After a pole position from Fabio Quartararo’s Yamaha, the Aprilias of Marco Bezzecchi and Raul Fernandez dominated the weekend at Phillip Island. Bezzecchi was the fastest all weekend, and he took a convincing win in Saturday’s Sprint race with a 3 second gap over fellow Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez. Pedro Acosta (KTM) finished third.
On Sunday, Bezzecchi was forced to serve two long lap penalties, which saw him drop out of the early lead back to 7th position, where he eventually worked his way onto the podium with a third place finish. Fernandez took his first ever MotoGP victory ahead of Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati) in second.
Marc Marquez (Ducati) has already been crowned champion this year, but he has undergone surgery to repair a shoulder injury resulting from a collision with Bezzecchi (hence the double long-lap penalty) at the prior round. 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.
Looks like they still have Bagnaia riding that Vespa. What a ridiculous brand destroying game. I one year they go from a company with an impressive race program to filth. Congratulations.
They have all 6 of their bikes in the top-8, won all but 3 of the full length races on offer and the rider’s championship locked up with 5 (!) races to go. That’s not “filth”, that’s a dynasty.
That depends on your point of view. As a fan who likes to play with statistics you might think that way. As a racer who is watching a race team aggressively attack a rider’s reputation while risking his safety I certainly do not. And you’re wasting your time trying to get me to see it otherwise.
Have a gander at those statistics an get back to me on Ducati’sc overall results this year compared to the recent past.
The racing is what I’m focusing on, not pit-gossip. I only care about the competition.
Sure, they were more dominant last year than this year. Things were a little more “even” in 2023. Things could get far worse then they are now and Ducati will still be dominating, but is this level of dominance a good thing?
They’re fading a little this year because all of their competition have development concessions designed to help them catch up. Ducati enjoyed the same thing before they started winning a few more years back. This is necessary to keep the participating factories motivated to participate. Once everyone is reduced to racing wallets, companies find better ways to spend their marketing dollars/euros/yen.
They have been racing wallets since 2002. They caved in WSB and AMA to better focus their wallets on MoneyGP. And all that money has been wasted. The sport bike maket went from behemoth that it was then to the trickle that it is today. It’s the biggest marketing fiasco in the history of motorcycles. Ducati is now blasting another round into its already bullet ridden foot.
MotoGP is an obviously failed experiment. Suzuki figured that out and left after winning the championship. Motorcycling would be far better off if they put things back the way they were. It kind of amazes me that KTM is now selling finally selling a full production sport bike now that nobody cares.
We’ve been over this. The sport bike market collapsing has almost nothing to do with racing. 8 of 10 600SS buying squids were completely unaware of national or international racing. Young people stopped buying sport bikes because they could no longer afford them (acquisition + insurance).
Racing has always been expensive. Changing from 2T to 4T did not change that in any meaningful way. Adding sophisticated electronics did and this was addressed by the spec-ECU rule, as well as manufacturer concessions, which ended Honda’s dominance and largely fixed the problem, bringing Aprilia, Suzuki, and KTM into the fold and allowing Ducati to emerge as the dominant maker. GP is healthier now than it has ever been. It has rebounded massively since the post pandemic lull, with 20% viewership year over year. Ironically, the US is one of the biggest growth markets for it.