Bad weather at Phillip Island this weekend led to a couple of decisions by the race directors. First, the full MotoGP race was moved to Saturday, and the Sprint to Sunday. Sunday’s weather turned out to be so bad, and dangerous, that the Sprint race was cancelled.
In Saturday’s main event, Jorge Martin, who had smashed the lap record during qualifying, took the hole shot and rode away from the field to a substantial lead before his rear tire deteriorated to the point that he was passed by several riders on the last lap and lost a podium position. Martin had run a soft rear tire while the consensus among the other riders was that a medium tire was needed to last the entire race. Martin gambled and lost.
The group of riders that caught Martin at the end of the race included the eventual winner Johann Zarco, Martin’s Pramac Ducati teammate. While Zarco has had a relatively successful MotoGP career, including many podiums, this was his first MotoGP win.
Finishing in second and third were points leader Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) and Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati). This was the first MotoGP podium finish by Di Giannantonio, whose seat on the Gresini Ducati Team has been taken by Marc Marquez (Honda) for next year.
Pecco Bagnaia carries a 27 point lead in the championship over Martin as the series continues next weekend in Thailand. For full results and points for today’s race, visit the MotoGP site here.
It would be interesting to know if Martin went out on a limb with his tire choice or if it was a Michelin tire engineer. SOMEONE has egg on their face.
All this winning seems to have given Ducati an attitude. They announced that they are developing a motocross bike.
Like Triumph I think they are only going to make four strokes. So there is a zero percent chance that I will buy one. But it will be interesting to see if they use a desmo head and I am interested in what the bike will look like. Ducati seems to have lost their knack for producing beautiful machines. But maybe they can make a cool looking dirt bike. I think the best looking dirt bike in the last couple of decades was the Gas Gas just before KTM bought them out. Very nice looking bikes. The guy that I brought a Multistrada from last month was selling one.
I will be interested to see how this goes. Street bike brands have a history of making very poor dirt bikes. When BMW gave it a go, that was an embarrassment. Building a quality bike bike isn’t as easy as it looks. Dirt bikers expect excellence in all areas. Street bikers will buy some real jalopies if they look nice or have a zillion horsepower. Even the four stroke riding dirt bikers are much tougher customers.
That was sure a reserved race report for one of the most exciting and drama-filled MotoGP races in history.
It was not the race. Mark obvously fall.
there was only a second difference between the soft and the medium option over full race distance. the POINT difference was a bit more…
So when you get fifth you do a backflip?
That is Zarco. Same team, but he won the race.
Personally, I’d flip if I finished sixth.
Perhaps Di Giannantonio’s result will help hiim find a ride.
Martin must have bumped his head on something. He was going fast enough to win the race with a medium rear. Or at least do better that fifth.
Poor team Japan. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
agree.
seems everyone on the planet knows that the Japanese team’s bikes are simply not competitive. therefore if/when a pilot of one of those bikes “really” wants to try for a satisfactory result…there is a lot of risk involved.
Fab flat out sated, on camera, as such…the bikes are not safe to race because the risks are too great when pushing for a good result.
So what the heck is going on!!! why aren’t the ‘proper authorities’ simply not banning the Japanese bikes outright or only allowing them to be used as trainer/beginner/rookie bikes?
Eh.. This game is dangerous when everything is going perfectly. All of the best riders have crashed out of races in the past 4 rounds or so, even while leading comfortably.
Eh.. uhhhhmmmnn…yes, the game is dangerous, there are risks involved, people crash.
point being; far less risks/danger for those on the fast bikes than for those on slow bikes when each are pushing for victory.
the slow bike’s pilots have to risk far more to gain the same.
Really happy to see Zarco get that monkey off his back. Dry race, and no one ahead of him crashed out to gift him a lucky win. This was a legitimate victory.
He needed it, too, since time was running short. Only a few more races left on the Ducati before his career dies a gruesome death on that abominable Honda. He was in serious danger of going down as the fastest rider never to win a premier class Grand Prix race, and now he’s off that list.
numerous folks stated that Martin’s poor tyre choice resulted in his rear tyre nearly disintegrating on the final lap(s) and that otherwise Martin’s victory was assured.
but yes…no one crashed.
Yes, and were it not for Martin’s choice of the soft tire he very likely doesn’t have that big lead in the first place. It was a gamble that almost worked, but, in the end, didn’t, because the guys directly behind him chose the medium compound and were able to overtake him on the final lap.
Tire strategy is a huge part of racing. Always has been. The winning rider usually is the one, or one of the ones, who calculated correctly.
In this instance, that was Zarco. It was a no-excuses, well-earned, dry-race victory.
Another case in point: Mark Marquez, who won countless races, especially mixed-condition races, based on his successful tire strategies. No one ever tried to discredit or minimize those victories. Instead, they chalked them up to his brilliant racecraft.
i agree he may not have procured such a lead at the start had he not had the soft…but that’s the start…not the end.
a lot of others (his peers included) stated he in fact had the required speed to have won on mediums if he had chosen to use them.
MM has made plenty of, subsequently, “wrong” tire ‘choices’ that cost him significantly as well.
that’s gambling…you win some you lose some…martin lost and Zarco won.
I hope everyone sees the 60 Minutes production on Isle of Mann Sunday night. Awesome. To think, my Viking relatives established the parliament on the Isle over 1,000 years ago, that still exists today and still keeps the fierce independence that enables such things as low taxes and the TT Isle of Mann race to this day. Go TT!
The race was pretty boring. Martin was so much ahead of the others that I even skip part of translation. And what we had in the end. Absolutely another result.
“Absolutely another result.”
As with the vast majority of races
Pretty exciting last 3 laps.
Congrats to Zarco, finally.