Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) won both races this weekend in Austria to re-take the points lead over Jorge Martin (Ducati) who finished second behind Bagnaia in both Saturday’s Sprint and Sunday’s full GP.
Finishing third on Saturday was Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, while Enea Bastianini (Ducati) finished third on Sunday.
While the other manufacturers strive for improvement, Ducati seems to be in a position of complete dominance at this point. This includes the first four places in the championship.
For full results and points for Saturday’s Sprint race, visit the MotoGP site here. For full results and points for Sunday’s MotoGP race, visit the MotoGP site here.
Is the first thought that pops into your mind always the negative?
One more year and then the big reset. 2026 regulations, 850cc, no aero, redesigned electronics, probably no hole shot device etc…
Everyone will be starting from zero.
If you look into the rules you’ll probably be disappointed. There will still be aero, they’re just limiting the width of them. There will still be sophisticated electronics but ride height devices should be gone.
There is no zero. Given the lack of progress Honda and Yamaha have made on familiar platforms, I can’t see how these changes will help them. I remember the last time they took displacement out. The Ducatis were so fast it was as if they forgot to remove the 200cc’s.
It’s 2027 the new specs take effect. Casey Stoner says he thinks the new rules will actually make the Ducatis faster the competition. The Japanese mfgs will probably just throw it in at that point.
I can’t help but think that the changes are going to be very unpopular. The appearance of the bikes isn’t going to really change all that much. The engines will end up at a really high state of tune. So the bikes will be harder to ride and the engine’s are likely to fail once in a while. Sometimes bad enough to spray oil all over the track. Possibly creating a huge crash and some down time while they clean up.
In other overwhelmingly dominant race bike news. Indian is being forced to retire the FTR750 after winning 101 races in 135 starts. American Flat Track has gone to a production engine rule.
I have long been very critical of Indian releasing their current FTR street bike after creating a bunch of hype about creating an FTR750 replica street bike. A 522 pound 1200 is NOT a replica of a 310 pound 750. Maybe Indian will get a little closer to the ballpark with a future FTR750 production bike so they can go racing again. But Indian has well earned my lack of confidence in them. So I’m not going to hold my breath.
How delusional do you have to be to think that there’s a market for the bike you’d prefer, regardless of how objectively better it would likely be?
Hint: Maybe this will help. Most street riders aren’t that good. To them, acceleration is it. Handling is not their ken.
I hadn’t followed dirt track but it sounds like the FTR 750 replaced HD’s old, equally exclusive 750 race special. Good for AMA. Production rules always benefit grassroots racing. Plenty of good engines out there to work with that aren’t expensive.
Don’t hold your breath on an FTR750. #1, it can’t be done (street legal..), #2 they don’t have enough reach to sell enough of them to make it worthwhile.
the race isn’t between manufacturers, it’s between men. there is nothing between bagnia’s bike and the other dukes that would account for a 5-15 second difference over 40 minutes or so other than his judgement. when mir won, it wasn’t because his bike/tires/tuner/fitness was better. the fact was that he didn’t screw up. i can still enjoy watching, and indeed, pay good money to watch, because i strive to ride like the champ does: quickly, yet within himself AND his bike’s capablities. you bet i miss seeing yam and suz up at the front, seeing as i have one of each, but it’s the riders that make these things fast, as we can see w/mm93 not even close…
mm93 is close. He is on the 93 year bike, yet he was fourth in the race.
This is meta
Really, you have four fast bikes with fast guys on three of them. The rest of the European bikes are what would have been fast bikes last year. The Japanese are about four years behind. It’s not easy to get on the same page nowadays. Making a competitive motorcycle is hard enough. But now you have to make a sort of cybernetic low flying aircraft. It’s turning into a rather severe case of have VS have not. What happens next year if Ducati makes a similar leap as they did this year?
Yes and no. There are the 4 factory Ducatis and there is everyone else. As close as these athletes are, nobody has the talent to overcome an equipment deficiency at this level.
Those were very boring races apart from MM was doing some entertainment.
I think they were both good races. What would’ve made them more entertaining?
Take off aero, perhaps
Why would that make any difference? The racing is closer now than it’s ever been before.
Dave – Do you really believe that “The racing is closer now than it’s ever been before.”
How about the epic battles between Rossi and Lorenzo, Stoner or Marquez ? Those races were often decided by tenths of seconds, sometimes hundredths. That level of excitement is sorely missing.
I don’t believe it’s close, I know it for a fact. Sure, here were some great battles, but that’s all you’re remembering. THere were far more yawning gaps of a full straightaway length and when Lorenzo & Rossi had heir occasional battle, every other bike in the field were virtual non-factors in the race.
Toward the end of that era, there were only a dozen bikes on the grid. The track was practically empty so they came up with “CRT” pack fill while they had to reconfigure the rules to save the class. The good ol’ days weren’t as bright as you remember.
Bagnaia won the Sprint by almost 5 seconds over Martin, who was another almost 3 seconds ahead of third place Espargaro.
Bagnaia won the main Race by over 3 seconds, again over Martin, who was over 4 seconds ahead of third place, Bastianini.
One manufacturer, Ducati, holds the top 4 positions in the Championship.
Does that sound very exciting to you ?
You’re kind of making my point. Those numbers seem broad today because lately the average race has been closer.
