The MotoGP series visited the Jerez circuit in Spain this weekend. It turned out to be a very surprising round for Yamaha.
Former champ Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) proved to be faster than all of the Spanish riders at their home event during qualifying. Taking pole position, Quartararo had a disappointing Sprint race on Saturday, but made the podium by finishing second during the full-length race on Sunday.
Saturday’s Sprint saw Marc Marquez (Ducati) take another win ahead of brother Alex (Ducati) in second and Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) in third. This is after Quartararo took the lead in the first corner, but crashed several corners later while battling Marc Marquez.
In Sunday’s race, Quartararo again led from the start, but this time led the race for many laps before being passed by Alex Marquez. Quartararo eventually finished second behind Alex Marquez who took his first win in the MotoGP category. Bagnaia again finished third.
Marc Marquez crashed out of the main race on Sunday while running in third position. He re-mounted to finish 12th, but his brother Alex takes the points lead in the championship going into the next round at Le Mans.
For full results and points for Saturday’s Sprint race, visit the MotoGP site here. For full results and points for Sunday’s MotoGP race, visit the MotoGP site here.
Ride of the year for Fabio and Yamaha. No wonder they’re paying him upwards of $12 million per year. All time lap record and second place on that bike is nothing short of astonishing. Still looking forward to the great reset in 2027. MM will probably retire when that happens. Peco should go back to the GP24.
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Fabio’s talent is tremendous but I have to question the logic behind spending $12m on a rider who’s mounted on a bike that can’t win under anyone. Why not let him go elsewhere and spend $2m on a “really good” rider while the team sorts the bike out.
I’d be interested in comparing Pecco’s laptimes last year to this year on the tracks they’ve visited so far. Chances are he’s as fast or faster on the GP25, but facing a pair of Marquez brothers who are just a percentage point better?
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Pecco qualified about a quarter of a second faster this year on the GP25. Though the fastest race lap record at Jerez was set by Pecco last year on the GP24. Kind of a mixed Bagnaia. The big money now is spent on the aero package. I wonder what would happen if the put the 25 areo in the 24 bike.
I wonder why anyone is eager for the 2027 rule change. The 800 years were the least popular for both riders and fans. I saw it as the most childish rule change in the history of the universe. The infants at Dorna were told by their engineers that two strokes, though they spend half of their time moving air just like the four strokes do, are “supercharged” buy the scavenging effects of their exhaust pipes. This makes them about 1.6 times as powerful as a four stroke at about the same level of tune. So for a while they gave the diesels a huge unfair advantage to make the guilibles think that four strokes were awesome. Then they banned the two strokes and went to 800cc bikes, 500 times 1.6, to really stick it to the two stroke guys.
But the manufacturers still wanted to go fast. So they cranked up the tuning from ludicrous to plaid and the riders hated riding the things. The fans didn’t like it either. Pedrosa still didn’t win the championship even though he had the perfect size, weight and talent to do so.
Time marches on. Advancements in ride by wire throttes have made it so they can tune the engines a lot closer to plaid and you don’t have to be Mick Doohan to ride the thing.
But the manufacturers are still going to want to go fast. So the 850 rule change will still be a crash fest. Remember Honda just a rew years ago? The slightly reduced aero will have slightly less drag while still making the bikes look just as ridiculous. So I don’t get just what it is the rule change is supposed to help other than to slow the races down a little.
The flip side is that most of the top motocross racers would like a 350s to replace the 450s. 450s are open class bikes. Just before they canceled the 500 two strokes the 250s and 125s were getting faster lap times. At this point the 450s are just carrying around more weight and creating more gyro than one needs to race with on dirt. But they race on tracks made for motorcycles. They even moved the jumps further from the corners for the four strokes, you know, because they’re four strokes. The road racers are stuck racing on tracks made for cars and the tracks almost always include a drag strip, a way too long straight. Jerez is slightly less so and look what it did for the Yamaha. But Jerez shows that the rest of the tracks are friendlier to bikes with all the power that a 1000cc four stroke can produce. The 850 rule would make sense if they redesigned the tracks so that ultimate top speed wasn’t a thing. But that’s not gonna happen.
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Amazing. You just made all of that up entirely.
Some MXer’s do want 350’s, the better ones don’t, because the best riders can take advantage of the power. Andrew Short campaigned a KTM 350 in the premier class. He lost because of his power disadvantage. 2T 500’s were damn near impossible to ride. 4T 450’s are relatively easy to ride, despite being faster. This is because (say it with me..), 4T engines are superior to 2T engines.
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Dorna to MM dashboard on lap one. “1 million dollar bonus to lay it down nice and easy- lets keep this interesting for a while”
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Funny. But he did it twice already.
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i would wager MM has enough money in the bank to dissuade him from such an offer. i’d guess he would prefer to thoroughly and gloriously dominate the season having the title clinched very early as he has done in the past.
i think mm’s Texas’s mistake would support that hunch.
*Jerez’z mistake…mm stated he wasn’t sure at all what happened at time of the interview.
again…most folks in the industry are claiming the only person who can beat mm is mm. so far so true.
in 2015 if he just finished 6th in the races he DNF’d he’d have won that year’s title…i can’t see that information not being present on his mind for this year.
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It’s easy to forget that Quartararo is a very talented rider. Jerez doesn’t have a lot of long straights. So Quartararo can preform the magic. The rest of the Yamahas didn’t do nearly so well.
Have a look at the KTMs. Every one of them finished in the top ten. They may not be the fastest bikes. But they do have a consistent race bike that all of their riders can get decent results on. Even when they were struggling when they were new to GP, and as they raised through the ranks, the KTMs generally finished near the other KTMs. It would be a great cup bike.
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Fabio Quartararo has commented that the engine they delivered for this race is “just what they’ve been asking for” so there has been improvement there. I agree it’s pretty curious that the other Yamaha riders haven’t been able to make similar progress. Rins is also an excellent, win proven rider.
KTM is looking a little like Yamaha used to (good platform that all riders can exploit), if not quite as close to the front.
I’d be perfectly happy if MotoGP became a spec class. I’m tired of seeing great riders like Quartararo handicapped by their machinery. I want to know who the best rider really is.
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did you feel that way for the 14 years Ducati was being beat?
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So what’s the story about Yamaha? Much more interesting than the saga of the Marquez bros, and even Ducati’s dominance, much as I adore the brand.
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I wonder if Marc will start running into his own brother.
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sure and Pecco stated that he enjoyed the fight with marc and was sad that it ended so soon.
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