As the 2022 MotoGP season approaches, Paddock-GP invites you to relive the last campaign, which led to the coronation of Fabio Quartararo, the first of a French rider in the premier category after 72 years of waiting. Fourth part of this retrospective with rounds 10 to 14, which are the scene of the very first victories of Jorge Martín and Pecco Bagnaia, while in the meantime Quartararo remains in control of the championship.
After more than a month of well-deserved break, MotoGP returns to action at the beginning of August with two successive rounds on the Red Bull Ring in Austria. Enough to ideally launch the second part of the season, while the French Fabio Quartararo and Johann Zarco were the two strong men during the first nine races.
Nevertheless, the opponents of the two tricolors will sound the revolt from the restart through two young drivers: Jorge Martín and Brad Binder, who will both win the bet in the Austrian mountains, while Quartararo strives to make with a round back on a circuit that is not very favorable to his Yamaha. Zarco, for his part, will encounter tire problems more often than usual which will cause him difficult races, and thus gradually slide down the hierarchy.
Quartararo will, however, manage to perfectly manage his lead in the championship, signing a new success, his fifth and last of the season, on the Silverstone circuit, before handing over to Pecco Bagnaia who for his part finally manages to win his first two victories in the premier category, and thus appears as its strongest rival at the end of the season.
Review of details of rounds 10 to 14 of the 2021 MotoGP championship.
10th round: Styrian GP
MotoGP fans almost had to wait! After six weeks of summer break, the competition will finally be able to resume its rights with two new rounds contested in Austria, on KTM grounds, on a circuit whose gauge also displays its full capacity for the first time this season.
Given its recent performances, including a success for Miguel Oliveira during the Catalan GP, the Mattighofen manufacturer is eagerly awaited on its land, especially since it had already shone on the Red Bull Ring last year with a victory , already through the Portuguese while he was still playing at Tech3.
But KTM will experience a disappointment, at least on the “Styrian GP”, title of the first race contested on “its” track. Oliveira was injured during free practice, which left him sidelined for the two rounds in Austria, and negatively affected the rest of his season.
In the end, it is a rookie who will shine, in the person of Jorge Martín. For what is only his sixth race (the Madrilenian was forced to be absent at the start of the season after being seriously injured in Portimão), the Pramac driver offers a real recital with initially obtaining the pole position, his second after that won in Doha, then victory at the end of a perfectly controlled event.
There is no shortage of superlatives to describe the performance of the young Spaniard, who thus becomes the first to win on an independent Ducati. The performance is also all the more remarkable as it comes after a retirement due to physical suffering during the last round, at Assen at the end of June. When we tell you that this break has been good...
Martín will have in fact resisted Joan Mir until the end. The Suzuki rider, who has had a dull season so far, seems to be getting off to a good start after the break, helped by the introduction of the holeshot device on his machine. Behind the two men, Quartararo perfectly limited the damage by taking third place on a track known to be difficult for the Yamahas, holding off Brad Binder, unleashed on his employer's land.
The race was also marked by a serious accident at the start, which gave rise to a red flag following a pile-up involving Dani Pedrosa, a KTM wildcard holder, and Lorenzo Savadori (Aprilia) who fractured his malleolus in the case. The two men's machines thus burst into flames in the middle of the track and the Race Direction had no other choice but to neutralize the latter.
Not to the taste of Maverick Viñales, who had a good start and will, according to him, experience a frustrating race due to a technical problem at the restart and a penalty for having exceeded the track limits. In fact, mad with rage, the Spaniard will be guilty of knowingly taking his Yamaha beyond the breaker with the idea of putting his engine into over-revving and damaging it.
A behavior which will quickly be singled out by the brand with three tuning forks, which will initially sideline its driver for the following GP before purely and simply putting an end to his contract (which was to take end at the end of the season after having already been shortened by a year). There are few similar examples in the history of motorcycle racing, except perhaps that of the American John Kocinski, who in 1993 damaged his Suzuki while his relations with the Japanese firm were at worst. The American subsequently never drove for the Hamamatsu brand again, it goes without saying…
11th round: Austrian GP
MotoGP in Austria: second! Like Losail at the start of the season, the Red Bull Ring is hosting a second round one week apart. And suffice to say that there will be a spectacle like during the first event, with a new surprise winner in the person of Brad Binder.
