Who can stop Ducati's MotoGP juggernaut?

MotoGP

Pecco Bagnaia scored his third consecutive victory on Sunday, chased by miracle-maker Fabio Quartararo, while third title contender Aleix Espargaró struggled

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Ducati celebrate Bagnaia’s victory hat-trick. No doubt the Italian and his Desmosedici GP22 are on a roll

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Mat Oxley

Pecco Bagnaia took home 25 points from Red Bull Ring yesterday, making it a perfect 75 from the last three races, but runner-up Fabio Quartararo was the moral victor, at a track where many believed he would get devoured by the Ducatis.

The world champion and current championship leader said he didn’t want to sound pretentious but felt he had ridden like a lion. And he wasn’t wrong.

His race was much like his qualifying performance.

“At every corner in qualifying I don’t know if I’m going to make the turn or go into the gravel, that’s the most difficult thing,” he said on Saturday. “The front is moving so much, the bike is moving. In the end I’m not 100% in control.”

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Quartararo had every reason to be delighted by his second place

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When the grid lined up on Sunday morning he was the only non-Desmosedici rider on the front two rows, at a track where the Italian factory had been beaten just once since Red Bull Ring first welcomed MotoGP in 2016. In front of him he had pole man Enea Bastianini, Bagnaia and Jack Miller, then either side of him he had Jorge Martin and Johann Zarco.

One by one he dispensed with the Ducati mob, most memorably passing Miller at the new chicane, which has made Red Bull Ring safer, while ruining the circuit’s unique character.

His move on the Aussie was a work of art. He swept past in the middle of the right/left to grab second place and commence an entirely unexpected pursuit of the winner.

“It was one of the best overtakes of my career,” said the 23-year-old Frenchman. “Jack braked a bit earlier than before and I braked a bit too late. All weekend it had been impossible to overtake there, so I said, ‘OK, I have to try something and for sure he won’t expect a move in this corner,’ and it worked!”

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Quartararo went past Miller in the right/left flipflop like lightning, with millimetres to spare. Miller even seemed a little embarrassed about what happened but, as always, there was a story behind it.

“I was surprised how fast Fabio came past me – it looked like I was going granny speed,” he laughed. “I was really suffering with the left side of my front tyre and I didn’t want to lean the bike too quick into the left of the chicane because every time I’d do that I was losing the front. He really attacked it and got it done. It was impressive – 10 out of 10!”

The new 2a/2b chicane didn’t only help Quartararo make such an amazing pass, it helped his entire race. Instead of Red Bull Ring’s original long run from Turn 1 to the 200mph Turn 2 (where Zarco and Franco Morbidelli crashed in 2020), the new layout created a shorter run from Turn 1 to the chicane and an even shorter run from the chicane to Turn 3.

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Brothers in arms: Miller, Bagnaia, Quartararo and Espargaró have a post-race love-in

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Last year Quartararo had to contend with a 7mph (11km/h) top-speed deficit on the Ducatis at that point of the circuit. This year his deficit at the fastest part of the revised track (into Turn 1) was just 2mph (3km/h).

“I expected much worse at this track,” he added. “For sure the chicane helped us this weekend. I could stay with the Ducatis in second and third, but they pulled away in fourth, fifth and sixth, but now we arrive at the chicane in fourth – we don’t keep accelerating towards Turn 3 in fifth and sixth. This year we ran super-short gearing in the first few gears and this helped us stay with them towards the chicane and towards Turn 3.”

When Quartararo took Miller with three laps to go, he set off after Bagnaia, shrinking the gap from 1.5 seconds to 0.5 seconds at the chequered flag. His ride was magical, somewhat like Marc Márquez, with the motorcycle shuddering and shaking beneath him, enduring inputs and forces for which it hadn’t been designed.

After the race Aleix Espargaró told journalists that Quartararo is by far the strongest rider on the grid at the moment.

Quartararo is anything but cocky, so he squirmed in his seat when a journalist passed on the comment during the podium media conference.

“I feel I’m at my best level but I don’t want to pretentious,” he said. “But it’s a nice compliment from Aleix [who just happens to be his neighbour in Andorra].”

Of course, Bagnaia’s (very nearly) start-to-finish victory shouldn’t be overlooked. When you’re equalling records established by Casey Stoner you can be pretty sure you’re doing a good job.

The only other Ducati rider to have won three consecutive MotoGP races is 2007 champ Stoner, who did the hat-trick twice, in 2007 and again in 2008. True, the Desmosedici is an immeasurably better motorcycle now, but the opposition is also stronger than it was a decade and a half ago.

Bagnaia was perfect yesterday, like he always is, except when he isn’t and makes mistakes, like when he crashed out at Le Mans and Sachsenring (mistakes which he blamed on relaxing too much).

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Bagnaia’s boots after the race – new for every weekend and already a bit second-hand

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His current progress is real a worry for Quartararo, whose championship advantage is evaporating. If you do the maths you’ll see that in three races Bagnaia has more than halved his points deficit, from 91 to 44. That’s a rate of 16 points per race and all the Italian needs to win the title is to score seven more points at each race over the last seven rounds, starting at Misano, his home track, next week.

Front-tyre temperature and pressure has been one of the biggest, most controversial talking points during 2022 but was hardly mentioned at the three tracks before Red Bull Ring: Sachsenring, Assen and Silverstone. This isn’t because the problem has been fixed, it’s because those three tracks are mostly fast and flowing, with minimal heavy braking and turning into slow corners.

