“Why Not Bez?”
For Part 2 of this DRR Triple Header across Day Of Classics, we take on MotoGP’s Grand Prix of the United Kingd- Okay seriously, whose idea was this to change the name? It’s the British GP damnit. I know it, you know, we all know it, it’s the sodding British GP at Silverstone! And during it we got an incredibly strange race that showed the brilliance and the torture of the sport, it’s brilliant dramatic highs, and it’s crushing, heartbreaking woes. Let’s talk about it on the next exciting episode of Downton Silverstone Abbey.
Cruelty Personified
This was really a weekend of two halves. Saturday started off in a reasonably familiar fashion. Fabio Quartararo’s third consecutive pole position, the first time he’d managed that since his title winning 2021 season. The conditions had turned from Friday, where the sun was out and warm, where on Saturday everyone was slower except for the French Ace, somehow breaking through to break Alex Marquez’s Friday lap record despite overnight rain and a track 15 degrees colder than the previous day.
Fabio wasn’t able to hold onto his lead by the time the Sprint came at 4pm, with the wind throwing in another obstacle to keeping tyres warm. Remember that, it becomes important later.
The Yamaha, while now as quick as anything with Fabio being able to take it to its limit over a single-lap, it’s still incredibly sensitive to losing grip, and with everyone on a soft-soft strategy and Silverstone being an absolute tyre shredder for MotoGP bikes, the Frenchman dropped down the board as the race continued, the soft rear just not able to handle the full 10 laps for the Sprint. Marc Marquez went for the throat to try and run at the front, but running wide at Village opened the door for brother Alex to lead the rest of the way. Marc takes the points in second, but loses his Sprint streak at six.
More overnight rain and a cold track again for Sunday, and the uncertainty of a field where all three front tyre compounds were used. And it made for a beautiful balance and game of risk/reward. Do you take the soft front, which means the tyre would be quicker to get up to working temperature and give you better feedback and initial grip as a rider? Or do you go medium, and have better rubber over the full distance?
We quickly got the answer when Alex Marquez crashed after… roughly seven seconds. In one of the fastest crashes in MotoGP history, Alex went slightly offline into Abbey and immediately slammed into the ground and into the escape road. A lap later, Marc Marquez tucks the front heading into Maggetts and the Red Flag fell. No, not because the sport is biased for the Marquez brothers, but because there was another crash off camera between Aleix Espargaro and Franco Morbidelli, with the Italian’s bike leaking oil at the final chicane.
On the restart, Fabio Quartararo took off. Within two laps, he had a 1.7 second lead and by half-way, it was five seconds. His pace on the soft front tyre was scintillating. I need to remind people that at Silverstone, one of the biggest fastest tracks the sport visits, he was 6mph off the Ducati’s in the speed traps. And it didn’t matter because Fabio was so fast through the corners, that’s where all his lap time was being made. It’s a reminder of the Yamaha days of old with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo at the helm, sweeping through apex’s carrying an ungodly amount of speed.
It also gave us the race’s other contender, and a surprising one – Marco Bezzecchi. Aprilia have struggled for most of the season, playing second, sometimes third fiddle without its new talismanic rider in Jorge Martin. Aprilia’s always gone well in slippery, cold conditions, and Bez worked with the soft tyre in FP2 to get up to speed with it in the tough climate. His ride-height device got stuck in the Sprint, dropping him to 19th, but he mounted a furious comeback to finish fourth, carving through the field with ease and confidence.
He did the same again in the GP, easily getting second on the road ahead of Johann Zarco. In the back half of the race, he was just starting to take a few tenths here and there out of Quartararo and it was setting up for a fascinating potential chasedown scenario…
…Until Quartararo’s rear ride-height device failed and he had to park his bike at the Hamilton straight. Heartbreak. We saw all the emotions of a man who hadn’t won a Grand Prix in nearly three years, pour out. It’s hard to blame him, he’d rode a magnificent, dominant race. He’d likely had enough in hand, even if the soft tyre dropped off. This race was a reminder that at one point, he was the only one of the grid who could hold a candle to Marc Marquez.
But through no fault of his own, it was all for nought. Just two weeks after home heartbreak and the changing conditions denying him a shot not only at the ultimate victory for the man who single-handedly reignited the French’s love for bikes, but also seeing his fellow countryman do exactly that in historic fashion.
Fabio, on the side of a live racetrack, threw himself to the ground in disgust and cried his eyes out. It was painful to watch. I had to screengrab it for social media, as I admin the MS MotoGP accounts… Seeing the frustration, the anger and pain from him, and his fans reacting to the news, was gut wrenching. Dorna even had their timing tower side-by-side camera show him still in tears as his best friend and assistant Thomas Maubant had to console him.
It reminded me of my first time seeing that cruelty. F1. Monaco 2008. Adrian Sutil was brilliant in the rain in his embryonic Force India to go from 18th to 4th, and with just eight minutes left on the clock, Kimi Raikkonen lost control of his Ferrari, clattering into Sutil, taking out his rear suspension and ending his race. James Allen’s commentary call still sticks in my head: “Sometimes sport is just so, so cruel.”1
He had his media debrief later that afternoon and he burst into tears again in front of the world’s media. Fabio was given a round of applause and pats on the back as he left it afterwards, still optimistic that Yamaha’s on the right track. I’m glad the reaction has largely been emphatic and that his tears were visceral, real and an authentic part of what makes Motorsport what it is.
