Yamaha toasts one rider’s win, divorces other
MOTOGP ASSEN (NLD) 27 JUNE ROUND 9/19
Seldom do 1-2 finishes for a team yield such unusually varied responses from their riders, but the circumstances surrounding both Fabio Quartararo’s Dutch TT Motogp victory last weekend and Yamaha stablemate Maverick Vinales’ second led to a bizarre atmosphere in camp last Sunday afternoon.
The 2.82-mile Assen track – “paradise” for motorcycle racers, as Valentino Rossi described it – was almost tailor-made for the Yamaha, the Dutch venue’s fast and flowing nature at one with the M1’s agility. And race pace in FP4 suggested top spot would only be stained in one colour. In qualifying Vinales headed Quartararo by 0.071 seconds, but it was the latter in race trim who looked the slightly stronger. A finely poised battle was on the cards for Sunday’s 26-lap contest.
The closest the pair would come in the race, however, was when Quartararo chopped Vinales off the line to take the lead while the polesitter – suffering an issue with his clutch – dropped to fifth behind Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, Alex Rins on the Suzuki and LCR Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami.
A mistake for Quartararo at the De Bult left-hander at Turn 9 handed the lead to Bagnaia. The Ducati rider didn’t have the pace to match the Yamahas but had the brute power of the Desmosedici at his disposal to at least make himself a stubborn obstacle that Quartararo had a hard time trying to surmount.
Bagnaia’s brief five-lap stint at the front backed up the field, creating a 10-rider lead group covered by just 2.5s. But there would be no repeat of the 2018 Assen barnstormer that saw 150 overtakes. Quartararo used the superior corner speed of his Yamaha to swoop through on Bagnaia at the Meeuwenmeer kink at Turn 12 on lap six.
This move and the subsequent three laps would largely seal the race. Quartararo reeled off three high 1m32s, times nobody could match, and he soon had a lead of 3s. A couple of small mistakes in the closing stages and some pain in the back of his arm – which “scared” him, given his problems with arm pump already in 2021 – weren’t enough to deny the French rider his fourth win of the campaign. He now has a 34-point lead in the standings heading into the summer break.
A long lap penalty for exceeding track limits too often dropped Bagnaia out of podium contention and gifted Vinales second on lap 15 – the sister factory
Yamaha rider having scythed past
Nakagami for third the lap before.
Securing his first podium since his Qatar win in March, Vinales’ celebrations were muted. The relationship between him and Yamaha has deteriorated rapidly as he’s struggled, the Spaniard slamming the marque for what he felt was a “disrespectful” handling of his woes following a German GP weekend in which he qualified 21st and finished the race last. Feeling like he is unable to extract the maximum from himself on the Yamaha, Vinales will quit the team at the end of the year.
Frustration has also crept into the Suzuki garage, with world champion Joan Mir unhappy at a lack of progress with the bike in 2021. Pinning his hopes on updates coming after the summer break, Mir took an “important” podium in third at Assen after working his way through from 10th.
He headed the Pramac Ducati of Johann
Zarco and the KTM of Miguel Oliveira, whose recent podium run ended with a still-solid fifth ahead of Bagnaia.
Marc Marquez crashed down to Earth from his Germany win in quite literal fashion at Assen. A heavy shunt in FP2 left him battered and bruised and lacking in confidence on his Honda. But an electronics fix from HRC made him feel a bit safer. With a tumble in Q1 leaving him 20th on the grid, Marquez carved through to seventh and was surprised to end the race in reasonably fine physical condition.
Narrowly pipped by the Honda rider was Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, while Nakagami’s early podium hopes faded dramatically. He ended up ninth ahead of Pol Espargaro and an angry Alex Rins – the Suzuki rider’s race “destroyed” by a “stupid move” from Zarco on lap two that forced Rins off track.
Valentino Rossi failed to find a strong result that might convince him to extend his Motogp career into 2022 after a tumble.