Silverstone MotoGP Wrap-Up 2016

This was a grand contest determined not by the vast experience and know-how of the top teams and riders, but by new combinations of circumstances that came together on the day.

After a rain-then-dry practice, Cal Crutchlow set pole in rain, taking care to work his front tire hard enough to keep it at temperature. With all the washing going on, much of the rubber put down in dry practice was sluiced away, and with it went “certainties” learned in previous races here.

Riders commented that the circuit is bumpy – one rider noting that they’ve been asking for this for five years now.

Marc Marquez, who fought his way back to 4th after touching Crutchlow at very high speed, then running off and having to make up time, was the only rider of the top group not on a hard front. In practice he had crashed on a softer tire in cool conditions and was, well, spooked by it.

The two Andreas were as expected fastest in top speed on their Ducatis but both men suffered arm pump. Marquez had something to say about that. He said after four laps of the race he realized his soft front was a mistake, saying, “I was with the elbows all the time, trying to manage the front.”

Crutchlow noted, “I couldn’t change direction. The bike just got worse and worse.”

That makes me suspect everyone had similar problems and for the Ducati men, being “with the elbows all the time” led to arm pump.

Crutchlow is very modest about his 2nd place, saying in a week everyone will again be saying he’s rubbish. But here’s the thing. I have long sought his opinions about things because he is one of the paddock’s good talkers, with something analytical to say about everything. Honda have finally noticed that and have assigned him some testing duties;

“I’ve been doing some small tests for Honda and it has been difficult jumping from bike to bike.”

Difficult, maybe, but I think this is a unique learning experience – like having extra practice. He’s learning from it. Why not test with Marquez, their main man? For the same reason Yamaha engineers back in the early ‘90s said, “We lost our way” – because Wayne Rainey could ride whatever they gave him. Marquez, the supreme improviser, is so good at getting the best from any combination that it makes him less able to identify a trend of improvement. And why not use Pedrosa? Because he, being the lightest rider, is his own special case; what works for him may be no use at all for anyone else. Crutchlow is a very smart man who notices things, but his spotty record and devil-take-the-hindermost manner conceal that. Respect him!

Maverick Vinales won easily, not only pulling away after the first start (the race was restarted after the Baz/Espargaro crash) but decisively did it again in the 19-lap final, leading every single lap as he drew away to win by 3.5 seconds. This was Vinales’s first win in MotoGP and Suzuki’s first since 2007.

It wasn’t speed – the Suzuki was 13th-fastest in top speed, 5-mph down on the chart-topping Ducatis. It was grip in bumpy, washed-pavement conditions that won this race. And the willingness to accept and use settings that realized an advantage.

Vinales said, “We proved that the job we are doing is really in the right direction.”

Knowing that he had a margin, he said, “I tried to push hard at the beginning to take advantage.” None of the usual factors was effective against him and his combination – not the unmatched speed of the Ducatis, not Marquez’s ability to improvise something that will work, not Lorenzo’s feared ‘perfection of smoothness.’

Why couldn’t Marquez do that job? Because his riding style uniquely hinges on being able to compress maximum braking with early turning – something Crutchlow remarked upon during practice, saying ‘Nobody can do what Marquez is doing.’ And if you put enough spring into your front end to keep off the bottom stops while cramming the bike into the corner as Marquez does, you will be too stiff to make the grip you need on this bumpy pavement.

I suspect Crutchlow, too, had his bike set on the soft side because he said, “I couldn’t change direction. The bike just got worse and worse.” When your bike is soft, it responds more slowly to steering because it takes time to compress the suspension enough to start feeding force from the tire into the chassis. But that very softness was making tire grip, by tracking over bumps rather than sailing over them, traction-free.

Jorge Lorenzo had made an unverifiable change after the warm-up; he went harder, and it reduced what grip he had. He sounded mystified in practice, saying the “bike is acting differently compared to other years”, but at the time blamed that on the twin mysteries of 2016 – being on Michelins again and having to rely on Dorna’s decade-out-of-date mandated software. Sure it’s acting differently; with the tires spending more time in the air where the bumps are throwing them, settings that had worked to produce his previous dominant wins here were irrelevant.

Yamaha team manager Massimo Meregalli noted that the condition of the pavement “made our job a bit more difficult.” Scott Redding, too, noted that circuit condition was eating into the front end feel he wanted.

Valentino Rossi was his usual combative self, keeping Marquez back while seeing what he could do to overcome Crutchlow. Third was good – he pulled a meager 3 points back by finishing ahead of Marquez, who despite that retains a two-race lead.

Marquez remains in a strong position, for recent unexpected successes by Crutchlow and Vinales have had the effect of sopping up points that might have gone to the Yamaha men.