The Thailand MotoGP race today was held on a wet track that slowly developed a dry line as the race progressed. KTM’s Miguel Olivera won the race after a battle with Jack Miller (Ducati) who finished second.
Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) finished third today and pulled to within two points of Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) in the championship standings. Quartararo had a miserable day that started with being pushed wide in the first corner, falling back deep into the pack, and being unable to see through the spray thrown by the bikes ahead for several laps. He eventually finished out of the points in 17th place.
Next stop for the riders is Australia. For full results of today’s race, take a look here. You can find additional details on the MotoGP site.
I think that some of you guys are missing the part where Bagnaia’s team mate, a guy named Jack Miller, finished ahead of him. What you could be witnessing on Zarco’s part could be either friendship, courtesy or a little of both. Zarco’s season is pretty much in the bag. He’s probably confident that he will finish ahead of Binder and Bagnaia has Q, a known tough cookie, on his hands. You guys need to remember that under all that leather and armor is a living breathing human being.
Courtesy does exist. Even I, a guy’s who rides selected events, sign up for the toughest classes I can get into so as not to possibly upset the championship aspirations of the top riders in that class, unless I happen to have game for all of them. And I try to know who is who before the race starts.
I did screw up once. And boy was that guy ever angry with me. I cost him a set of tire warmers that he had his heart set on. I almost bought him a set just to mello him out. But he carried on a little longer than I had patience for. Courtesy is something that everyone needs to ba aware of.
Nope.
Jack is still in the championship race, Zarco isn’t. Zarco is riding for Ducati next year, Jack isn’t.
It was straight calculations on part of the reiders with Ducati providing the pressure. Zarco chose not to overtake Pecco purely because of Ducati’s wishes.
These guys are races and winners, courtesy is something you can show when you’ve already won the race.
Glad to see it wasn’t just me that saw the obvious no pass from Zarco. Passing Marquez with ease, and then decides to just follow Pecco, this was quite disturbing for me to watch, this is not my idea of racing, don’t like to see this happening. I understand Ducati’s past failures to win this Championship and is willing to do just about anything now to win. Really do not think they or their rider’s care, as long as they Win Baby Win! Not sure what can be done about this, maybe someone out there has some ideas?
Basic thing about modern MotoGP bikes is that those things look much Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts bikes except Suzuki. May be for now. Aerodynamics.
I hated everything about that race. Nothing about it was enjoyable, least of all Zarco refusing to pass Bagnaia, replicating what Enea did for Pecco last week.
This is the problem with one against eight.
I truly do not understand what Ducati management is doing. I truly do not understand why it seems nobody is upset at how Ducati Corse management is trying to manipulate this championship. I am livid at the fact that Paolo, Davide, Gigi and Claudio are allowed to have influence over any rider on the grid just because they happen to be riding a Ducati. Everyone keeps talking about team orders but that isn’t what is happening. It is MANUFACTURER orders. And when a manufacturer provides one third of the bikes on the grid and feels they have a right to tell all the riders on their bikes how to race we have a serious conflict of interest not to mention a loss of integrity of the championship. Tardozzi’s in the Gresini box scolding Enea for trying to win a race, Mooney’s boss Nieto freely admits they will help Pecco because he is on a Ducati and he was part of the VR46 academy, the entire Ducati Corse management team is in the Pramac box after the race kissing butt and thanking Zarco for not trying to pass Pecco when he clearly had the pace to do so. WTF has happened to MotoGP??? If championships are going to be determined by whatever manufacturer has the most bikes on the grid coupled with which riders rode together on a team earlier in theirs careers combined with which nationality a certain rider is on a certain team then LET ME OFF THIS BUS!!!! Kudos to Enea and Jack for not simply pulling over to let Pecco pass them. I long for the days when even riders on the same team (let alone brand of bike) asked for no quarter and no quarter was given. I am a gnat’s a** away from canceling my subscription to MotoGP.com and switching to World Superbike. My only regret would be missing Moto3 races which are by far more entertaining than MotoGP, and, at least from my perspective, not having the results controlled from behind the curtain. I like Pecco a lot. He is a great rider if still prone to some rookie mistakes. But does he really want one third of the grid being ordered to help him win the championship because he had a dismal start to the season??? I will watch the last 3 races as objectively as I can. But what I have seen lately is unbecoming of a true world championship series. If I’m the only one that sees things this way, then so be it. But I will put my wallet where my mouth is.
