MotoGP title fight: from advantage Quartararo to advantage Bagnaia

MotoGP

The pendulum swung again at Buriram: no points for Fabio Quartararo, a week after Pecco Bagnaia crashed out at Motegi and two weeks after Quartararo was knocked out at Aragon. And just three MotoGP races to go…

Miguel Oliveira Jack Miller and Pecco Bagnaia in a golf cart as rain pours down after the MotoGP Thai GP

Buriram podium men Miguel Oliveira, Jack Miller and Pecco Bagnaia rejoice in the rain, while Fabio Quartararo had another grim day

Dorna

Mat Oxley

What’s it like being Fabio Quartararo at the moment – the lone Yamaha among five Ducatis on the front two rows of the Buriram grid, splashing around outside the points for 25 laps to complete the race having scored just eight points over three consecutive Sundays?

Certainly outnumbered, like a nun in a whorehouse. Certainly outgunned, like a local warrior at the Battle of Ombdurman in 1898, when the British army killed 12,000 Sudanese for the loss of 48 of its own men. And definitely out of luck, twice knocked out of races through no fault of his own, at Assen and Aragon, then screwed by a tropical downpour in Thailand.

The British army won Ombdurman through superior technology – machine guns and artillery against spears and rifles – just like Ducati is currently steamrollering MotoGP with superior technology.

Quartararo is riding better than anyone at the moment but you need grip to go fast.

The Bologna brand seems to have everything sorted now. The Desmosedici is a winning motorcycle at all tracks and in all weathers, whereas ten years ago it was a losing motorcycle at all tracks and in all weathers.

Whatever the situation Ducati can now set up its winged missile to make it generate plenty of grip and, of course, plenty of horsepower. The company is currently the powerhouse of MotoGP, a bit like MV Agusta, based at the other end of Italy’s so-called Motor Valley, was the powerhouse of 500cc GPs from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Sure, Ducati didn’t win yesterday’s race, but it had won the previous six and Jack Miller was in with a chance of attacking KTM’s winner Miguel Oliveira very nearly until the final corner. Miller might’ve had a better chance, but his GP22 wasn’t working so well through Buriram’s twisting final section as it was through the track’s stop/start opening section.

“I was lacking a bit of contact through the flowing part of the track where you’re not really transferring too much weight [between each tyre, into and out of the corners],” he explained.

Fabio Quartararo cornering in Mandalika and Buriram

Quartararo had elbows kissing the ground at soaking Mandalika (left), where he finished second. At Buriram (right, chased by Cal Crutchlow) there was less grip, so he finished out of the points

Yamaha

Miller’s second place and main title-challenger Pecco Bagnaia’s third was the 23rd consecutive race that Ducati has had at least one rider on the podium, a record in GP racing’s big-bore four-stroke era. However, the Bolognese have a way to go before they better Honda’s all-time premier-class podium record: 83 in a row between 1993 and 1999, with its NSR500 two-stroke.

Bagnaia went to Thailand 18 points behind Quartararo and will go to Australia next week, with only the Malaysian and Valencia rounds remaining after that, just two points behind him.

If Ducati had no problems yesterday, just like the previous half dozen races, what exactly were Quartararo’s? The reigning world champion is riding better than anyone at the moment, usually magicking speed from the YZR-M1 of which its other riders can only dream.

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But you need grip to go fast. Quartararo’s secret is extracting huge grip from the M1, by dancing all over the bike, transferring load between the tyres, and playing with the throttle and brakes. This allows him to use lots of corner speed to overcome the horsepower advantage enjoyed by his rivals, especially his Ducati rivals.

In the rain, however, there’s little edge grip to be had from the tyres, so yesterday his only advantage was cancelled out. But, you say, what about Mandalika in March, where Quartararo finished second in the rain-lashed Indonesian GP just behind Oliveira? Mandalika had so much grip in the rain that riders were scraping their elbows like they do in the dry. The only riders who got their elbows down at slippery Buriram yesterday were Remy Gardner and Luca Marini when they hit the deck.

Just two crashes during a race that started in tropical-downpour conditions and ended on a drying track was impressive stuff from Michelin’s rain tyres.

Miguel Oliveira leads Pecco Bagnaia in the 2022 MotoGP Thai GP

Bagnaia chases Oliveira in the early stages as the KTM rider makes his charge towards the front

KTM

Wet races tend to be won by the fastest bikes, because they can tiptoe around the turns then blast down the straights, which is why Buriram was all about MotoGP’s more powerful V4s, with not one inline-four finishing inside the top ten. Quartararo finished 17th, 34 seconds down, returned to his garage and walked out of the back without talking to anyone. Understandable in the circumstances – he’s just spent three weeks in hell.

The top five was one KTM, three Ducatis and one Honda, covered by less than three seconds, an average lap time difference of just 0.118 seconds. That’s how close MotoGP is at the moment, even in the rain.

Of course, everyone was asking why Oliveira and the KTM are so good in the wet, after their second consecutive victory in a Southeast Asian deluge.

