The first Misano MotoGP race this year (there is another next weekend) saw Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha) take his first win in the premier class in convincing style.
Well behind Morbidelli, a podium battle played out. On the last lap, Joan Mir (Suzuki) dove underneath Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) to nab third place away from the Italian at his home race. Finishing second was Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati). Bagnaia still needs a crutch to walk as he is recovering from an injury suffered earlier this year.
Coming into the race, Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) was leading the championship points, but his DNF today handed that lead to Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati), who finished seventh. Follow this link to full race results.
Franco was a dominant force in Moto2, so have been a little surprised that it’s taken him so long to find his groove in MotoGP. With a bit of experience and the confidence that comes with a win, his competition may be in for some pain. I was also really impressed with Bagnaia. He did things on that Ducati at Misano that no one thought possible.If he qualifies better next time around it’ll be another fun race. Also, Joan Mir is getting his legs. Another uber-talent that’ll keep us glued to our screens. Best race season ever. Moto2 is downright boring in comparison.
Spare a thought for us impoverished MotoGP fans in the UK who refuse to have anything to do with BT, who bought all the rights a few years back, and don’t have great broadband speed.
We’ve enjoyed TV highlight coverage (actually all the main race) a day after, broadcast by the free channel Quest, but for the second time this season they didn’t carry this recent race. I think BT are flexing their muscles again, and with-holding the coverage.
The good news is that Quest are listing this next weekends race. It’s anyone’s guess as to who will win!
Oh dear; I whinged too soon.The Misano MotoGP was broadcast by Quest one day later than scheduled, with no advance notice. Good job my recorder was on the ball, or I’d have missed a good race!
As you were…
Can you not get the Dorna package Nick? From a concerned fellow fan on the other side of the pond.
Thanks for your concern, Motoman. When the BBC lost F1, they swapped to MotoGP and it was great live coverage, but BT scooped the lot so since then I’ve been content to watch highlights free, and spend my money on my bikes. Now is probably not the best time to consider buying into Dorna with the season half-gone, but I ought to budget for a videopass in 2021, if we’re all still here!
So I just bought the Dorna package myself after doing the same as you for years. Now, I’ll hock the cat to pay for my annual subscription…. 🙂
Rumor has it that there are other available viewing options. I took Dorna up on their “free” off-season viewing option, but they were so aggressive about not even making cancellation available without jumping through multiple hoops that I lost confidence in them.
The product itself was fine. They shouldn’t have to be jerks to keep customers.
The price was more than I wanted to pay, but probably wasn’t that bad. IMHO, it’s better to spend my money on my bikes and keep the cats. 🙂
Had to apologize after the cat read the part about the cat….
But seriously, I think the Dorna package is a great deal and the coverage and camera work (on-bike, various vantage points and the like) are well worth the asking price.
Last I checked, and fortunately it has been a while, every one of the 25 or so bones that I have broken healed naturally in six weeks, except my ankle which has stayed broken for 19 years. A look at the dates of the old stories here seems to indicate that Marc Marquez, superhero who can win races while beating up Chuck Norris and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, got injured eight weeks ago and completed a second “successfull” surgery to pin his arm six weeks ago tomorrow.
They pinned the arm to get him out faster in the first place didn’t they? I’m getting a powerful wiff of fail here.
Different breaks, different bones. The bone he broke takes a long time to heal (most bones do not fully heal in 6 weeks). I was really surprised he even tried to ride.
Meanwhile, one of yesterday’s podium finishers has a leg that’s still badly broken enough that he used a crutch to get to & from his bike + the podium.
And what Marquez does is sports at the highest level. It takes more to succeed than to have bones that are not broken. He needs physiotherapy and hard training to come back.
There is a sweet-spot between FBoring and NASCRAP. In FBoring, one team and driver is completely dominate, every year. In the pseudo-competition of NASCRAP, the “rules” allow everyone the chance to win while preventing anyone from rising above the herd of good old boy socialists.
I loved the historical dominance of MM93 in 2019. Did I need to see that happen in consecutive years? That is an emphatic, no! Will it be interesting to see if MM93 can reassert himself?, absolutely. Will he ever be able to repeat his increment of 2019 to the rest of the field? I think that is unlikely. MotoGP is playing out nicely for competition and entertainment.
I miss Marquez, Pedrosa and Lorenzo
Great opportunity for rookies and guys that don’t normally sniff a podium to do well.
Vinales is a let down. Don’t know whether it is him or his bike. He’s great in preseason, practice and qualifying, mediocre in the races. Quatararo seems lost all of a sudden.
i thought P Espargaro and Binder would do better.
Never seen a season when the factory teams struggled so much.
My wife was pulling for Rossi to get his 200th, she was dssapointed when Mir passed him on the last lap. I was pulling for Rins but Mir is a good consolation.
Congrats to Morbidelli, Bagnaia and Mir. A new generation.
What’s say we throw Stoner into the “I miss list” while we’re at it Mickey. Agree with all the rest.
Motoman..I almost threw him in there, he was a heck of a rider but truth is I never cared for him personally, but you’re right as far as riders go, he deserves to be in that list. Thanks.
DrT, maybe the your ideas of leaderless racing could be expanded. Every win results in a 1-race ban. Two second-place finishes – 1-race ban. Three thirds – 1-race ban. Setting a fastest lap during a race – long-lap penalty. Pole position – start next race from pit lane.
Just think of all the things that could be done to make sure the best riders and the best teams do not dominate the sport.
