The weather has flummoxed people, especially the weatherman, from times immemorial. This season the MotoGP paddock has been more affected than most because on top of so many tyre choices from Michelin, setup work needs to be done for both dry and wet because invariably the conditions change. This is extremely frustrating from a rider or crew point of view, but it sure makes for some great racing.
Honda made some changes to its motorcycle over the summer break, and now it has gotten even better under braking – something that it was already strong at. As such, the two riders who use the front brake the most, Marc Marquez and Cal Crutchlow, have had a strong showing in first and fifth, despite both falling at the same time thanks to leaking fluid from Bautista’s motorcycle. Pedrosa is his quiet consistent self in third place.
Yamaha has come back from the summer break with enough new chassis to go around, and Rossi’s results speak for themselves. If it wasn’t for Marquez’s late charge, he’d have had pole position. Vinales doesn’t like the latest iteration of the Yamaha chassis, and the results speak for themselves – seventh isn’t the ideal starting point for him. This is a very interesting dilemma for Yamaha (again). Both riders are equally capable of winning a championship, but both prefer different development directions, so which should they pick?
Ducati has debuted a new fairing design which at first look doesn’t quite seem to follow the spirit of the new regulations that ban winglets. Lorenzo found it to his advantage, and climbed to sixth place on the grid for the start, thanks to the winglets. Desmo Dovi, on the other hand, chose to stick to the previous fairing, and still managed fourth place in qualifying – our money is on Dovizioso as a dark horse for the riders’ championship if he keeps this sort of form up to go with his consistency. The third GP17 ridden by Petrucci also had winglets this weekend, and he qualified eighth.
Johann Zarco hasn’t quite yet got the start to the second half of the season as he did the first bit, qualifying in tenth place behind Alvaro Bautista. The rest of the field is led by Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia in eleventh. The Suzukis have done exceptionally badly this time around, with Rins the first of the two in thirteenth place. The KTM team is back to its original standings after some good progress in the first half of the season, but they’ve brought a lot of more parts to test, so we can expect more progress as the season goes on.
The list of riders from 11th place onwards is as below:
11. Aleix Esparagaro, Aprilia
12. Loris Baz, Avintia Ducati
13. Alex Rins, Suzuki
14. Jonas Folger, Tech 3 Yamaha
15. Jack Miller, Marc VDS Honda
16. Hector Barbera, Avintia Ducati
17. Karel Abraham, Aspar Ducati
18. Pol Espargaro, KTM
19. Bradley Smith, KTM
20. Andrea Iannone, Suzuki
21. Tito Rabat, Marc VDS Honda
22. Sam Lowes, Aprilia
23. Scott Redding, Pramac Ducati