5-10 years ago, guys like Lorenzo and Marquez would LAP riders up to about 10th place and gaps were so wide that often it looked as though the various bikes were riding around the track alone. Back then there were only 3 bikes in the paddock with any chance of winning at a given time.
Now we’re complaining when Bagnaia wins by 3 sec over another guy with several wins under his belt because there weren’t enough passes back and forth?
In the sprint race 10 seconds covered the top-5, 16 seconds, the top-10.
In the main race 30 seconds covered the top-10 in a race that was won in 42 minutes.
This is very close in modern racing standards and was admittedly one of the wider finishing margins we’ve had this year.
I want to see the other makes reach parity but with all the concessions they’re being offered, it’s up to them to commit now. That said, I’m not sure how we can expect it to be much closer. They’re fighting for 10th’s here.
Bagnaia is smart. But his astonishing speed is a kind of wondering.
Nicely said. These gaps are millennia in road racing terms.
If you don’t care about the bike brand then yes, I find it very exciting. I still clearly remember when the gaps between places were so large you would be forgiven for thinking they were alone on the track.
I want to watch people race, couldn’t care less what brand of bike they’re on. This series would be a lot better if they were all on Ducatis.
If you don’t care about the bike brand then yes, I find it very exciting. I still clearly remember when the gaps between places were so large you would be forgiven for thinking they were alone on the track.
I want to watch people race, couldn’t care less what brand of bike they’re on. This series would bebetter if they were all on Ducatis.
I agree.
Since MotoGP has become MotoDucati, my interest has gone down noticeably.
I’d like to see Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Kawasaki back in it and all competitive.
I find it odd that the other European manufacturers results seem to be backsliding a bit while the Japanese manufacturers seem to be going nowhere. The first Japanese bike finishes down over one second per lap in every race. As a group, the Japanese MotoGP results aren’t much faster than the WSB. A guy has to wonder what’s going on over there.
I guess it’s not too unexpected. But I thought it odd that Martin objected to the rule about leaving the track. Apparently he left the track, cut part of it and returned without losing the required one second in the process. So he was given a long lap that lost him a little over four seconds. I think that a one second rule is quite reasonable and can’t imagine what you would replace it with. If you leave the track in a TT race for instance, you are required to re-enter the track from the point that you left it or you will be disqualified. That would be extremely difficult to do on a MotoGP wearing slicks.
All that said. I am acutely aware that one second is an eternity for a racer during a race. Martin probably thought he lost at least one second while off the track.
I think all of the time penalties are too harsh (especially over the senseless tire pressure rule). 4 seconds can be several places as close as the racing has been and nobody wants to watch a championship be decided by some arbitrary penalty.
The tire pressure rule is far from “senseless”. It’s a legit safety issue. Michelin themselves pushed for the rule after determining that teams that deliberately ran low pressure risked tire failure at high speed.
A loss of control at high speed could endanger all/any rider on the grid.
Tires have been an interesting issue. There are lots of after crash comments from riders about the tires cooling off and losing grip. Given that, it’s no mystery that the riders would want to run a slightly lower pressure to keep the tires, which seem to have a narrow optimum temperature window, in the sweet spot.
The security of the tire industry is amazing. You can read articles about every other pert of the motorcycle. But there is next to nothing about tire development as the bikes go from two stroke to four stroke and then get more and more downforce. That can’t be an accident. I’m sure there would be a lot of interesting stories to tell if the the security wasn’t so impenetrable.
There is a point in a tire, that connects the part that goes through the ground to the balloon, which is tire is.With some synthetics. I think this problem will not be solved ever until another material of tire.
Mick, the past two seasons the complaint has been that the tires are getting too hot, driving the pressure up, causing a loss of grip + low-side crash.
To ground the disucssion, there has never been a time that I can remember when all of the riders sung the praises of the tires. They are and always will be a significant limiting factor. Michelin has achieved a wholesale 30 second pace improvement this year, which is nothing to sniff at. They are almost single-handedly responsible for all of the lap records that have been re-set this year.
Racing at over 200mph is a legit safety issue. The riders say they’re less safe with an overheating tire. They’re not running “low” pressure, they’re running what becomes the correct pressure once the tires are warm. The only time tire decomposition was a real hazard was when they ran full-blown superbikes at the Daytona 200.
The issue would be easily solved if there was not a spec tire monopoly.
Michelins are highly overrated IMO – I’ve tried them on both my car (tuned GTI) and bike.
Back when they didn’t have spec tires there was always have and have not problems as the tire manufacturers leap frogged each other. Fans would put their hopes on some rider only to have that rider’s tires hold him back as the guys with someone else’ tire had a clear advantage for at least a handful of races.
I have to wonder if Michelin is happy. The aero on these bikes have made them their own use case. They are now spending a lot of time and money to learn how to develop tires for bikes that only exist on planet Zork. What are they learning that is going to help them make better products for humans on earth? Maybe a great deal. Or maybe nothing at all. No news makes it through their outstanding security. So nobody outside of Michelin will ever know.
The spec tire is an unfortunate necessity. If one of the makes got it wrong then it would ruin he whole season of whoever they supplied and there’s too much riding on that. Teams would collapse. If the supplier gets it wrong, then it’s the same for everyone.
While they complain about the pressure spec rule, they’re still dropping record lap times almost everywhere they go.