MotoGP: Marquez Masters Motorland Aragon

The crowd turned out in the thousands for the start of Round 14 of the 2019 MotoGP Championship.

Orange is the new yellow as Marquez fans flocked to their heroes home circuit and the sea of orange was was telling of the tide that Marquez was about to apply on the race.

Marc Marquez had looked imperious all weekend claiming pole position on Saturday giving him the best chance to get away at the front as the lights went out and that’s exactly what he done.

From lights out, he opened up a gap to the following pack, the chasing pack was headed by the fast starting Jack Miller, he came under attack from the two Yamaha’s of Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales.

The Monster Yamaha rider was climbing all over the Frenchman for 3rd but after 4 laps stuck behind the Petronas Yamaha rider, Vinales made a move into the final turn and set after Miller. Aleix Espargaro on the Aprilia was showing signs of moving from 5th into 4th. The Spaniard showing great pace all weekend and was putting Quartararo under pressure and holding off Valentino Rossi.

The rider on the move was Andrea Dovizioso – after starting from 10th he was making places early in the race. Quickly making his way up to 7th behind Rossi, before making a move on his fellow Italian down the back straight into the final turn, a lap later he made the same move on Espargaro’s Aprilia. The Ducati showing it’s prowess in a straight line, getting off of the the turn 14 left hand corner onto the back straight better than his rivals.

Maverick Vinales began putting the Pramac Ducati rider Jack Miller for 2nd, going up the hill into Turn 3, Miller ran too deep into the turn, running wide, allowing Vinales a passage through with 16 laps remaining. He then set off to try and catch Marquez. With a 4.7 second gap to the Honda rider it would be a tall order. Although he was quicker on the next two laps before Marquez increased his pace.

Man On The Move

“I pushed and pushed and pushed but finally in the last two laps, the tyre was very much on the limit. I nearly crashed two or three times because the rear” – Maverick Vinales

Just behind Dovizioso had made his way past Quartararo for 4th on lap 9, slowly closing the gap to Miller on the Pramac Ducati before making his move on the Australian into Turn 1 on lap 14. This gave him a clearing to chase after the Yamaha of Vinales, the Spaniard maintaining a 1 second advantage for the next 5 laps.

Lap 21/23 – Dovizioso using the speed of the Ducati to his advantage closed the gap to Vinales and powered past the Yamaha rider on the back straight. Vinales was clearly struggling with rear tyre grip as his bike was shaking on corner exit. “I pushed and pushed and pushed but finally in the last two laps, the tyre was very much on the limit. I nearly crashed two or three times because the rear [tyre].” Vinales said after the race during his media debrief.

Miller saw an opportunity to claim his 3rd podium of the season with Vinales’ tyre troubles. Approaching the final lap, Miller got the perfect run through the final turn onto the home straight, as Vinales was struggling to put the power down on the left hand corners, Miller went late on the brakes into turn 1 and made his way past Vinales for 3rd. He ran slightly deep, with Vinales trying to get the cutback, however Miller covered his line into the fast turn 2. If Miller could get to the back straight in front, the podium battle was as good as done and that is exactly what he done.

History Books Are Being Re-written

No one could catch Marquez, he started the final lap with a 6.8 second advantage over Dovizioso in 2nd. He cruised to the line – standing up on the bikes foot pegs and mimicking the action of reeling in a fish – he reeled in the race win and now see’s his 8th title beckoning ever closer.

If Marquez wins the race at Thailand in two weeks time, he will become the 2019 MotoGP Champion with 4 races remaining and 100 points still in play. He currently sits 98 points ahead of closest rival Andrea Dovizioso.

The Motorland Aragon race marked Marquez’s 200th Grand Prix race start, across his 125cc, Moto2 and MotoGP career. The landmark was was celebrated with his 78th career win at a circuit that is only 1 and a half hours from his home in Cerveza. So you can imagibe there will be a big party tonight.

His achievements are made even more impressive by the fact that he is only 26 years of age and he is the only rider that can produce a competitive result on a Honda machine. At still a very young age, Marquez could have at least another 10 years left in his career, in those 10 years we could expect him to become the record holder in terms of race wins and chase after Giacomo Agostini’s record of 15 titles. A very tall order but it is not out of the realms of possibility.