Red Bull Ring is all about heavy braking and turning into slow corners, so front tyre temperature and pressure talk was back last weekend and front tyre choices depended on each rider’s strategy for the race.

Bagnaia and Miller were confident they would run at the front, enjoying the cool air that brings, so they both chose soft front compounds. The soft gave more grip, so it was the safer option, even though it was more squidgy, so it made bikes less stable on the brakes.

All the other fast Ducati riders also choose the soft – Bastianini, Martin and Zarco – because they too had hopes of running at the front. More surprisingly, Quartararo went for the soft front, even though he surely knew would spent much of the race surrounded by red-hot Ducatis, radiating massive heat towards his front tyre.

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Bagnaia and Miller fighting for cooler air to cool their front tyres

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Probably just as well that Quartararo changed his mind on the grid, switching from the soft to the hard front. But this is why it took him a while to reach his maximum pace in the early stages.

“I struggled a bit to warm up the hard front,” he said. “Then I was super-aggressive and made many mistakes but I saved them.”

Bastianini, perhaps with an eye on the rising track temperature, also switched from a soft to a hard front on the grid. Sadly, his race ended early while he was in the lead group, when he dented his front wheel rim running on a kerb.

The fact that both factory Ducatis used the soft front explains why they contested the lead so hotly for several laps. The goal wasn’t simply to lead the race for the sake of leading, it was to bless your front wheel with cool air, instead of cooking it with the heat coming off the lead bike.

“To be safe we used the soft front tyre even though it wasn’t the best because I had a lot of front locking,” explained Bagnaia, who when Miller briefly got past immediately counterattacked to prevent his front tyre getting hotter.

“I was already having a lot of movement from the front, so I said, ‘If I stay behind him I’ll surely have too much pressure in the front tyre’. So when he overtook me I tried to drop my lap times and open a gap.”

And that’s exactly what he did, leaving Miller to worry about Quartararo.

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“I’m happy with the job done,” added Bagnaia. “Now I will try to continue gaining points on Fabio, but he is so, so competitive.”

Bagnaia is nothing if not a gentleman, so after the race he thanked his team, his family, his girlfriend, everyone in fact, with the exception of his dog.

“I’ve never won three races in a row, so I will use this moment to improve myself more. Thanks to everyone – I found the reasons for my mistakes and I’ve tried to improve. For sure I have to learn a lot more things to arrive at the level of some of the top riders from the past. But I’ve made a step.”

Even more impressive, Bagnaia won with a rear slick he doesn’t even like. Red Bull Ring places immense stresses on the rear tyre, with so much low-gear acceleration, so Michelin doesn’t bring its usual softer-casing rear slick to the track. Instead Michelin brings an older design, with stiffer casing and minimal rubber depth, to avoid heat build-up, similar to the tyre used at Mandalika and so hated by Honda and Suzuki.

Inevitably this tyre offers less grip in all areas: braking grip, edge grip and acceleration traction. Riders and teams therefore have to adapt as well as they can.

“My riding style doesn’t suit this tyre so well, because I use the rear tyre a lot to stop this bike, which is why I struggled at the start of weekend,” added Bagnaia, who was way down in 16th at the end of FP1.

Quartararo meanwhile didn’t have such worries. “For me this tyre is almost the same – our bike isn’t so sensitive to these things, even though it’s always much tougher to ride than in the past.”

Of course, although Bagnaia and Quartararo were the main men in Austria, the championship leader’s closest rival is Aprilia’s Espargaró, not the Ducati number one.

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Espargaró has a difficult race, mostly mired in the pack

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Espargaró and his RS-GP were on a roll before and after MotoGP’s summer break – fast enough to win at Assen and fast enough to win at Silverstone. But while Bagnaia picked up his first-ever hat-trick, Espargaró was punted into the gravel by Quartararo at Assen, had a huge crash at Silverstone and then struggled with his bike at Red Bull Ring. He now stands 32 points behind Quartararo and 12 ahead of Bagnaia.

“I was over the limit at every corner but I made zero mistakes,” said the Argentine winner who did well to salvage a sixth-place finish from a third-row start.

Most of all he struggled with the stiffer rear tyre.

“I prefer to crash than finish fourth” Jorge Martin

“I had a lot of problems stopping the bike,” he said. “During practice we tried a lot – we moved the engine quite a lot and made the bike longer and lower. We tried everything but then the bike didn’t like the apexes. I braked like an animal and I don’t know how I didn’t make any mistakes. But in the end I destroyed the rear tyre because if you arrive too quick at the entry of corner, you accelerate out of it with more lean and you destroy the tyre, so then I had a lot of spin in the straights and there was nothing I could do to stop Zarco and Martin coming past near the end.”

During the last few laps Martin closed on Miller to dispute the final podium place. On the last lap he lunged past at Turn 1, lost the front and crashed.

“I was on the limit but I had to try for the podium – I prefer to crash than finish fourth,” said the Spaniard who remounted to finish tenth.

Thanks to Martin’s crash, Luca Marini scored his best-ever result, coming through from 13th on the grid to finish fourth, ahead of Zarco, who struggled with his soft front overheating in the battle.

Misano next, another home race for Aprilia and Ducati. It’s all way too close to even begin who will have the advantage there: Aprilia, Ducati or Quartararo.

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