MotoGP organisers have taken a dim view of riders electing to skip events to promote the championship, with reports that riders will be fined 5000 Euros (approximately A$8025) for shunning future events after reigning world champion Marc Marquez refused to participate in a karting race ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.
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Elsewhere, Aprilia concedes it may have to implement team orders to ensure one of its riders wins the championship over Ducati’s Marquez in what’s becoming one of the tightest title fights in the sport’s history, while KTM’s Pedro Acosta said he and Marquez “looked like donkeys” after the bizarre duel at Mandalika, where each rider was content to let the other past as they tried to avoid a penalty for illegal tyre pressures in the 27-lap race.
There’s that and more in MotoGP Pit Talk, your news wrap of the stories behind the headlines ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, with Phillip Island set to host the world championship for the 30th and final time from October 23-25.
Marquez closes MotoGP title gap | 01:06
RIDERS BRISTLE AT FINES FOR PROMO NO-SHOWS
MotoGP riders have largely dug their heels in over proposed fines for missing promotional events organised by MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group (MSEG, formerly known as Dorna) in the aftermath of Marc Marquez refusing to participate in a pre-Grand Prix karting race in Japan two rounds ago.
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After the 10-minute pre-race warm-up session on the Sunday of Motegi and three hours before the 24-lap Grand Prix, riders were required to compete in the karting race for the crowd trackside and for series promotion purposes for 35 minutes, with Marquez sending a Ducati staffer wearing his jacket and helmet while he underwent treatment on his problematic right shoulder before the Grand Prix, which he won later that afternoon.
Fellow Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, who was injured after being taken out by Alex Marquez in the Motegi sprint race the day prior, also didn’t participate.
After Marquez spoke about his absence – “you have to be selfish and perform at your maximum … we are fighting for the championship, we’re not here to mess around in kart races” – in Japan, motorsport.com reported at last weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix that an email was circulated to the teams warning them that fines starting from 5000 Euros would be levied with immediate effect to riders who repeatedly shun promotional events, starting with the 20-minute ‘Hero Walk’ where fans have paid extra to meet riders at a designated part of the circuit for autographs and photos.
The report indicated that the edict sent to the teams insisted on riders remaining for at least 10 of that 20-minute period to avoid a fine, which would escalate for repeat offenders.
Acosta claims MotoGP win | 01:42
In addition to the ‘Hero Walk’, certain Grands Prix have organised similar social media-friendly events ahead of their races this season, most memorably with a tuk-tuk race at Buriram ahead of the season-opening Thailand Grand Prix in March.
Speaking after his sixth place in Sunday’s race at Mandalika – held over 27 laps under blazing skies where track temperatures hit 62 degrees – Marquez said the show on the circuit was of more importance to the one created off it, particularly with MotoGP changing its weekend format next year to add an extra qualifying session for sprint races.
“I’m the first one who wants MotoGP to grow and be bigger, but I think we can have different ways to grow the sport without pushing the riders so much,” Marquez said.
“Now, we have a lot of things to do, because it’s not only the MotoGP things … we have sponsor things during the weekends, the meetings, warm-up, then you change quick for the (riders’) parade, then ‘Hero Walk’, a lot of people.
“In the end, we are athletes. Next year, the schedule is more and more because time on the track is the same but it’s more intense. There are other ways to grow. We have the show on the race track, not outside.”
KTM’s Pedro Acosta – Marquez’s teammate at Ducati next year – agreed with his compatriot, citing the example of Raul Fernandez, the Aprilia rider who raced on Sunday in Indonesia after breaking two fingers in a Saturday sprint crash – as an example of a reason to miss a promotional activity.
“I’m totally against it (the fines) … you can’t force a rider to do something without taking into account everything that may lie behind it, their personal situation,” Acosta said.
“Raul’s situation today … if he has a fracture, you need to get it checked because you use that finger to brake. He could be in pain, he might be unable to brake.
“Depending on the moment, the organiser should ease off … give us some space. What happened with Marc in Japan, I totally agree with what he did.”
Australia’s Jack Miller, however, felt there shouldn’t be different sets of rules for different riders.
“If you’re supposed to be there, you’re supposed to be there,” the Pramac Yamaha rider said.
“I don’t think it’s to take that upon yourself (to withdraw). What makes somebody so special that they can walk away and the rest of us all have to go and sign (autographs)? If we all walk away, we all look like c**ts. Nobody is above the rules.
“It’s more and more (promotional activities), so at some point they’ve also got to start paying us (riders) because every time you do more and more stuff, the money gets less and less. That’s how it goes.”
APRILIA MAY USE TEAM ORDERS TO HALT MARQUEZ CHARGE
Aprilia technical director Fabiano Sterlacchini admits the Italian brand may have to resort to implementing team orders to combat the charging Marc Marquez across the final five rounds of the season, with Jorge Martin’s championship lead over Marquez staying at two points after last weekend’s round in Indonesia.