The South African driver, who has been having difficulties since the start of the season in qualifying and is forced more often than not to make crazy comebacks – most of the time successfully – to finish in the top 10, signs thus his second success in MotoGP after the no less astonishing one obtained in 2020 in Brno, when he was at the time only in his third race in the premier category.
However, Jorge Martín was well on his way to a double blow, the Pramac driver who had won his third pole position on Saturday in just seven qualifying sessions in the discipline! But the rain will come and reshuffle the cards, especially in the very last laps, and that's when Binder will pull a masterstroke out of his hat, by deciding to stay on the track on slick tires during the last four loops while all his direct rivals prefer to dive into the pit lane as part of the flag-to-flag.
A gamble that will pay off for the KTM rider, who after the success in 2020 of Miguel Oliveira (then at Tech3) allows KTM to win again on its home soil! Binder thus won ahead of Pecco Bagnaia and Martín, while Joan Mir failed at the foot of the podium in front of Luca Marini and Iker Lecuona, who also remained in the running. A result with the scent of revenge for the latter, barely a week after learning in the middle of a free practice session that KTM would not retain him for the following season. Also note the convincing result of Valentino Rossi, eighth at the finish and who once thought he had his 200th podium in MotoGP.
On the French side, however, the results were more mixed, with Fabio Quartararo only managing to do better than seventh, while Johann Zarco had to retire after a fall and thus lost two places in the championship, finding himself in fourth position behind Bagnaia and Mir.
Round 12: British GP
After a final delicate round in Austria, the important thing for Quartararo was not to let doubt intrude as the last third of the season looms and the Niçois has a comfortable lead over his two most close rivals, Bagnaia and Mir, both on 47 points overall.
The Suzuki driver tried to play on the psychological rope, explaining that Yamaha would undoubtedly tend to apply a certain form of pressure to its driver as the end of the championship becomes concrete, the Frenchman thus becoming more likely to make mistakes. errors.
But this is to misunderstand Quartararo and the profound work on himself that the Frenchman has undertaken since his arrival in MotoGP in 2019. On the contrary, it is a real demonstration that we will witness from him, from less in the race because the qualifications are, for once, dominated by Pol Espargaró!
The Spanish rider, who left KTM at the end of 2020 to try the adventure with Honda, has so far suffered greatly on the RC213V, even though the Japanese prototype is known for giving its full potential with an aggressive riding style – a typology which fits perfectly with that of Espargaró.
But the lack of traction offered by the Honda has made things more complicated for the Iberian, who has also had until now to suffer from the comparison with his illustrious teammate Marc Márquez, who is however coming back from injury but has still succeeded for its part to win in Germany.
Espargaró thus signs the best qualifying time, seizing his third pole position in the premier category after his first two wins in 2020 with KTM. The HRC resident is thus ahead of Bagnaia and Quartararo on the first line, the two men who are further asserting themselves as the dominant forces at the end of the year.
Quartararo would undoubtedly have been able to do even better if he had not suffered a heavy fall on Friday, depriving him of valuable driving time. But the Yamaha rider will ensure Sunday by adopting a pace that none of his opponents will manage to follow, to pocket his fifth triumph of the year, ahead of the winner of the last edition organized in England in 2019 (that of 2020 having also been canceled due to the health crisis) Álex Rins, for whom this is the first top 3 since the 2020 Valencia GP.
Aleix Espargaró offers Aprilia's very first podium in MotoGP after having clashed with his brother in the race, before resisting until the checkered flag against Jack Miller who for his part recovered well from his fall during from the last round in Austria. Pol Espargaró leaves the former Royal Air Force base with fifth place, a good result even if his lack of pace in the race may make him harbor regrets.
At least the Spaniard has the satisfaction of having supplanted his teammate Marc Márquez, who had a difficult weekend ending with a fall, taking Jorge Martín with him. Number 93 was also handicapped all weekend by dust in the eye following another fall. When a grain of sand seizes the entire mechanism...
Zarco, for his part, saw the finish well, but he seems to be in difficulty since the restart and could not do better than ninth in qualifying and 11th at the checkered flag. The Frenchman rode for most of the weekend with the Suzukis of Rins and Mir, who decided to remove the holeshot device recently introduced in Austria on their mounts. Another disappointment, that of Bagnaia, who, plagued by erratic tires, could not do better than 14th, provoking the Italian's ire towards Michelin.
