Qualifying for the opening round of the 2022 MotoGP championship was completed earlier today in Qatar. Two riders who were standout rookies last year rode their satellite Ducatis to qualify for the first two positions on the grid for tomorrow’s GP. Jorge Martin will be on pole with Enea Bastianini next to him and Marc Marquez (Honda) in the third position.
Marquez, known for drafting other riders during qualifying, obtained his lap time after drafting Ducati’s Pecco Bagnaia, who will line-up ninth tomorrow. Defending champion Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) will be on the 4th row of the grid tomorrow after qualifying 11th.
For full results of today’s qualifying, take a look here. You can find additional details on the MotoGP site.
Well that’s odd. Buell was set to unveil a couple of prototypes, a 185hp touring and a 175hp dirt bike, yesterday at noon in Daytona. I searched it up on the Google this morning and got bupkis. Those guys get zilch for press and don’t seem quick to update their website.
We used to eat at the Mexican joint in Mukwonago (Dos Amigos) that was popular with Buell and the gang quite often, back when I lived in Wisconsin. So I try to keep tabs on what is going on under the Buell tent. Buell is no longer associated with Buell Motorcycles and they are now made in Michigan. But old habits…
Well, here it is, for what it’s worth. Dig the extreme rake on the dirt bike. They have been racing hill climbs, which is about the only use for 175hp dirt bikes.
The touring bike is little more than an old schuell Buell model without the Harley engine. I believe the Buell engine is sourced from Rotax, which is not a bad thing. Toss on a set of panniers and a steam punk headlight and windscreen and I don’t thing the touring market going to feel very threatened. Though I wonder if they will try to enter it in those bagger races. If there isn’t a rule against some aspect of the bike there will be very shortly.
https://ride-ct.com/buell-shows-off-new-models-that-reach-into-dirt-riding-and-touring/
Entering a Buell into that bagger series is a very bad idea. Remember the flak they got for entering a super sport 600cc-level series?
The current Buell “business” is a liquidation effort.
Isn’t this article about GP qualifying?
Can’t figure that one out. Does Binder’s family pay in big? Brad is a fine rider but not an important enough rider who could influence a team to bring on his underperforming brother.
Edit: This was supposed to be a reply to VLJ’s post..
I read that he comes with the most “financial backing” relative to the other options the team had. Whether that is in the form of family wealth or sponsors, I don’t know.
Why should a factory as large as Yamaha is care about a rider’s financial backing? Yamaha is a much larger manufacturer than Ducati or Aprilia, neither of which are choosing substandard riders who can buy their way onto the team, Karel Abraham style.
Yamaha is in this to win races, advance the brand, and sell motorcycles, aren’t they? They only have four rider seats. What are they doing auctioning off one of them?
While Dovisioso works for Yamaha if I remember correctly, Binder the Younger is not a contracted Yamaha rider and is therefore not paid by Yamaha.
If Yamaha cared as much as you suggest, then perhaps the question you should be asking is, “Why doesn’t Yamaha provide their satellite team with a solid rider?” The truth is, Yamaha just doesn’t invest much into their satellite team. Tech3 was a good outfit that had solid support from sponsors, but never much from Yamaha. Now there is a Mickey Mouse effort running the satellite team. I’d have to fact check myself, but I don’t think Yamaha’s satellite team has ever won a MotoGP race, at least not in the modern era. Now, even Ducati’s third tier satellite has a win.
We’ve seen this before. Company size doesn’t always translate directly to marketing segment investment. Honda has famously under spent in MX racing and Superbike racing for many years, despite being the largest manufacturer in the sport.
Yamaha must not be willing to invest much outside of their factory effort. Honda has floundered a bit recently too. I don’t get it. It’s negative marketing to field losing bikes.
I don’t know if the practice today is as common as it was in the past, but I remember reading articles 15 years ago or so that title sponsor deals for the factory teams sometimes included clauses that limit how much support satellite and private teams could receive from the factory. They wanted their millions putting their logos on the podium.
There is also the philosophy that it doesn’t matter how many losing bikes you have on the grid so long as one of them wins the grand prize.
