Marco Bezzecchi Brilliant in Le Mans

The returning Marc Márquez led two laps, was second for many laps, but crashed out late in the race at the famous Le Mans Bugatti Grand Prix Circuit. Francesco Bagnaia and Maverick Viñales collided early and were out. Much to his own surprise Marco Bezzecchi won, the leader of a Ducati 1-2-3 sweep.

“Today when I started I saw that I was faster than the guys in front of me. I was a bit afraid for the front tire temperature. But I was able to overtake them. I was able to escape,” Bezzecchi commented.

Behind the Italian were Jorge Martín, Johann Zarco, Augusto Fernández, and Aleix Espargaró.

Is there fresh light on the question, “Does the sprint race format put riders under excessive pressure to be first at every moment?”

The answer is that 13 riders finished and eight riders—many of them top contenders—crashed out. That’s almost 40 percent of the field. Some will point to other, pre-sprint-era races with similar stats, but as one fellow enthusiast put it, “It has turned MotoGP into a grid of 24 Kevin Schwantzes.”

Viñales and favorite Bagnaia collided on lap 4. Bagnaia said, “He overtook me very cleanly but was a bit wide. I was on the inside on my line and when he came back [across] he just took his normal line. But I was there.

“So maybe I could [have managed] better and maybe I had to close the gas. Or maybe he had to consider that I was there.”

Can all these cases be agreeably resolved by alert, intelligent stewards acting upon enforceable rules? Resolved promptly, so that spectators and viewers can know who placed where, very soon after the flag? Not something to be resolved days later in offices, with appeals and courtroom argumentation?

I think of what happened in World Supers when it was decided to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy toward production chassis dimensions. Then it turned out that factory tolerances for the location of the two pivots and the steering rake are not zero, so zero tolerance could not be imposed because production chassis were all over the map.

Are racing rules that completely forbid contact between bikes enforceable?

On lap 5 Luca Marini and Álex Márquez were out after Marini touched the curb in turn 4. “[I] made one of the best saves in my life. But then Márquez hit me in the back,” Marini commented. Next out were Joan Mir on lap 12 (problems stopping and holding a line) and Álex Rins on lap 14 (front end closed). Jack Miller, having taken the lead from Marc Márquez on lap 3, led until lap 10, faded back, and was off on lap 24.

Marc Márquez, having shown his ability to “decode” the current Honda with German-made Kalex chassis, was achieving fabulous lean angles but having been second from lap 11 to lap 25, found himself finally over the limit and unable to “uncrash” himself as he used to do with remarkable regularity. (He had discovered a way of steering the front end into the ground as the bike slid along on its side, such that as it slowed it was flipped back up onto its wheels with a great shake.)

“I crashed in turn 7,” he said. “But the crash started in turn 6. Because I had a massive shake in turn 6, because the bike was shaking a lot there in all accelerations” (which presumably means shaking recorded on x, y, and z axes by the Inertial Measurement Unit).

Fabio Quartararo has achieved little thus far because of equipment shortcomings.

He said, “From the beginning of the year we have been trying thousands of things—of settings on the bike.

“We’ve tried a lot of things on the bike and the best we had is always to bring the base of two years ago. So we decided to keep [the setup] like that and that’s it.”

Marc Márquez’s evaluation of the current Honda: “We need to change something for the future, to be more competitive, to be more safe, because every year the Honda riders are in the top ranking of crashes. It’s not only me. Mir crashed four or five times in Jerez, now here again three times.”

During Márquez’s period of winning championships, other riders said his bike was stiff, that it was “very physical.” He braked late and hard, entering turns on just the front wheel, then dropping the rear in a sliding attitude at the last instant. The bike was tall for prompt weight transfer, and it was stiff for instant turning (the opposite of my late uncle’s 1948 Buick, which featured high flex for delayed turning response).

During Márquez’s periods of recovery from injury the Honda was redesigned to make it “more accessible” to the styles of those riding it.

Just as Honda has altered the behavior of its bike away from the sharp focus on Márquez’s style, Yamaha has moved away from the classical corner-speed riding style of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. When riders like Viñales have wanted a bike suited to a more aggressive style, with enhanced braking ability, it has evidently been necessary to back away from the chassis lateral flexibility that used to increase corner apex speed, and to build in greater braking stability in the form of a stiffer steering head. It has been noted by Rossi himself in recent seasons that Yamaha has given up being the paragon of corner speed it once was—with a long, low bike which by delivering high corner speed has less need of violent, late braking and grab-a-handful acceleration (a “more aggressive style”).

The two remaining Japanese manufacturers in the series are therefore both trapped in trying to follow the dictum of Rossi’s longtime crew chief Jeremy Burgess—to develop a bike that everyone can ride rather than trying to create a separate bike adapted to each rider’s individual style. Or trying to create a bike for their star rider alone.

Ducati’s success in producing a bike that suits most of their eight riders suggests that Honda and Yamaha must strive to do the same. But the success that Honda and Yamaha have had in the past has come from developing a bike to suit a star rider. In 2004 Colin Edwards Jr. was teamed with Rossi, but their needs were so very different that the all-new “Furusawa Yamaha” of that year was made to suit Rossi only. Colin, despite championships in World Superbike, found himself a point-and-shoot rider imprisoned on a corner-speed motorcycle.

What if it turns out that the various qualities of a motorcycle—braking stability, apex speed, steer response, and weight transfer—are not kitchen condiments like oregano, thyme, and rosemary? What if only coordinated combinations that suit a particular rider can actually work?

Another point is that the very accelerated schedule of the sprint race format provides much less time to evaluate machine setup.

OK, developing better motorcycles is not the proper aim of Dorna or its large stockholder, Canada Pensions. If Formula 1 is boosting ratings by re-aiming its presentation toward general, non-enthusiast audiences, won’t Canada Pensions be on the phone asking Dorna how it plans to do the same? Never, never again utter the word “tires” in a broadcast or press release, and let’s have more, more, more extreme facial close-ups depicting big gross emotions like Triumph, Hatred, or Anxiety. Emotions sell! Motorcycles are just what the riders happen to be sitting on.

We all see where this is going—the motorcycle manufacturers and the series manager Dorna have different reasons for participating. Let’s hope they manage to keep it all together.