Mugello MotoGP Wrap-Up 2016

A record crowd of 100,000 got their money's worth in a lead-swapping final lap between championship leader Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo and Honda's Marc Marquez.

The key to understanding the result was consistency, to which dean of MotoGP journalism Dennis Noyes so often points; the best predictor of the result is not who squeezes out a hot lap or two in practice, qualifying, or Sunday warm-up, but rather which rider has the highest consistent “cruising speed.” For the easier it is for a rider to lap quickly, without accepting unusual risk, the more likely he can set a race time the others can’t equal. The obvious challengers were Lorenzo’s teammate Rossi, who sensationally set pole with drafting assistance from Vinales. His race was stopped on lap 9 by a smoky engine blow-up like that suffered by Lorenzo in morning warm-up.

“We've been very lucky today with our engine because one lap less in the warm-up, we wouldn't break in the warm-up and we would [have raced] with the same engine,” Lorenzo said.

In the early laps, Rossi attempted a pass on Lorenzo but classically ran wide at San Donato, indicating he lacked the margin to pass without sacrifice.

A strong result was also expected from Andrea Iannone, whose factory Ducati was clocked at 220-mph. He was fast, “…unfortunately I couldn't get a good start. I'm disappointed about that because if I had been closer to the leaders I think I could maybe have been able to fight for the win. When I caught Dovizioso we passed each other a couple of times and we lost a bit of time; after passing him, however, I no longer had any chance of catching the two up front.”

The top teams put serious R&D into achieving strong starts—for example, by developing friction material whose grip does not change steeply with temperature, making clutches grabby. Rossi used the wet FP1 (which Lorenzo sat out) to practice starts.

And then there was Vinales, who on his factory Suzuki topped the Sunday warm-up and was looking like serious business about to happen, “We got a problem on the electronics,” he said. “The bike stopped pushing, giving power, then everybody overtook me. I changed gear and it came back to normal. I stressed a lot the tires in the first laps. Trying to overtake, trying to accelerate, I destroyed the tires more than if I was in a leading position. I'm really sad, because I think after warm-up, it was possible to fight for the podium.”

Marquez did a fabulous job of overcoming the problems of his 2016 Honda RC213V in staying close to Lorenzo at all.

“The wheelie stops us and we need to reduce the power for the wheelie,” Marquez said. “Here [at Mugello] we have the wheelie but the worst problem is the stability on the exit. This stability, if we want to gain it, the electronics cannot fix. We need to reduce the power to be smoother.”

When Marquez speaks of ‘stability’ on exit, he may be speaking of the oscillations which can easily develop between anti-wheelie and anti-spin systems. Lacking electronics sophisticated enough to overcome this, they have dialed-out power as a brute force “solution.”

“Last year we were able to control the power with the electronics (Honda’s own system and software),” Marquez added. “The bike was much more stable and the slide was nicer. Now with these electronics (the “common software” imposed by DORNA in 2016) I cannot manage this power so we need to reduce it but the power is there. The thing is that we cannot use it for some reason.”

The big-picture result has been reduced acceleration and top speed. Marquez knows the power is there, but to control the wheelies they must reduce it.

Teammate Dani Pedrosa added, “The strong point we have is the braking. There is only one strong braking [at Mugello] so we can make up some time there but in the rest of the track we are mainly losing. Still the gap is very big. It's a struggle to find a good compromise on the track, especially because here, after one turn there is another.”

Pedrosa noted that in pushing to make up time (usually by later and harder braking), you run the risk of going off-line, thereby compromising the following corners in a “cascade of error.” At the limit of braking, the front tire begins to lose direction, inviting mistakes.

In sum, Marquez’s job was to compensate for the ten-years-out-of-date electronics, the lost acceleration and top speed, manage the instability off corners, and consistently click off lap times equal to those of Lorenzo. Yes, sir! No problem, sir!

Lorenzo said, “Marc made a very good race pace and looking at the lap times in the practice, I didn't expect him to stay so consistent all the race but they made a good step.”

Neither man in that last-lap clash knew what would happen, “…when Marc overtook me,” said Lorenzo, “he is a great fighter and I thought it was better to finish the race in second place and take the points.”

Marquez said, “I tried to give my all and I did the best race I could do today, I really tried everything. I took several risks in an attempt to win, but on the home straight Jorge slipstreamed me. During all the race I was in his slipstream and I never catch him completely. I could catch him on the last lap because he did a mistake with the gear on the first corner, but I tried to be there and I think it was a great show for all the fans.”

Both men fully committed to winning the encounter; Lorenzo remembered his 11th-hour rush past de Angelis in the 2005 250 race here.

“…when I arrived in the last chicane the memories of 2005 passed into my mind when I overtook [Alex] de Angelis in 250, so I had his crazy idea to make the same. I opened a lot of throttle and I entered so fast, maybe too fast because Marquez again overtook me, so I thought I was losing the race. Luckily today the rider in front was Marc with his Honda which is struggling this year with its engine, so I [was] fast into the last corner and going quite close and I recovered a lot of meters to win this unexpected victory.”

In the end, Lorenzo had the margin to slipstream Marquez—a margin Marquez had lacked throughout the 23 laps.

These are two equally admirable kinds of brilliance—Lorenzo’s beautifully controlled and consistent high pace versus Marquez’s ability to reliably improvise stability from chaos.

Lorenzo feels some animosity from fans, who prefer his colorful teammate. It has always been this way in sport, for fans are drawn to riders who appear to risk everything in every corner—riders like Noriyuki Haga or Kevin Schwantz. Fans are less attracted to those like Roberts (three 500 titles), Lawson (four 500 titles), Doohan (five consecutive 500 titles), or Lorenzo (three MotoGP titles), who are merely extremely good at what they do.

Imagine your airliner is on final at Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak Airport, bucking the crosswinds as it flies the glide path between tall buildings. Rain. Poor visibility. Which kind of pilot would you want at the controls?