The MotoGP championship series had a wild round at the Catalunya circuit last weekend. Heavy crashes and injuries, and two red flags during Sunday’s main event.
On Saturday, Alex Marquez (Ducati) took the Sprint win ahead of Pedro Acosta (KTM) and Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati). Meanwhile, Jorge Martin (Aprilia) crashed out of the Sprint race after suffering a concussion earlier in the day during practice.
Sunday’s race was red-flagged twice. The red flags resulted from two nasty crashes, including one involving Alex Marquez and Pedro Acosta when Acosta’s KTM had a mechanical issue on a high-speed straightaway with Alex just behind him. Alex clipped Acosta’s bike, resulting in Alex and his bike leaving the track at very high speed and the ensuing flipping and barrel rolling of both Alex and his bike.
Alex Marquez lay on the track for an extended period of time before he was put on an ambulance and ultimately taken to the hospital. We are pleased to report that he has apparently suffered only a broken clavicle and a fracture (apparently not displaced) of his C7 vertebra. He had successful surgery to plate the collarbone and has already left the hospital.
The other crash involved Johann Zarco (Honda), who injured his leg in the process. Zarco has also been discharged from the hospital.
The twice-delayed Sunday GP ended with Di Giannantonio taking the win over Fermin Aldeguer (Ducati) in second place and Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) in third.
Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia), despite his mediocre weekend, continues to lead the championship points. 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.
Crazy race. Glad no one was seriously hurt. It is nice to see others on the podium. The sprint race also had some good racing. Hopefully it continues for the season.
Interesting to see the day carried by so many unusual suspects. I wonder what it was about the track that so favored people with a different mix of skill sets. The series should seek out radically different track layouts to promote more of this sort of thing. It would give the fans so much more to speculate and bench race about. More like an enduro series with all the different flavors of forests from low swamp to high desert.
Road racing is so seriously limited in that way. All the races are held on automotive based race tracks. I’ll bet some of the car guys would enjoy a race course designed for motorcycles first in their series to mix things up a bit.
I believe that Barber Motor Sport Park was design for motorcycles.
Chicken/egg? The bikes are designed to work on the tracks.
As John II pointed out, Barber in Alabama is primarily a motorcycle track but it’s criticized for being too short for the big bikes to really open up. Matt Mladin didn’t seem to notice. He rode that place like a mad man on a GSXR 1000.
Rider/bike. I think a motorcycle race should favor the riders, all of them. Ducati top fives of the recent past and the recent Aprilia dominance seems to illustrate that most of the tracks test the bikes. The very point about “the big bikes really open up” is the problem, in my opinion.
Remember. I am the guy that bought a YZF250 (250cc four stroke motocross bike) to use as a test sled for my ice race tracks. Every year I use it to try to make sure the 250 guys didn’t have a straight where all they could do is watch all their hard dicing go up in ice dust. I also made better races to watch. I did occasionally get some open four stroke guy bring a plow truck and add usually a couple of long boring straights and a hairpin option so they could do the superiority dance because their higher revving diesels had some top speed on the almighty open two skrokes.
To be honest. I could go pretty fast on the YZF250 “Weisel”. But boy was I happy to see it go. Maintenance nightmare. It might not have been ride for three, fix for six of the old snowmobiles. But it was bad.
In the end. If the tracks weren’t so boring Quartararo would be a force, Acosta on fire…there would real races at every event. Not just a display of the fast guy of the day on one of the very few bikes that can fog the fricken mirror on this car track.
Interesting to see the day carried by so many unusual suspects. I wonder what it was about the track that so favored people with a different mix of skill sets. The series should seek out radically different track layouts to promote more of this sort of thing. It would give the fans so much more to speculate and bench race about. More like an enduro series with all the different flavors of forests