Good Day For Some – Not For Others

“After some laps I had to slow down. I didn’t have the grip and I had some kind of problem with the tyres.” – Valentino Rossi

Dovizioso salvaged an incredible result in what was a very tough weekend for himself and Ducati, only Miller looking competitive on board the Italian manufacturer all weekend. Leading home a Ducat 2/3 in front of Miller.

Vinales looked best placed to finish behind the dominant Marquez but slipped off the podium in 4th on the final lap. Although he can take positives in the fact that Yamaha are genuinely improving and that he finished 3 seconds in front of the next Yamaha. His team-mate Rossi had a disastrous race, finishing a lonely 8th and 23 seconds off the race win and 18 seconds from his team-mate. Early laps looked encouraging, hassling Aleix Espargaro for 5th, while being in the battle for the podium but from lap 4 onward, he dropped back behind Dovizioso and Crutchlow.

Rossi blames the rear tyre, something he has had issues with in the past few races. “After some laps I had to slow down. I didn’t have the grip and I had some kind of problem with the tyres.” It is an issue that Rossi will be desperately wanting to get on top of as he sees Vinales and Quartararo scoring podiums and out-performing the Italian. Although both suffered in the later stages, they are able to keep their tyres in better shape for a longer period of time.

Alex Rins had the pace to be on the podium but after qualifying in 13th he tried to make up as much ground on the opening lap as possible. While running in 8th on lap one, he left his braking extremely late into Turn 11, clipping the back of an innocent Franco Morbidelli, the result, pitching the Italian out of the race. He was ultimately given a long-lap penalty (riding around a section of track outside of the circuit) which dropped him 3 seconds behind the battle for 9th. He caught Petrucci, Oliveira and Iannone in the battle for 9th. After a few tried and failed attempts at passing Petrucci, he made his way past the Italian into a lonely 9th.

The Curious Case of Jorge Lorenzo

“Unfortunately, I start to feeling a lot of dropping of the rear tyre. Even if I try to manage the consumption of the rear tyre with the throttle, being very smooth and not open full throttle, the tyre was dropping a lot. I had to drop the pace a lot one second, little-by-little, all the overtook me.” – Jorge Lorenzo

The opening few laps looked encouraging for Lorenzo, he made his way up to 13th place, after starting 18th on the first lap. He would move up to 12th on the following lap. However, this would be short lived, he began tumbling down the order and by the end of lap 5 he was in 16th place. He ran in 21st – and last – at one stage before gaining a place on Hafizh Syahrin late on in the race to finish 20th.

Just like Rossi, rear tyre issues stopped his progress – “Unfortunately, I start to feeling a lot of dropping of the rear tyre. Even if I try to manage the consumption of the rear tyre with the throttle, being very smooth and not open full throttle, the tyre was dropping a lot. I had to drop the pace a lot [by] one second, [then] little-by-little, all the [riders behind] overtook me.” he told BT Sport after the race.

For a great champion to be struggling in the manner that he is, is very difficult to watch. Question marks are persistent about his future and whether he will be around in 2020 and beyond. Lorenzo came into the weekend after being told by his doctor that his back injuries, which he suffered at Assen in June were now healed but he told journalists that he was still suffering from pain. Aragon marked a full year since Lorenzo picked up his first injury in a long line of injuries over the past 12 months. After high-siding himself off his Ducati at turn 1 on the opening lap of the race.

Lorenzo said he would “honour” his two year contract (which expires at the end of 2020) and won’t leave Honda at the end of the current season. However, this isn’t to say that Honda won’t terminate his contract. Lorenzo has shown eagerness to get out of his contract, apparently holding talks with Ducati back in July to move to the Pramac Team before Jack Miller was confirmed. Team Manager – Alberto Puig has expressed his displeasure with Lorenzo’s commitment of late and has called into question Lorenzo’s desire to push to the limit.

If results don’t improve by the seasons end and Lorenzo continues to find himself finishing over 40 seconds from the winner and if the management feel that Lorenzo isn’t as fully committed as he should be, then Honda will want to bring in someone else to partner Marquez in 2020.

The Teams Championship is something that is important to the Repsol Honda Team. With Lorenzo only scoring 23 at this time of the season, along with Stefan Bradl’s 10 points for the team. It has been left up to Marquez to carry the team, in terms of points. Honda will want someone that can back Marquez up and score big points. They currently sit 25 behind the Ducati Team, this will be an issue not lost on the top brass at Honda.