Take nothing away from Marco Bezzecchi’s victory. There’s something special about the Italian and his knack of not winning often, but winning BIG. This was his fourth victory in the Premier Class and he’s never done so by less than four seconds. His pace and confidence in treacherous conditions was sensational and it goes to show you that when Aprilia is in his narrow window of operating, it can fly.
While Marc Marquez was still top Ducati, just beating Franco Morbidelli by just 17 thousandths of a second, it was for third place. You could make an argument that with Fabio so far ahead before his bike failed, Ducati were the fourth strongest manufacturer on the weekend with Johann Zarco a clear second on his Honda and continuing to ride at a stunning level.
Silverstone had everything. Drama, unpredictability, more passing than usual due to the rather equalising nature of the track and tyre wear… and while I do love a surprise winner, it’s a shame it came at the expense of the man who looked so good, until he suddenly didn’t.
The Lightning Round
It’s worth pointing out in an indirect response to certain other media personalities out there, that it’s not an engineer’s job to make the sport they’re in more entertaining. It’s to make their bikes go faster. I’m all for ride-height devices being banned, I think they’re dangerous and I don’t care that much about lap times. But this is a collective failure from the sport’s governance as to why they’re here, not the people in the laboratories that are doing their jobs to make the best racing bike they can. It’s never a perfect marriage, but technology and politics are joined at the hip to make Motorsport what it is.
Pecco Bagnaia is in big trouble. Just four points in his last two weekends, and now 72 points behind teammate Marc Marquez. He just seemingly can’t get to grips with the GP25 and the lack of feel it’s giving him, especially on the Sprint tank on Saturday.
I do wonder how much of the issue is being masked at Marc being the undisputed king of being able to ride around problems. Bonus note: Given Alex Marquez is now the clear #2 in the standings, Morbidelli in fourth and Fermin Aldeguer showing some big upside already… have Ducati taken the GP24 concept as far as they can go? Is the 24 still the best bike on the grid? It seems the engine mount changes and revisions to the internals have made its riders lose feeling with the front and lose confidence. Pecco said he couldn’t even feel the difference between the soft and medium fronts. Not ideal. At all.
Jorge Martin’s Instagram on Sunday was eyebrow raising… “I’ll reveal my side of the story soon”, while on a mountain bike training. Hmmm…
I’ll say this much on the topic, Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivera essentially took Bez’s win as a “please stay” plea: “Jorge’s is a message that the factory is working hard. We send the message that the bike is ready to win. We want to win with Jorge, and we are waiting for him with open arms. When a rider has so much bad luck, and he’s been like this for so long, he’s in a condition that none of us are in a position to understand well. We have to have the utmost respect for his situation, we will do everything we can to make him see that this is the place he has to be.”
Massimo would be a terrible Poker player.
40,500 on Race Day. Less than 100,000 across the weekend at Silverstone. Ouch. Now I need to point out, this isn’t a huge drop. It was 41,600 last year on Sunday, but still a 20k drop over the weekend. They moved the GP to May to try and facilitate getting more fans in and it bombed.
Personally, I think there’s a bunch of factors. Final week of the Premier League weekend for football as well as the EFL Playoffs. Isle of Man TT starting this week, another biking pilgrimage. Inserting yourself into Day of Classics with the Monaco GP and Indy 500’s with people wanting to watch those from home isn’t helpful. We have no British talent in the top flight, Jake Dixon is a Year 7 Moto2 rider that has little chance of a seat now he’s in his 30’s, and there is no junior talent that’s anywhere near the GP yet and that could take years to rectify.
The race itself is on free-to-air, but otherwise on a £31 a month channel that doesn’t do anywhere near what it used to to promote the sport. I could mention the pricey tickets and the location but remember… F1 does half a million year-on-year with ludicrously expensive ticket prices.
The GP’s moving back to August due to “fan feedback” for 2026, but given it’s the final year of Silverstone’s contract, is the unthinkable on the cards where we have no British GP in the future? Because 40,000 on race day in one of your biggest markets outside of Spain and Italy is… ungood.
And it’s such a shame because the racing this weekend was superb. Beyond the MotoGP race, the Moto3 race with Jose Antonio Rueda going from last to first to beat Max Quiles (Remember the name) was superb drama. And the Moto2 race? Phew… Race of the year so far. The five-way fight between Diogo Moreira, David Alonso, Izan Guevara, Aron Canet and Senna Aigus was absolutely stunning. A bar fight where a race broke out at the end. For once, I won’t spoil it for you but if I was reviewing standalone races for Moto2 and 3, Moto2 would be my first 10/10 for the year. Bike racing at its best.
Speaking of Rueda – Five wins out of seven to start the season and already has a 54-point lead in the standings after Angel Piqueras and Joel Kelso failed to finish. He’s a little bit more experienced than David Alonso… but do we have another David Alonso already?!
The Verdict: 8/10 (Great) – Back-to-back bangers for MotoGP. Like France, an alternative bit of fun rather than a purely brilliant race. But I was thoroughly entertained by the drama of Fabio’s start and finish, Bez’s comeback, the Ducati’s beefing with Jack Miller and Pedro Acosta, and the overall race we got. And the terrifying part? This was the worst race of the weekend. Moto3’s was a 9/10, and Moto2’s was a 10. Watch ALL three races this weekend. See you in Aragon.
- Fun Fact: I now produce his podcast. Small world huh? ↩︎