Finally, we can point out that with the presence of Brad Binder in sixth place, the six manufacturers entered in MotoGP are represented without exception in the top 6. Further proof of the tight gaps and the particularly high level of competition reached by the premier category !
13th round: Aragón GP
Good things come to those who wait for. For Pecco Bagnaia, the adage has never been so true at the end of the afternoon of Sunday, September 12, 2021. The Transalpine had nevertheless put his effort into it from the start of the season with an opening pole position in Qatar , but until then things had never combined ideally, sometimes due to a lack of rhythm, a fall (at Mugello) or even a penalty (at Assen).
Moreover, the observers probably gave little credit when he was battling with Marc Márquez for a good part of the event, on one of the Honda driver's favorite circuits and turning counterclockwise. (and therefore being less restrictive for the injured shoulder of the multiple World Champion).
But Bagnaia held his ground, and managed to keep his composure even as his opponent infiltrated, time and time again, inside. But the Ducati rider had a well-established tactic, which consisted of systematically uncrossing to find himself with less angle much earlier than his opponent to be able to release the horses of his Ducati in the long return straight. . Unstoppable.
The official Ducati had taken the lion's share during qualifying, Bagnaia taking pole position ahead of Miller, while Quartararo had secured a place on the first row. A flash in the pan for the Frenchman, who will not have the sufficient pace in the race to take part in victory, and will have to settle for eighth place at the finish, on a circuit which, it is true, did not give him never really succeeded.
Behind Bagnaia and Márquez, Mir reappears on the podium without shining, a constant for him this season. The Suzuki rider barely managed to contain the attacks of Aleix Espargaró, who came very close to a second podium in a row for Aprilia.
But the real performance is undoubtedly that achieved by Enea Bastianini who, starting from ninth place on the grid, obtained her best result since her debut in the premier category with sixth place at the finish.
Much lower in the hierarchy, Zarco experienced his worst result of the season with 17th place. As we know, the Cannes driver has experienced a downward trend since the restart, and this time it is the ill-advised use of the soft tire at the front which explains this poor performance. The Pramac driver finished ahead of Maverick Viñales, who returned to competition for Aprilia in place of Lorenzo Savadori. Valentino Rossi and Luca Marini hit rock bottom, finishing in 19th and 20th respectively.
14th round: San Marino GP
“Goals are like ketchup, when they arrive they come all at once”, Cristiano Ronaldo once said on the sidelines of the 2010 Football World Cup. We could adapt this assertion to the victories of Pecco Bagnaia, who waited a long time before achieving his first laurels to finally string together two victories in a row.
This time, the Ducati rider will not have to lead a real standoff to win his case. In fact, he will just have to raise his voice a little at the end of the race to prevent a very enterprising Quartararo from attacking him.
The French rider deserves a lot of credit, because he spent most of the weekend fighting against the Ducatis, finding himself truly surrounded with his third position on the starting grid, by the four Desmosedici entered (the two official ones in front him, the two satellites of Pramac behind him).
The Niçois also loses a lot of time at the start of the race to get rid of the Italian horses, on a circuit where it is not so easy to overtake and where the GP21s above all have plenty of time to use their power to defend their interests. But that doesn't matter, Quartararo will still do the essentials and take second place, thus minimizing his loss of points against Bagnaia, who comes back to 48 points in the championship. The Yamaha rider thus acquires his 19th podium in MotoGP, and at the same time becomes the Frenchman with the most top 3s in the premier category, ahead of Christian Sarron.
Behind the two leaders we find Bastianini, who confirms his good performance in Aragón with a first podium in the premier category while riding a Ducati that is two years old! The Italian is thus ahead of Marc Márquez and Jack Miller at the finish, while you have to go down to sixth place to find any trace of Mir who finishes in front of the Espargaró brothers.
This first race held in Misano (there will be a second race a month later) also presents several firsts, notably that of Andrea Dovizioso who makes his return to competition within the Petronas Yamaha SRT alongside Valentino Rossi after the successive freelances of Garrett Gerloff and Jake Dixon. In addition, Franco Morbidelli joins the official Yamaha team, after the seat vacated by Viñales was temporarily occupied by Cal Crutchlow.
Among the disappointments, we can note the new abandonment of Rins, definitely the author of a very messy season, while Oliveira is in great difficulty since his injury contracted in Austria, with only two unfortunate points collected during the last three races contested. .
