The Dutch TT at Assen MotoGP main event was held earlier today. After passing early leader Brad Binder (KTM), Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) took the win over Marco Bezzecchi (Ducati) in second place and Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia) in third.
In a repeat of a circumstance in yesterday’s Sprint, Binder crossed the finish line in third, but lost his podium position to Espargaro after exceeding track limits on the final lap. Binder officially finished fourth.
The riders take a five week break before returning to racing at the British GP on August 5. Bagnaia continues to lead the championship points … now with a 35 point cushion over second place Jorge Martin (Ducati). For full results of today’s race, take a look here.
There was some good road racing @ The Ridge this weekend – Moto America series. Was there Saturday and really enjoyed it.
Marquez doesn’t have inferior tires he has a Honda with inferior power. There are two ways to be quick around the track, straight line speed and cornering speed. The lack of Honda straight line speed requires more cornering speed to have competitive lap times. Marquez definitely enters the corners faster than most, unfortunately he exceeds grip and fails to complete the exit. Ducati, KTM, and Aprilia are all faster. You can’t make up in the corners what you lose on the straight. Great race though especially seeing Jack ass Miller bouncing through the run off area.
Marquez’s biggest problem is Marquez. If your bike is not competitive, it is not an open invitation to make it more competitive by crashing … and taking down other riders.
“Marquez’s biggest problem is Marquez.”
-correct.
MM knows (as does EVERYBODY except for you I suppose) he has the talent/skills to get good results even using severely lacking equipment. He just needs the bike to remain upright which isn’t the case. The provided equipment can not match his skills level. Him pushing hard is exactly what Honda wants/expects from him and what Honda is benefitting from. MM needs to immediately tell HRC to F off and resign to enjoy the fruits of his labor. (MotoGPgreed) is changing the rules to keep Honda and Yamaha $$$ in play so that’$ intere$ting. Greed.
“If your bike is not competitive, it is not an open invitation to make it more competitive by crashing … and taking down other riders.”
-re-phrase please because that statement makes no sense. Honda gave MM a bike to ride and expects MM to get results. Period.
“Rephrase because that statement makes no sense.” You’re right. Sorry. Let me try again. When racers are young, they are often “squids” … short hand for “squirrely kids.” They can do this because young bones are flexible and mend easily. As they age, they become less squidly because they don’t bounce as easily, bones break rather than bend, and injuries are generally more serious. Nothing is sadder than an aging squid. For example, one that crashes out of five races in a row and has to sit out the remainder of the season. Look, anyone who has ever raced knows you have to push the envelope and occasionally crash. This was true when I raced (amateur) dirt track and motocross, and it is true today. But at some point you learn that third place ain’t so bad. The “win it or bin it” mentality might make you a hero to some, but to me you look like a ticking time bomb whose career is about to dramatically end.
agreed. I remember Kenny Roberts’ other son Curtis, while riding for Honda, stated that it was his orders from the team to podium or crash trying. I do fully believe plenty of pilots do not have to be told to do as such. They just do it as it is expected.
also, my general theory regarding damage sustained and recovery time from accidents is that the older we get the more ‘energy’ is involved in the accidents we get into.
crashing (at 3 m/ph) on a tricycle at 2 years old is normally less damaging to body and equipment and involves less recovery time than crashing a vehicle, at 21 years old, at 120 m/ph.
Two races in a row Binder loses a podium place (and points?) for a “track limits” violation. What nonsense..
Same rules apply to each rider. Definitely a shame to drop a position that way but his fault completely.
If you look, you can find a replay of where they nicked Binder for exceeding track limits. He barely bumped the rear tire off the edge of the pavement. Martin was close behind him and went all the way off the track with both tires in the very same spot less than a second later and wasn’t penalized at all. Someone obviously doesn’t like Binder and they are doing their best to make his life miserable. And they wonder why their viewership is going down.
The reason that Jorge Martin wasn’t penalized for exceeding track limits is because he was in P5 with P6 (Alex Marquez) over 10 seconds behind him. He didn’t gain a position, and given that it was the last lap of the race, they couldn’t impose a long lap penalty on him, and even if they could, it wouldn’t have dropped him behind Alex Marquez. On the other hand, Binder and Espargaro were separated by a tenth of a second, so technically it could have helped Binder by getting in the green. I’m not thrilled he was bumped from the podium to fourth, but the rule was correctly applied.
Same rules, very inconsistent enforcement.
I can’t help but feel that there are some sketchy tires. Didn’t MM crash all over the place last week by suddenly losing his front tire? This week seven guys crash, one guy got taken out by another crashing into him.
Wasn’t it in the late eighties when they suddenly had tire with much better grip. Except that those tires gave no indication when they were reaching their limits. They had a lot of guys crashing. So they went to tires with slightly less grip but better communication.
I suppose it could be the aero evolving faster than tire tech. I noticed that most riders are running hard fronts even in the sprint race. Hard front and soft rear setups are quite common. Maybe some of the bikes can’t run anything but hard fronts. To me, that says tire tech issues. If the medium and soft tire can’t be trusted to finish a sprint. Then they don’t really exist as options.
Many issues come into play. Too many to point to a single cause with our limited knowledge. For instance, I would think like Mick that the use of the hard fronts is a compound issue like tread life deteriorating too quickly. Then I read that they use the hard compound due to the carcass stiffness for the maximum braking the bikes are capable off. So tire stiffness vs grip was the issue.
It’s totally ridiculous – with modern tire engineering – leading tire company – they can’t get this figured out? The tires work in such a narrow temp/pressure range it’s totally impractical – riders can’t ride at the limit with any confidence, either. Very bad scene.
Seems that spec tires have led to equal misery for everyone.
It happens now and again throughout history. The aero guys seem to be loading the front tire faster than the tire guys are responding. That’s racing.
I think it was the early to mid nineties when I swapped to the new rear dirt bike tire that came out, supposedly to replace the tire I was using. The tire worked great. But after three of them I discovered that, even with heavy duty tubes, I could only get about 50 to 60 miles of use out of them before they went flat. An Enduro is typically 75 or more ground miles. I ran the end of one with a flat rear tire and still got first place in my class. But I got a bit of a dent in my rear wheel and I rattled the crap out of myself bouncing over a really rooted section late in the day. That’s also racing.
I went back to the old tire, which hadn’t been discontinued. The new tire was discontinued the next year. You could probably make them last by running higher pressure. But who on earth is going to that on a race bike? I actually did run those at 14psi. 12psi is go to for most dirt bikers on fairly rugged terrain.
It’s a matter of perspective. Tires have always been a limitation. There has never been a time when everyone agreed that the tires were great and racers will always take risks to go fast.
Couldn’t have said it better Dave
More then one third of the grid went out of race due to crash. Good for Aprilia and KTM though. Thanks YT.
ahhh!!!
so I’m not the only who is noticing this new phenomena.
FQ sure did not look so well after the race.
Greed kills.
They know what they do.
they suuuure do.
it’s been happening for a very long time…dangle a carrot (fame/money) infront of any normal adolescent and watch that adolescent throw his/her life down the toilet chasing after that dangled ‘my dream’. very entertaining. a couple centuries of this…not too many more i should think.
Couple of centuries? They are gladiators to watch. Lots of centuries. Still the same. Not a problem.
not a problem…well…as long as the ones mangling themselves and killing themselves are not our kids.