Bagnaia Extends Championship Lead at Assen

MotoGP order is restored. Francesco Bagnaia’s win at Assen on Sunday, after Marco Bezzecchi’s topping every session, setting pole, and winning Saturday’s sprint race, increases Pecco’s lead in the championship to 35 points over second, Jorge Martín, and to 36 points over Bezzecchi.

Revealing rider comments now give us a better picture of how riders like Bez and Martín show great strength, but so far, the reigning champion Bagnaia has the consistency to make his rivals’ performances appear spotty.

Fabio Quartararo (factory Yamaha) qualified a surprising fourth after disappointments at Sachsenring a week earlier. As he continues to insist, whatever positions he has attained this year are the result of extreme pushing, making his rides sensitive to the slightest mistake. Like Jack Miller, Johann Zarco, and Maverick Viñales, Quartararo was a DNF—there were eight DNFs out of 22 starters, or 36 percent.

Bezzecchi was honest in his appraisal of how he won the sprint and what his chances were for Sunday’s 26-lap race.

At the start of the sprint “I tried to resist Pecco a bit too much [and] ran wide and lost the position against Brad [Binder] too.”

After repassing Binder: “I…had a good battle with [Bagnaia] for a few meters and luckily I was quite fast once I got in front.”

“Tomorrow will be very different because you must approach the race differently. I’m quite fast but I think Pecco goes a little better with the medium tire.

“I think Pecco is the favorite because he’s usually better than me at managing the spin, the slide, and to lean the bike in with the medium tire. He has a riding style that allows him to corner a lot with the rear.”

At Mugello, Bezzecchi noted that Bagnaia turns with five degrees less lean than he, and attributes this to Bagnaia placing his body more extremely to the inside, and lower.

In the present era, it was Marc Márquez who first pushed this to an extreme, beginning corners with a fair angle of lean and then increasing it at the apex (resulting in what Cal Crutchlow called “Honda’s V-shaped line”). To do this, Márquez shifted his entire body—not just his lower body—to the inside, pulling the outside arm tight across the tank on its way to the outside bar. The left leg is drawn up against the body to prevent pavement contact and it is the inside elbow that needs protection. This calls for combining extreme gymnastic skills with the ability to steer precisely despite the exaggerated position.

A look at published data for tire footprint area versus angle of lean shows that area decreases at high angle. That explains why riders must adopt this extreme cornering position, and why Bezzecchi feels Bagnaia’s position is particularly extreme: pushing the bike up by pushing himself down slightly increases footprint area.

Tires were a problem for everyone, with high track temperatures. Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha) experienced blistering, saying “I think this was a common problem.”

Tire blistering occurs when high tread temperature volatilizes some part of the 30 percent of the tire that is made up of processing oils and resins. The resulting gas lifts up parts of the tread, putting the tire out of balance. The resulting vibration warns the rider.

“I prepared to overtake [Binder] at turn 5,” Bezzecchi said, “and going out of turn 6 I was already in front but then I started to feel vibrations at the rear. I wanted to chase Pecco by pushing harder, but I was cautious and I couldn’t lean the bike as much as I wanted. I’m happy. I think I managed the race well.”

Bagnaia explained his decision process in the sprint. “I was trying to close the gap to Bez but…I started to feel like I was risking too much.

“In the last two laps I was getting a lot of chatter from the rear. I was risking too much to continue pushing and I saw that [I] was 1.3 seconds behind so I decided to slow down a bit.”

In Sunday’s 26-lap Grand Prix, Bagnaia said, “I tried as soon as possible because of the front tire temperature”—when you are leading, your front tire is in cool fresh air, but behind another rider or in a group you are in hot radiator air and exhaust gas, which push up front tire temperature.

“When you are so close behind,” Bagnaia continued, “it’s very easy to pick up the temperature and the front tire was a bit too soft.

“It was too hot to push as we wanted; the tires were at their limit. When I got a second ahead I started to check because I was at the limit in the right-hand corners (Assen is a right-hand course). It was difficult to carry cornering speed.

“When on the last lap I saw I had a lead of nine-tenths I became calmer.

“Yesterday (in the sprint) he caught me and got away. I was a bit worried. But I knew that today he too would have difficulty with the tires. This morning in the warmup I found something that helped me.”

Then Bagnaia said something that revealed a source of confidence: “My team and I…know where to go when we find ourselves in difficulty. We are strong in this.

“We are getting a better understanding of the new bike…”

In a postrace conversation among riders, Aleix Espargaró (a strong third today, 1.925 seconds out of first) said to Bagnaia, “You’re not fast. You just don’t make mistakes.”

Martín (Pramac Ducati, fifth on Sunday) made a generalization we have been hearing for at least two years: “We always struggle with the rear grip. Not only Ducati but all the brands are disappointed. It is never enough. The more grip you have, the better you go at the end of the race.”

This has been the basis of recent rebalancing of bikes to place more weight on the rear, relieving the much smaller-section front tire of some braking load.

Miller (KTM, DNF) described the process: “We changed the bike…just trying to work on the issues that we had in Sachsenring and Mugello.

“In the high-speed corners I was not having as much rear contact, and [was] missing a little bit of drive grip once the bike was sat up and moving.

“So we’re just trying to rotate the bike back around (moving weight to the rear by raising the front/lowering the rear slightly).”

Miller described his first-lap crash: “I was braking pretty deep [into one] and [Viñales] went past me.… I thought he was going wide and I tried to cut back under. Just as I did I asked a little bit too much of the front end and away she went.

“It was literally a couple of degrees lean angle more at the apex, just trying to bring it in to drive out between turns 1 and 3. And that was all she wrote.”

Miller’s teammate Brad Binder (fourth) drew this praise from “gray eminence” Carlo Pernat: “Binder confirmed that he is a great rider [by] arriving at the end of the race on that soft tire.”

This report is a window on the thought process of top riders. They reveal that they are constantly adjusting their riding to conditions and deciding what level of risk is the right compromise between lap time and the essential goal of finishing. Racing is a high-speed intelligence test that places great value on information awareness, retrieval, and analysis. It is far from the fan ideal of “Givin’ ‘er a hunnert an’ tin percint.”

Marc Márquez, after unsuccessfully trying to hammer nails with his forehead, chose not to start at Assen and to use the upcoming summer break. We must hope that he will regain his composure and be able to start afresh. The highest finishing Honda at Assen was that of Takaaki Nakagami, eighth.

MotoGP resumes the first weekend of August.