Winners
France
The world’s a strange place. A few years ago it would be hard to even imagine a French street artist having the courage to mime out a tricolore MotoGP 1-2 without having to stop halfway to hide shaking in his loft. But, the day after the Portugal race, the great unwashed were waking up with their favourite croissant to this headline:
“Shallots of Frenchies get an Eiffel as their riders are anything but snail’s pace”
A Quartararararo, Zarco 1:2 for France.
Fabio was on another level. The world champion has struggled so far with the lack of pace in his Yamaha – but his team have always insisted that the bike would come good on the European tracks such as Portimao, Jerez ad Oliver’s Mount. Yamaha’s reasoning is that their bike performed well there last season and ‘they’ve not really bothered changing anything’ since then.
Yamaha’s prediction came true as Quartarararo was in a different league and made the victory look easy. His win was reminiscent of a Jorge Lorenzo win – just with a miles better personality.
But was it the bike? The next Yamaha home was Dovi half a minute behind.
Meanwhile Johann ‘never quite good enough to win’ Zarco was the second garlic-infused rider home. Starting on pole and looking strong his second place never really looked in doubt. We love Zarco, despite being French, so it was great to see the smile return to his face albeit with the same disappointing haircut.
Alex Rins
Despite starting second to last in 23rd place the goofy, loveable Spaniard finished the race in 4th place. Most of this can be credited to his superb first lap where he made up an astonishing 13 places.
Last season Rins was a different rider. He fell off a lot. He fell off in the races. He fell off on his pushbike. He even fell off the hospital bed explaining to the doctor how he’d fallen off his push bike whilst riding around thinking about him falling off in a race.
But Alex is keeping it rubber side down and now sits at the top of the championship level with Quartararararo.
Us
People like to look back with rose tinted spectacles. Take F1. The fans of F1 get all misty eyed as they talk of the ‘golden era’ of Prost vs Senna. But was it? Even by F1 standards this period was mind numbingly dull. Only 2 cars were ever fast enough to win. Senna would qualify on pole by about a month and in the race Prost would follow him hoping his car broke down. The golden era?
Meanwhile we’re regularly told that the current era is the ‘golden age’ of MotoGP…but this actually could now be the case. It’s genuinely impossible to predict who’ll do well and which riders who were doing well will now not do well.
The top four in the championship are all with different manufacturers and have just 8 points between them.
Losers
Takaaki Nakagami
Takaaki may have plenty of ‘A’s in his name…but a lot less on track.
His results this year have been slyly swept under the tatami given his LCR teammate Ralf Schumarquez has been even more rubbish and falling off even more.
But in Portugal something clicked for Marquez – probably his dodgy shoulder again. But something also clicked into place for his younger brother Ralf. The younger Marquez, for reasons unknown to him and his crew, wasn’t terrible and couldn’t even manage to fall off. In the race he dished out some hard moves on his brittle-boned older brother clearly channelling the childhood anger when Marc stole his pet Iberian pork chop.
Ralf’s fine performance then left everyone questioning “hang on, who’s his teammate then?” A quick Google and we all ‘remembered’ it was Nakagami. Then we looked at his results…and realised they were pretty terrible. He finished the race in Portugal second to last (only ahead of Darryn Binder…so technically last) and is 18th in the championship…crucially one place behind Ralf.
Jack Miller
Poor jester Jack had a terrible weekend – the equivalent of a test match and BBQ being cancelled through bad weather and someone intellectual turning up.
It started on Thursday when the press made up a load of rumours about him being replaced by Jorge Martin…as that seems likely so they might as well get ahead of the curve. The press spread the rumours so convincingly that they, and even Ducati, ended up believing them – causing Luigi Dall’Igna to scamper off and check his paperwork.
Such rumours didn’t really help Miller’s mood. But there was one sure way to pipe everyone down – perform strongly on race day.
It was all going so well. The cards had fallen favourably for the Aussie comic as the two upstarts who are fighting to steal his job (Jorge Martin and Enea Bastardnini) both crashed out in a pile of disgruntled Mediterranean seepage. Better still both crashes were unforced errors whilst they were trundling around mid-pack.
Not mid-pack meanwhile was Miller who was battling for a podium. This looked like a typical Ozzie-style kick-in-the-nuts reply to all those who had mocked him.
Then he fell off. And took Joan Mir onto the beach with him.
Joan Mir
According to Wikipedia Joan Mir was once the MotoGP world champion. Although we may not be sure about that seemingly erroneous ‘fact’ what we are sure about is that the Spaniard needed to beat his teammate.
His teammate, Alex Rins, has had the edge on him so far this season and hasn’t crashed even once. Joan was keen to beat Alex in Portugal and prove to him why he was a MotoGP world champion…or at least according to Wikipedia.
It started perfectly for Mir as he qualified in a career best second place (hang on…so Wikipedia says he’s a world champion but he’s never had a pole? Or even a second until now? Is someone fact checking this?). Better still his teammate Rins was starting second-last after screwing up his qualifying.
But in the race Rins fought back and was heading towards the front. Mir, meanwhile, seemed to be struggling and the ultimate embarrassment of his teammate catching and passing him before the end of the race looked plausible.
Luckily Jack Miller saved his bacon by crashing him out. Joan even gave him a quick round of a applause as he picked himself out of the gravel understanding he’d been saved from a sticky situation.
But it all meant that Rins again had beaten him.
The rulebook
Finally a big shout out to the rulebook and it’s entertainment-ruining strict usage in Moto2.
The Moto2 race is the one that’s on when everyone is leaving the circuit to ‘get the jump on the queues’. No one really watches it as it doesn’t have the big names of MotoGP or the frenzied excitement of Moto3. It’s the forgotten middle child.
Anyone still stuck at the circuit and forced to watch it though won’t be forgetting it in a hurry.
Mid way through the race a localised rain shower came down…localised entirely on the very fast turn 2. This caused just about all the leading riders to crash out in what looked like a scene from Saving Private Ryan. Obviously this crash count could have been minimised if the marshals were doing their job and not updating their Instagram accounts…but let’s not point fingers.
In the end 12 riders crashed out most of whom destroyed their bikes. The race was red flagged…as soon as the Instagram posts of the crash were uploaded. The riders near the back saw what was happening so fortunately were able to slow down enough to avoid a similar fate.
Here’s where the rules come in. The rules states that a rider must be able to get back to the pits within five minutes of the red flag to be allowed in the restart. The utter carnage and lack of marshals meant that there just wasn’t time and so the top half of the field were all eliminated from the restart.
The only front runner that didn’t crash, oddly, was Jake Dixon. But if there’s one thing Brit riders know how to do it’s crash. Jake started the restarted Moto2 race in pole and was the sure favourite to win…but then fell off and smashed up his bike.
In the end it was the American Joe Roberts who took his first ever victory in the least competitive Moto2 race in history.