Marc Márquez Returns to His Winning Ways in Qatar

Marc Márquez on factory Ducati has done it again, regaining the point lead from brother Álex. Before practice Marc was reserved about his chances. He said, “I have only won one year here.”

This has two basic causes: The track has fast right-handers that are his weak area, and his strength in his best years has been in “small” point-and-shoot corners that favor his brake hard, get turned early, and blast off riding style. Not many in Qatar.

He continued, “In my best years [here] I always suffered.”

On Friday he was third fastest behind Franco Morbidelli and 2022-23 champion Francesco Bagnaia.

“But I started in a good way. Even with the used tires I feel better than with new tires. I’m riding alone, I’m just trying different styles at a circuit that is against my style, so I need to adapt a bit.”

He also said, “When I ride, I try to adapt my style to the track, and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t ride following my instincts as I usually like to do in Thailand or in Austin where the times come easily to me. Here, I have the pace with used tires, but I need to think more about how I need to ride.”

In Thailand and Austin, the notes came from within, but at Losail he had to play from the sheet music.

We must particularly admire riders who can do this: Jorge Lorenzo, the corner-speed man who adapted to the point-and-shoot Ducati, or Kenny Roberts, who realized he could brake harder against Freddie Spencer because his engine’s weight was farther back than Freddie’s. Have an idea, then smoothly blend it into your existing style. There are so many stories of riders who have gone faster in practice while trying a new way, but who instinctively reverted to bad habits on Sunday—and slowed down.

Now for the shameful episode of the weekend: the demotion of Maverick Viñales (Tec3 KTM) from second place to 14th based on the tire pressure rule.

If I were a spectator, applauding the podium, only to hear that through the interference of office workers one of them had been sent down to 14th, I would want my money back. Viñales’ well-judged ride into second was a grand demonstration of the excellence of Michelin tires.

Supposedly the tire pressure rule is intended to prevent tire failure. Did Viñales’ front tire fail? No! It gave outstanding performance.

If a corporation is so fearful of possible negative publicity attending a tire failure that they are willing to demote an outstanding rider in this way, they should remember the words of former US President Harry Truman: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

In “adjusted” results, Bagnaia was second, 4.5 seconds back, and Morbidelli (VR46 Duc) 6.5 seconds. Those numbers attest that Márquez was able in useful degree to overcome his stylistic differences with the Losail circuit. We know these two have race-winning speed—Bagnaia as past champion and Morbidelli as lately returned to the level that first brought him to the series.

Bagnaia said, “I had a strong start but it’s not easy to manage when you go so far behind (he fell back to seventh on lap one). I probably pushed too much, then there was the duel with Morbidelli, and I wore out the tires.

“When I passed Marc at one point (lap 5), I started to feel the tires dropping and realized that he was managing them instead.”

Morbidelli said, “I was able to get a good start (he was fourth on the grid) and took the lead (which he held for laps 1–10). I felt good about the pace and was ahead of everyone, but then I had a tire drop.”

Tire drop is not an accident. It is a result of how hard you use the tires. Presence of mind, not lack of speed, is what kept Márquez in second and third during the first 15 laps of the 22-lap race. Marc said later, “…in the first part of the race I was quiet. Morbidelli was going but I predicted…that he would not be fast in the second part of the race.”

This is just what Marco Lucchinelli did in 1981. Knowing that the bias-ply tires of that time could survive only 10 laps of actual racing, he let the others push while he cruised. When he saw their tires begin to make little slips, he could pass them without opposition.

Tire drop is a change in tire characteristics associated with the stress-driven breakup of clusters of reinforcing particles (carbon black, silica) in the rubber.

Viñales, too, experienced some chatter. He said, “Today I had some…

“…I also changed my corner entry a little bit: I pushed more at the front than at the rear and that helped me a lot to keep a good pace…”

Chatter typically originates at the rear, so his plan was to ease up on the rear a bit. Let’s remember that he finished second, just not “officially.”

Johann Zarco (Honda) was fourth and Fermín Aldeguer (Gresini Duc) fifth. It’s good to see Honda and Zarco returning to the fray; he was 0.173 second behind Morbidelli. Zarco noted that “vibration (the 21st century word for chatter) is still our limit. So I just cross my fingers to fix this and in that case I believe I can be in the top six (on Sunday).”

A photo of Marc’s bike in practice with a slender parallelepiped maybe 6–7 inches long attached vertically to the rear end of its right swingarm beam has been variously interpreted as an anti-chatter tuned mass damper or a camera for observing the right tire sidewall’s behavior in corners.

Romano Albesiano, formerly with Aprilia but now MotoGP technical director at Honda, recently revealed that progress has been achieved on the Honda by relaxing some forward chassis stiffness. During the championship years of Márquez on Honda, he needed that stiff steering head to prevent braking instability with his very hard braking, and apparently it remains in Honda’s “cookbook.” Such stiffness is the enemy of corner speed.

Aldeguer is another of the fast plain-speakers entering the series. He said, “Ducati’s data showed that I’m the least aggressive rider on the tires. This somewhat limits me in the time attack, but in the long race [it] gives the points” (he was eighth in Q2, 0.622 second out of first).

To those saying these recent races are boring and that Ducati and Marc Márquez are the cause, I remind them that Bagnaia’s saying vague things like “I probably pushed too much” is not an effective tool for opposing a rider with a race plan and the ability to learn to use the Ducati to be fast on a circuit previously difficult for him.

Current champion Jorge Martín, just returned from an earlier injury, suffered broken ribs and lung damage from a crash on lap 14 of Sunday’s race. Let’s hope his painful injuries are soon mended.

Jerez, in Spain, is in two weeks.