Meh, don’t be silly, Fred. You are employing a reductio ad absurdum fallacy. That’s a non-starter. Dorna already sets the rules to encourage parity and greater balance between teams and riders. All I’m simply pointing out is the much more entertaining racing when you don’t have a 6-time champion on the grid whose only way of winning is to ride well over the limit. Talented? For sure. Entertaining championship? Nah. This year is MUCH better in my view, and I’m pretty sure most fans will agree. But, if you like top-heavy winner-take-all dominance where the outcome is a mostly foregone conclusion race after race, well, you’re entitled to your preference, I guess, and you’ll always have F1 to watch. Lol! 🤣
I quit watching F1 shortly after Ayrton died, and have seen nothing since to motivate me to go back.
You may be authorized to speak for “most fans”, but I am not. Personally, I do not consider the racing to be improved by the absence of the best riders. What your “most fans” don’t seem to realize is just how much they are confirming that Marc is clearly the best rider of our day. Honda appears lost without him. Other riders are good at a track or two, but Marc pretty much was able to win on every track, in every condition.
I did not start out as a Marc Marquez fan, but his skill, positive attitude, and hard work have been quite impressive. It makes no difference to me if Marquez wins or not, but every race without him in it begs the obvious question of whether the winner is just the “best of the rest”. For a day.
Just to clarify, Fred, I’m not trying to speak for others; just offering my best guess that they are enjoying the close exciting racing and utterly unpredictable season more this year than any in recent memory. Also, it’s not absence of “best riders” (plural), but the absence of one single dominant rider that has vastly improved the racing and the entertainment, in my opinion.
Your comment that “Other riders are good at a track or two, but Marc pretty much was able to win on every track, in every condition“ is precisely the problem and indirectly helps make my argument. There is nothing that can be done about it, of course, except for other riders to step up and beat him once he comes back, and I’m not holding my breath on that. But I will surely enjoy the racing MUCH more while he is out if the season continues like this.
I can understand what you’re saying. It is more exciting not knowing who will win each weekend. I’ve certainly enjoyed this season so far for that reason. But I also agree with Fred in that the winners this season are the best of the rest. Sure MM doesn’t win every single race, just most of them. But since we know that, I just focus on the race for second place for entertainment but focus on MM for my own education. I’ve learned a lot of technique from watching these guys over the decades.
MM will be back hungrier than ever and likely destroy everyone in his usual fashion when he comes back and it will be back to a predictable result. But I’m ok with that because this is the pinnacle of racing. The best is supposed to win. And MM’s time will come when he starts losing a step. Father time beats everyone.
I agree with Bob. Just like Rossi who was very dominant in his time, MM will lose a few steps as time catches up.It’s still a pleasure to watch Rossi race, but he is a 4th, 5th 6th place rider these days with the occasional rare 3rd place podium. You are rooting for a man just to make a podium, who once utterly dominated MotoGP. Happens to the best of them. Will happen to MM someday as well.
MM is VR a decade ago.
Every limit presupposes something beyond it.
MM knows this, and it was a lesson pounded on me by the really fast guys when I was a racer.
dropping it twice=25 points!
I have to agree with DrT. I’d much rather see a close race with two or three riders battling at the front, than see one guy win every week by a large margin. I think there may be two primary types of fans. The first is a fan of a specific rider and the second is a fan of the race itself. It’s not a question of which fan is right and which is wrong, it’s just a question of how you choose to view it. I loved MotoGP back in the day when Rossi and Gibernau were battling it out every week, with the race nearly always in the balance until the last lap.
NASCAR takes close racing a step too far. There’s nothing fun about watching half the race ran under caution. Fortunately, in MotoGP, there’s a heftier physical price to be paid for crashing, which helps make it more exciting.
A guy could easily think he’s looking at the results of a rain event.
In an otherwise tragic and sad year in human history, MotoGP racing is the odd happy anomaly of 2020. What a great race, exciting to watch right to the end! If it was not already obvious to everyone how good the racing in MotoGP could be by the simple removal of one overweighted “variable” in the equation, Misano’s outcome should remove all doubt. Balance prevails and the result is elegant. Yet another new winner, another new rider on the podium, three different manufacturers represented, and all in the context of close racing, but not over the limit riding, and where the rider finishing in P7 ends up in the championship lead. Feel gutted for Fabio, and just a little sad for Rossi, but that Suzuki has GOT to be the sweetest bike on the grid. Casey Stoner put his foot in his mouth again last week, imo, claiming the championship lacks a “true leader” on the grid, as if this were a bad thing. Oh contrare! May we have many more years of “leaderless” racing in MotoGP long after the pandemic is a distant memory.
I think this would be a season of “what if”. I don’t think MM would’ve dominated like he has in the past. Track records continue to fall and the Honda is even worse compared to the other bikes, if the other rider’s results are anything to go by. Considering that last point, maybe his crash was inevitable.
We may never know for sure, but the evidence, as opposed to proof, is that Marc carved up the field after running off the track, before his crash. The crash happened when he backed off the attack slightly, and he would have been back on the bike the next race had the bike not taken and unlucky bounce into his arm.
Even with the Honda being quite a handful, the evidence (not proof) is there that Marc would be leading the championship by rather large margins. 2020 will be known as the year that Mark didn’t race, not as the year that other riders proved better.
Whoever wins will have earned the trophy, as all a person can do is the best they can under the circumstances they face.
I’d have to agree about MM. He’s struggled with his bike before and managed to wrangle it.
There are so many other variables this year, too. When MM normally dominates, the cast of characters in his wake are usually pretty stable but this year? KTM’s up front, both Satellite Yamaha’s winning, Jack Miller up front? It’s really wild.