the adrenaline from the start, the painkillers…

“I felt great and was catching Jorge.

“I started to have a bit of pain, especially in the change of direction (which at speed requires maximum muscular effort on the bars).”

Marco Bezzecchi also had to race through pain, finishing second. (Mooney VR46/)

Bagnaia after the sprint was realistic: “Jorge has an advantage from every point of view. He is very fast, has great consistency, and is not injured. He is at a higher level and it will be difficult to beat him (on Sunday).

“I struggled in the right-hand corners and on this circuit they all turn that way (10 rights, six lefts).

“Furthermore when the bike started to shake it was difficult for me to stop those movements.”

Several riders noted problems with front-rear balance on Misano’s high-grip surface—so different from the week before at Barcelona. Indeed Bagnaia suggested requiring a specified level of grip: “What I’d say to the Safety Commission? There must be a mandatory level of grip.

“Barcelona is a disaster.

“It’s unsafe. A little mistake: you crash.”

Martín’s consistency at speed has made him second in the championship, but the grid is heavy with men who have won races and will again, on bikes that can take them there. Contrast this with the 500 two-stroke GP era, when there were one, two, or at very most three riders who might win—a series in which Mick Doohan was champion five years in a row. Winners of the 500 class were hailed as supermen, uniquely able to ride what were realistically very bad motorcycles in the terms of the present era. Their explosive torque delivery—even with torque-smoothing devices such as variable exhaust timing, water injection, and electronic torque controls—prevented mortals from riding them well.

Bagnaia’s body language clearly showed how he felt at Misano. (Ducati/)

Today, by contrast, we have 10 or 12 “supermen,” all capable of winning, all on factory-engineered racebikes.

Some call for rules to shape racing into what fans imagine it to be: Daredevils oblivious to danger, ignoring the need for championship points, outbraking, trading paint, carving under from flag to flag.

Radicals cautiously imply that mandating bad tires or requiring brakes to fade out after 15 or 20 laps can magically bring the fussy position-changing fans feel they are owed. Yet having achieved this long-sought parity of talent and equipment outbraking has become less common precisely because skills are so equal. Especially if rising front tire pressure is making wheel locking more frequent. Riders, knowing that contract renewal depends on championship results, must manage risk.

This makes overtaking others more difficult, and riders know it even if fans and brand managers do not. That’s why riders make such efforts to qualify on the front row and to be first into turn 1 in sprint and final. Rider after rider speaks of being stuck downfield in a group after a bad-luck shunt at the start, and having to waste laps getting free—laps during which the leader or leaders may move out of reach.

It was grand to see Dani Pedrosa, immune to time and retirement, in the lead group. It was grand to see that innovation (in the form of the KTM carbon composite chassis Pedrosa rode) continues to originate from more than one European constructor. In the Monday test following the Misano final, Aleix Espargaró rode Aprilia’s new carbon chassis.

Dani Perdrosa was the people’s champ at Misano. (KTM/)

He said, “It’s really, really different.

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say but that the new frame is lighter and I felt also that it is a bit more flexible, more soft, which is not really what the engineers were trying to do.”

Ideally, since carbon fibers are a directional material, it should be practicable to design in flex in directions where it is wanted, and forbid it in other directions. The difficulty of separating desirable from undesirable flex has made it challenging to design one bike that can be ridden well by both corner-speed and point-and-shoot riders. The chassis stiffness P&S riders need for braking stability and instant turn-in conflicts with the suppleness required to keep tires in contact with pavement in long, fast corners. The softness that generates mechanical grip for corner-speed riders confuses point-and-shootists, making them feel the front end is “moving around” and about to close.

It has surely occurred to anyone who works with these bikes that lateral movement of the steering head and its supporting structure could be switched on or off by coupling it to the engine’s cylinder head through a small hydraulic damper. Its motion could be permitted or forbidden by a valve closed by front brake line pressure. You can be sure the Europeans have no shortage of ideas or willingness to build and test them.

Pedrosa was issued a front tire pressure warning for having ridden more than 50 percent of a lap with pressure below 1.88 bar.

He said, “Maybe because I was riding on my own I didn’t bring up enough pressure. Because yesterday I was higher and actually the feeling was better yesterday than today.”

Part of the decision as to what pressure to put into the tires depends upon whether the rider is more likely to be on his own or in a hot drafting group.

Speaking of the rear tire in the final, Pedrosa also said, “I had a few problems in the first laps because the rear tire wasn’t heating up quick enough for me, especially on the left side, and I had a few scares.”

Marc Márquez rode a more measured race and scored his highest finish of the season. (Repsol Honda/)

Marc Márquez’s new method of riding at less than desperation level bore fruit this time as a seventh-place finish. He asked, “How do you tame a beast? If it’s a wild beast, maybe you can try it with blows. They tamed me with blows—a bone, another bone, a rib.

“I was doing something wrong and what I was doing wrong was that I was taking too many risks.”

In the Monday Misano test both Márquez and Fabio Quartararo tried new bikes from Honda and Yamaha, respectively. Nothing revolutionary was revealed. For what it’s worth, in those Monday sessions Quartararo was sixth quickest and Márquez 14th.

Next come the flyaway events, beginning with the Indian round in two weeks.

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