There are 5 races left of the season and these could be the most important races of Lorenzo’s career. Not only will he have to find improvements on the bike but he must ask himself this question. “Do I really want to keep putting my life on the line on a bike that is difficult to ride and I don’t get on with?” All riders have to ask themselves that dreaded question someday and it’s never easy.

Moto2

Due to the Singapore Grand Prix running earlier than it’s normal 14:10 (GMT time) and instead starting at 13:10. The MotoGP race was moved forward by 1 hour. This meant that the Moto2 race was pushed back until after the MotoGP race.

Alex Marquez had seen his championship lead whittled down to 26 points over the previous two races by Agusto Fernandez.

However, the Marc VDS struck back by taking pole position on Saturday ahead of his now, main championship rival. Both got reasonable starts from the front row but it was the KTM rider of Brad Binder that hooked up the start perfectly and jumped into the lead of the race. He would then open up a gap of seven tenths of a second by the end of the lap.

Disaster would strike for the Sito Pons rider of Agusto Fernandez. Going down the corkscrew section of the circuit, he lost the front chasing Alex Marquez and crashed out. He would remount to finish in 22nd.

At the front, Brad Binder was showing great pace, pulling away from the rest of the pack. The group behind of Marquez, Luca Marini, Tom Luthi and Jorge Navarro all pushed past each other lap-after-lap. Slowing each other down in the process, allowing Binder to increase his advantage.

Applying The Pressure

Marquez would set after the KTM rider once he made it past Marini on lap 12, he was quickly followed by the SpeedUp rider of Jorge Navarro. Both setting mid-low 1:54 lap times and chipping away at Binder’s 2 second lead.

With 3 laps remaing, the lead was down to just over 1 second but Navarro believing he could catch Binder, made a move on  Alex Marquez to move into 2nd. The Spaniard setting low 1:53 lap times, Brad Binder began struggling for rear grip, his bike moving on corner exit as he applied the power. He would hold on though and take his second win of the season by 0.7 of a second over Navarro and Marquez.

Alex Marquez taking 16 important points in the standings, seeing his championship lead increase to 38 points over Jorge Navarro, while Fernandez slips to 42 points back.

Sam Lowes had another strong race, finishing 5th for the second weekend running. Just missing out on 4th place towards the end, putting Marini under a lot of pressure from the British rider. Jake Dixon had a tough race, finishing in 23rd, albeit 27 second in front of his team mate.

Moto3

Aron Canet was the rider to beat coming into the first race of the day, Moto3. The number 44 rider was looking to close the gap in the championship to leader Lorenzo Dalla Porta. The Leopard rider struggling for pace all weekend.

Coming under pressure from Ai Ogura and the Estrella Galicia rider Lopez in the early stages of the race, Canet then got his head down and opened a gap to the rest of the field. Importantly getting far enough ahead to break the slipstream effect down the long back straight. His gap would open up lap-after-lap as the following riders would mess themselves up by constantly passing and re passing each other. His win came into doubt after been given a track limits warning after running of the circuit at Turn 10 and the final corner.

He backed off very slightly and kept his head down and took the win by 4.581 ahead of second place.

Titanic Battle For Second

Ai Ogura tried valiantly to catch Canet when he made his way from 7th to 2nd, he brought the lap times of the group down from 2:01’s to 1:59’s. Places when being swapped thick and fast, Dennis Foggia was on a late charge and made his way to the front of the group and looked best placed to take 2nd. However he came under attack into the final corner from Lopez pushing both wide and allowing Ogura to sneak past for 2nd. Foggia came across the line for his 2nd career podium in 3rd.

John McPhee recovered to 4th place, putting in a brilliant ride after losing his left knee slider with 10 laps remaining. The issue with losing that is you won’t be able to bank the bike over through the left corners to due a hole being ripped into the suit. It could also get caught and cause a crash by pulling the rider off of the bike.

Lorenzo Dalla Porta recovered to finish in 11th spot and picking up 5 important points but was given a penalty post-race for exceeding track limits. He was dropped back to 12th and now only holds a 2 point advantage over Canet.