I’m just thinking out loud here, but perhaps this could involve a cultural component as well. The Japanese companies can’t imagine possibly losing to a satellite effort while the Italians are like, “How many Ducatis will they let us put on the grid? As long as a Ducati wins, we win!”
Franco Morbidelli won three MotoGP races in 2020 as a Yamaha satellite rider. Riding a year-old 2019 M1, Franco finished the season in second place, only thirteen points behind the 2020 World Champion, Joan Mir.
Also in 2020, Fabio Quartararo won another three races as a Yamaha satellite rider. He rode a 2020 full factory-spec M1 to eighth place in the championship.
All in all, with the lone exception of Darryn Binder, Yamaha has invested quite heavily in their satellite team’s riders: Fabio and Frankie, then Frankie and Valentino freaking Rossi, then Rossi and Andrea Dovizioso, and now Dovi and Binder.
Totally forgot about those wins in 2020. Brain lapse I guess. But I still contend that Yamaha doesn’t invest in their satellite team like they should. Fabio wasn’t a Yamaha rider when he was with Petronas, and I don’t think (could be wrong) Franco was either. They were recruited and paid by the team. The fact that Franco performed as well as he did on an old bike is a testament to the rider (and the weirdness of the 2020 season), not Yamaha’s support of the satellite team. In fact, Hervé Poncharal directly said Tech3 quit Yamaha for KTM because of a lack of factory support even when they had a rider (Zarco) that showed great promise.
Good investment in a satellite team looks like Tech3 KTM or Lucio’s Honda squad. Formidable investment in a satellite team looks like Pramac. Yamaha’s satellite team has never looked like any of those teams. Always old bikes, always a lack of technical and financial support. So much so that Morbidelli said he was shocked that they started giving him chassis updates mid-season. But that was probably just because he was showing the most consistency.
When Tech3 KTM lost Red Bull sponsorship, KTM took it upon themselves to help find a new sponsor for Tech3 or provide the funding themselves if need be. Yamaha pretty much just stood by and watched as their satellite team fell apart.
Jeremy, be careful with the use of “always.”
The Petronas satellite team had full factory/current-spec bikes for Fabio, and also for Valentino. Those guys were not riding old and/or inferior equipment. As satellites go, that team invested more than KTM, or Ducati has with their bikes and riders, nearly all of whom are riding year-old bikes, if not two-year-old bikes. The KTM and Ducati satellite riders are also not being paid nearly as much as Fabio, Frankie, Valentino, and Dovi.
It’s doubtful that Alex Marquez and Taka Nakagami are in any better straights than the Yamaha guys, either. Taka has never podiumed, and Alex is a perennial backmarker despite his two fluke podiums at the end of 2020.
Darryn Binder is an outlier. His situation is much more similar to that of the lower-tier satellite guys on the other teams, but, for Yamaha, he’s the only one. The other Yamaha riders have traditionally been on higher-spec machinery than their satellite counterparts, with higher salaries.
The bikes for Fabio and Rossi was a measure they took to help mitigate a delicate political situation: they needed to retain Fabio while somehow keeping Rossi happy. This was a move to benefit the factory team that just happened to have a benefit to the satellite team. It was not a show of support (IMO) to the satellite effort.
Taka’s and Alex’s lack of results are a function of the bike and their riding ability. The team actually gets a good bit of support from Honda in terms of updates and technical support from Honda.
But point taken… “Always” is too strong a word.
“Nothing was wrong. That’s the problem.” – Fabio Quartararo
Yep, going to be a long year for the Tuning Fork boys.
Oh, and as if we didn’t already know this, but Darryn Binder really has no business being in MotoGP. Seven years in Moto3—who does that? Moto3 is supposed to be a development class, not a career—and only a single victory, including none in 2021. Only six podiums in seven seasons. How on earth does that warrant a bump out of Moto3, past Moto2, straight to MotoGP?
Thanks to him and his late crash, his yellow flag cost Zarco an advancement into Q2, where he almost certainly would have ended up no worse than the second row, and probably on the front row. Instead, he starts on row five.
Good job, nepotism.
Agree completely with your post. The satellite Yamaha team is a joke compared to a couple of years ago. Binder wasn’t even good in Moto3 and Dovi looks like his best days are behind him. I feel bad for Fabio and Franco. They know that every Q session is life or death.