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At a fast, flowing layout expected to accentuate the sweet-handling characteristics of Aprilia’s RS-GP machine, the brand’s four riders – winner Marco Bezzecchi, Trackhouse Aprilia’s Raul Fernandez (second), Martin (third) and Fernandez’s teammate Ai Ogura (fourth) gave Aprilia its first 1-2-3-4 result in MotoGP history on Sunday.
Marquez, though, won the sprint race against the odds the day prior, with Martin finishing off the podium in fourth. At what shaped as Ducati’s weakest track over the final six rounds, Martin and Marquez scored 22 points apiece, which represented something of a win for Ducati and Marquez, who had failed to even finish a race at Mandalika in four previous attempts.
Martin’s two-point lead matches Fabio Quartararo’s two-point lead over Francesco Bagnaia at the same stage of the season in 2022 as the smallest-ever after 17 rounds, with Ducati’s Bagnaia winning the title over Yamaha’s Quartararo in a final-round showdown in Valencia.
Speaking to GPone.com, Sterlacchini said there was “no deadline” for considering team orders, but that the concept wasn’t off the table.
Martin (355 points) leads Marquez by two points, with Bezzecchi’s fifth win of the season seeing the Italian draw within 46 points of the series lead with 185 points available, which would shrink to 148 if the Qatar Grand Prix scheduled for early November gets cancelled because of continued unrest in the Middle East.
Ogura (fourth, 96 points behind Martin) and Fernandez (seventh, 119 points adrift) are unlikely title protagonists, but give Aprilia four riders in the top seven of the standings, KTM-bound Fabio Di Giannantonio (sixth, 110 points behind) the only other Ducati in that leading group.
“We haven’t set a deadline, but between now and a few races from here, the time may come to have a discussion with (team principal) Massimo (Rivola) and define a team strategy with no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’,” Sterlacchini said.
“Right now we’re quite far apart in the standings, there are a lot of points up for grabs, and anything can happen. We feel comfortable allowing freedom for now, but I don’t know for how long.”
Aprilia threw away a haul of points in the Saturday sprint in Indonesia when Fernandez and Bezzecchi, first and second on the grid, were involved in a first-lap, first-corner crash that eliminated both riders.
“We’ve seen that the crash in the sprint is part of the game … even if you try to clarify roles, possibilities and risks, sometimes things can happen,” Sterlacchini said.
“It (will) depend on the circuit whether Ducati is in the mix or not – they’ve had an edge on some tracks and we’ve had it on others. It’s positive to face this kind of challenge. As Massimo said, right now our riders are completely free (but) we’re starting to talk among ourselves about setting some guidelines to avoid problems.”
‘LIKE DONKEYS’: ACOSTA BEMOANS TYRE PRESSURE RULES AFTER MARQUEZ FIGHT
Pedro Acosta said he and Marc Marquez “looked like donkeys” after their bizarre-looking battle over fourth place across multiple laps of Sunday’s race in Indonesia, with Acosta needing to keep his KTM tucked up behind Marquez’s Ducati in order to avoid a penalty for breaching MotoGP’s tyre pressure rules.
From ninth on the grid, Acosta moved past Marquez on lap seven for fourth, but was 1.1 seconds adrift of Jorge Martin in third. Running in clear air, Acosta chose to drop behind Marquez six laps later, mindful of breaching the Michelin-mandated rule of running at least 60 per cent of the race at a minimum front tyre pressure of 1.8 bar (around 26psi).
Teams will under-inflate tyres when their riders start races in the middle of the pack as Acosta was, with the extra heat generated from racing immediately behind other rivals and on a hot track spiking tyre temperatures, and therefore pressures.
After Acosta let Marquez back through, the pair swapped positions deliberately on multiple occasions, with the penalty for a tyre pressure infringement adding 16 seconds to a rider’s race time, costing them positions and points.
Aprilia’s Ai Ogura overtook both Spaniards by lap 25, leaving Acosta to finish fifth and Marquez sixth, 1.3secs adrift. Neither rider was penalised for a tyre pressure breach, which would have dropped them to 13th place; Maverick Vinales (KTM) was the only one of the 17 finishers who was, which made no impact to his result as he’d crossed the line in last place.
“We looked like donkeys,” Acosta said.
“I think that he was having the same problems as me, because he let me past also, but I don’t know.
“Maybe I should have stayed a bit longer behind Marc, but I think that if I was passing him one lap later, it was not going to change anything.
“I lost a lot of time with these things and this took away the possibility to be inside the top four.”
On Saturday, Martin – who had unexpectedly vaulted to the lead on the first lap of the sprint – allowed Marquez to pass him as his tyre pressure plummeted, but an attempt to reclaim the lead went awry when he ran wide at the penultimate corner on the second-last lap and fell to fourth behind Ogura and Ducati’s Fabio Di Giannantonio, who annexed the final two places on the podium behind Marquez.
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