These last 4 races have been pretty bad for FQ. While Bagnaia did DNF last week, he’s scored solidly every other week. If FQ doesn’t turn his around he’ll be lucky to finish the season in 2nd.
It doesn’t look good for him. Ducatis mobbed the podium last year in Valencia. He can likely go well at Malaysia, but then so can the Ducatis. Consensus seems to be that the Yamaha has potential at Philip Island, but I’m not sold on that. He needed to score points badly in Thailand.
Looks like five guys had the secret sauce and left the rest of the pack for dead.
Either the article has a typo or someone got a late penalty. The results have Q in 17th, still out of the points.
Marini either binned it and rejoined or hates wet races.
I didn’t think Bags had a prayer. Yet there he is two points out. Q is something like human after all.
It’s nice to see KTM get another win.
I don’t recall seeing spray ever mentioned as a factor/excuse. I wonder if either the weather conditions or the wing things, or both, were creating more of a fog like thing than usual. The only time I have ever been hampered very badly by rain was when I was riding home from BIR during a tornado, must have been ’95 or’ 96, I was riding a 916 Ducati on highway 23. It was a struggle to see the lines on the road through the green soup and stopping would have been certain death from the traffic behind. I’m pretty sure they would have called the race if it was raining that hard.
Weird day that. When I got home an hour and a half later I was totally dry. Weather, Minnesota has it all.
are you seriously equating your highway commute to a GP race in torrential rain?
And admitting attempting to ride in such dangerous conditions instead of hanging out in a farging Stuckeys or something
“are you seriously equating your highway commute to a GP race in torrential rain?”
seems you missed “during a tornado”?
i’d bet most MotoGP riders would rather run a race in torrential rain than in a tornado.
I took the comment in the “slowly developed a dry line” bit in the article to mean that it didn’t rain all that hard for a good portion of the race.
I am a native Minnesotan. Minnesota does have one of the harshest climates on earth, look it up. I have more than a little experience with severe weather. Thailand is tropical. I would imagine that they do get heavy rain on occasion.
That said, I did get caught in a garden variety severe thunderstorm while dirt biking in Akeley that made it very difficult to see due to the atmosphere being quite foggy while it was really coming down. The hail wasn’t any fun to deal with either.
But that I am mentioning these two storms in particular means that the majority of the severe rain that I have been caught in was what I would consider to be racable. Rain that slowly develops a dry like is not severe. And yes, I have raced in severe weather.
Just for clarity, highway 25, see below, is a two lane road through a rural area. The storm hit a little north of Foley. I suppose you could street view the road. I haven’t benn on that section in decades so I can’t tell you if it has been widened.
Oops! Now that I took a peak at Foley I noticed that I got the number of the highway wrong in the original post. It’s highway 25. 23 goes to Duluth. I’ve ridden that one a lot. I should know better. Age virus.
two of the most surprising snow storms i’ve witnessed were in North Dakota and in Minnesota.
In North Dakota it was 2-3 days of hard wind driving 40’snow drifts across the roads/highways and then a week a watching 1/2 ton trucks loaded with dead frozen cows being hauled (to the dump?) from all directions.
In Minnesota I was surveying a pipeline and stopping the vehicle about every hour, for about twenty minutes, to run checks. in that twenty minutes Id have close to 6 inches accumulation of the thickest heaviest wet snow on my vehicle to be cleared off before proceeding to the next location…and so on.
after riding up 25 to BIR from shoreview one year, i told my friend(from ely) and his wife (from mora) that if they ever got a call from a ‘foley buckman’ that it would be me.
Though my parents grew up in Brainerd. I still think some place like Wabasha would be a better location for a race track in Minnesota. A guy could link up a funner ride there and/or play around on the alfabet roads in Wisconsin. It’s a whole lot more fun to ride to Millville than BIR for instance.
We stayed near Wabasha at a friend’s place and did the alfabets in Wisconsin last year for group leaf peep. The group is doing the smokies in Tennessee this year, at another friend’s place, in a week or so. Today and tomorrow the White Mountains of New Hampshire are peaking and it’s nice out. Being that I have been sentanced to live here in NH. I’m going to be making the most of it for a couple of days. The wife is going to be in Maine. So I’m thinking maybe the Hypermotard today and the supermoto tomorrow. The “real” street bikes feel like heavy cows after a day on the supermoto. So it goes last.