Pol Espargaró may be in his ninth season in MotoGP while Enea Bastianini is only starting his second, but it is the latter who looks like an old hand at the end of the Qatar Grand Prix.
It all came down to the starting grid, when the two drivers decided on a last minute tire change, with the Spaniard swapping his medium front tire for a soft compound, like what was already fitted to the rear of his Honda RC 213 V, while conversely the Italian made the reasonable choice to exchange his soft rear tire for a medium which already corresponded to last year's soft.
From then on, the die was made, and the Gresini driver only had to wait for the rear tire of Pol
I will espargaro began to deteriorate on the 14th lap only to pick up his pace increasingly until the 17th lap, before passing the Honda rider on the 18th of 22 laps.
A clear strategy that worked fully on the part of
Enea Bastianini, despite the stratospheric departure of Pol I will espargaro : congratulations to the young pilot from Rimini who writes a textbook case!
Let's move on to fabio quartararo, victim of an unwanted increase in pressure in his front tire (see here).
The curves show us that The Devil started his race well, even better than during the Doha Grand Prix which he won last year. We can actually see that from the sixth lap the Frenchman's pace slows down by a few tenths but remains very regular. Compared to last year, and despite his front tire problem, this allows the Yamaha rider to complete the 22 laps of his race in 42m24s741 compared to 42m23s997 in 2021: despite races with very different configurations and results, more regular , tumors !
This is a good thing in terms of the rider's ability to give his best, less so in terms of the Yamaha's progression from one year to the next...
However, let's not draw hasty conclusions because last year the MotoGP riders were entitled to tests and two races on the Sepang circuit. So let's wait for Mandalika, where the Niçois rode very well during the winter tests, to judge the real rider-motorcycle potential this season.
Let's now look at a third figure that challenges us: the comparison between the best Ducati during the last Grand Prix in Doha in 2021, that of Johann Zarco (2nd), and the best Ducati during the 2022 Qatar Grand Prix, that of
Enea Bastianini (1st). We are talking about the same bike, a Ducati Desmosedici GP21… and there is no photo: despite the absence of winter tests on the Qatari track this year, and despite the presence of two Grand Prix on the Losail track last year, Enea Bastianini had a perfect race and “stuck” more than 12 seconds to the French driver (42m13s198 against 42m25s454)!
Here again, we will not draw any premature conclusions and will wait a few races to find out if, which is likely, the GP21 has improved over the months in 2021 to arrive at the particularly high-performance bike that we saw on Sunday, or if the The Italian exploits it better than the French pilot.
As a reminder, he took the first GP22 to eighth position during the 2022 Qatar Grand Prix, in 42m23s734 despite a technical problem at the start (see here).
In terms of progressions, we obviously cannot ignore that of Brad Binder, 8th in 2021 in 42m28s976, 2nd this year in 42m13s544, an improvement of almost 15 seconds!
Following next week…