Miller took four points off his team-mate, which may or may not prove crucial in the title fight

The RC16 has always been good in the rain – the bike scored its first podium at the rain-lashed 2018 Valencia GP – which means its wet-weather engine, electronics and chassis settings allow the rider to get the maximum from the bike from minimal grip. This gives the rider the confidence he needs on a slippery racetrack, plus Oliveira has a smooth riding technique, with smooth throttle control. I think this may be one reason he’s leaving KTM – in the dry the RC16 needs to be grabbed like a bull by the horns and that’s not really his style.

Also, perhaps rainfall masks the one deficiency that prevents the RC16 from winning in the dry right now. The bike doesn’t quite turn well enough – it uses wider-radius cornering lines that prevent riders from getting on the throttle as soon as they’d like.

Just as the KTM is so good in the wet, so was Bagnaia always bad in the wet. But, wow, did he turn that around just in time. This was the 25-year-old Italian’s first full-wet race podium in MotoGP and the last time he made the top three in the rain was way back at the 2017 San Marino GP, in Moto2.

Jack Miller ahead of Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez in the 2022 MotoGP Thai GP

Miller building his title attack, while Márquez builds his attack on Bagnaia, which was thwarted by Zarco

Ducati

Funnily enough, Bagnaia’s mentor Valentino Rossi was the same. “I don’t like riding under the water!” he used to say during his early years in GPs. At one race during Rossi’s debut GP season it was raining so hard at the start of Friday morning practice that he shut himself in his campervan, but he too learned to walk on water.

Riding in the rain is all about confidence – you can’t go full-attack, you have to ease into it, feel the grip and ride to that grip. When Bagnaia woke up on Sunday morning and saw the forecast he thought he was in trouble. “Then when it started raining I was a bit nervous and at that moment Jack came to me and said something about believing more in myself in those conditions.”

Miller’s mind-coaching worked wonders, but not quite well enough for Bagnaia to beat him, so the Aussie took four points off his team-mate, which may or may not prove crucial in the title fight. Of course, Miller’s mega recent run of results has made him a title contender, albeit an outsider, 40 points down on Quartararo and only 75 points left to race for.

Outsider status will suit Miller just fine. He will go into his home race at Phillip Island all guns blazing, knowing he has nothing to lose. And of course he’s already split with Ducati for 2023, so it may get interesting in the factory garage at the final few races if he’s getting closer to the championship lead, while Bagnaia needs his help.

Yesterday Bagnaia instead got help from Pramac Ducati rider Johann Zarco, who was by far the fastest man as the track started drying out, his favourite conditions. The 32-year-old Frenchman quickly caught the leading quartet of Oliveira, Miller, Bagnaia and Marc Márquez, who was all over Bagnaia, looking for a way past. Zarco passed Márquez, slotting himself between the title hopeful and the six-time champ, protecting Bagnaia from attack during the last few laps. It was the perfect way to thank Ducati for saving his MotoGP career two years ago.

Oliveira celebrates winning the 2022 MotoGP Thai GP

Oliveira took his fifth MotoGP win for KTM, a few weeks before he switches to Aprilia

KTM

This is yet one more advantage of having so many Ducatis on the grid: when you need it you’re more likely to get help, either from rivals who want to help or because they’ve been told to. With Zarco, it was a bit of both.

Márquez’s second strong finish over two weekends was further evidence that the huge surgery he underwent in June has been amazingly successful, possibly more so than even the biggest optimists dared hope. When he slid off on Friday morning he happily picked up his RC213V, mostly using his injured right arm, a sure sign that the bone is fully fixed and the muscles are getting stronger.

So which of the two most likely contenders will win the 2022 MotoGP world championship?

“I bet on Pecco’s bike,” said Márquez. This wasn’t dissing Bagnaia, it was saluting Quartararo who he sees getting so much more out of the Yamaha than anyone else, the same as he gets so much more out of the Honda than anyone else.

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Of course, it’s not just Quartararo, Bagnaia and outsider Miller. Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaró is still in with a chance, just about, after salvaging 11th place from a grim weekend in Thailand. He stands 20 points behind the leader, while Enea Bastianini is one point ahead of Miller.

The title is simply too close to call. Ducati may have the upper hand from a machine point of view, but mostly the bikes are so close that a couple of wrong clicks on the suspension and a few wrong clicks on the laptop can take you from fighting for the podium to the struggling to stay in the top ten.

The weather at Phillip Island is often a deciding factor. If it’s cold and windy the track is treacherous. And generally the more wings have on your bike when the wind is howling up from Antarctica the more trouble you have navigating the track’s high-speed curves, which may be one reason why Ducati hasn’t won a race there since it had Casey Stoner on board.

And then Sepang and Valencia. Like I say, too close to call.

If machine performance is mostly against Quartararo, history is against Bagnaia. In seven decades of motorcycle GP racing no one has won the premier-class championship after crashing out of five races. But there’s always a first time…