I like to watch the Grand Prix with my heart, but I follow it with one eye on the stopwatch— the only thing that matters when it comes to timed sports.
This is true for all those activities where the result is the sum of fractions of time taken to cover a certain distance.
Numbers never lie—or almost never—and experts in other sports, tennis comes to mind, or even the high jump, will make different calculations. But here too, it’s the math that tells us who won, how they won, and who lost and why they lost.
The beauty of it is that today, almost always, after a Grand Prix, we go live with Carletto, Matteo or Marco, our hearts still racing, and we let our emotions run wild, but the ticking of the stopwatch is always there with us. I was lucky enough, in the past, to sometimes work alongside Stephanie McLean, the beautiful wife of Barry Sheene, who was not only a Playboy model but also an excellent timekeeper—so much so that in those manual days, almost everyone relied on her, even the official timekeepers. Transponders hadn’t been invented yet!
The thousandths of a second that marked Barry’s rides carried her scent.
That’s why this morning, as I almost always do when the results on paper need interpreting, I took the official results and read them carefully. You know, don’t you? Our brain remembers smells and associates emotions with them.
Aprilia and Bezzecchi were impressive yesterday at Austin: Marco completed all 20 race laps—except the first one from a standing start in 2:03.203!—in around 2:02. A metronome!
Martin hit 2:03 on the 7th lap and finished the last one in the high 2:03s. Acosta lapped in 2:03, excluding the start, on five occasions: on the 14th lap and from the 17th lap until the end.
And here’s the podium. Which is history in the making: Aprilia’s third consecutive victory, the fifth if you count the end of last year. Ducati needs to start worrying… or does it? Well, I mean, of course. Gigi Dall’Igna didn’t expect a start like this , but is he worried? And how worried is he? He’s a man of numbers, and even if they don’t smell like Stephanie to him, they’re just as exciting. That’s how I imagined him, examining them carefully. Then, of course, Gigi has a thousand other data points at his disposal. We wanted to try to understand how deep his concern was, knowing that his rider—Marc Marquez—had been beaten so decisively—by 8.100 seconds to the winner—in the Austin Grand Prix. Also taking into account that Diggia finished ahead of him by 1.1128 seconds…after serving a long-lap penalty on the 4th lap!
Oh well, fans, I don’t intend to prove anything: whoever won, won, and did a great job. The Grand Prix is a sum of events that took place. It’s not like analyzing them can change the result. Kind of like life, isn’t it? It’s what happens while you’re thinking about what needs to be done.
But let’s take it one step at a time, just to try to understand how concerned Ducati and Marc Marquez must be about this unexpected start to the season.
The fastest lap was Ogura’s 9th in 2:02.037
Bezzecchi set the 3rd fastest time on the 6th lap in 2:02.114
Marquez set the 4th fastest time of 2:02.133 on the 12th of 20 laps
Diggia set the 6th fastest time at 2:02.179
As we mentioned, Bezzecchi completed all laps between 2:02.114 and 2:02.899, while Marquez went over 2:03 on laps 13, 16, 17, 19 and 20.
That makes sense: on the 4th lap, in fact, the world champion fulfilled his obligation to complete the Long Lap. He started 5th, then dropped to 7th, returning to the track in 11th place and lapping in 2:05.392.
He had completed the lap prior to the Long Lap in 2:02.888.
On that extended lap , he therefore lost exactly 2.505 seconds. It’s amusing—and offers a glimpse into these riders’ concentration skills—that on the very next lap, Marquez clocked a 2:02.887: one-thousandth of a second faster than the lap before the penalty!
Anyway, on lap 6 Marc was 10th, so he moved up to 9th place during lap 7 and stayed there until lap 14. Ahead of him were Bastianini, Ogura, his brother Alex, and Bagnaia. Not exactly slow riders.
It wasn’t until the 15th lap that he managed to climb back up to 6th place, but by then he was locked in a fierce battle with that tough guy Enea, who’s a podium-caliber rider!
Both of them, passing and re-passing each other, lost time, but that was a battle for position, and that’s fair game! Marquez completed the 15th lap in 2:03.029; the Beast passed him again, pushing him back to 7th place, and there Marc even clocked a lap time of 2:03.640. Another second lost!
At this point, in the thick of the battle, the Ducati rider clocked a 2:02.849 on lap 17, and on lap 18 he even passed Bagnaia, who was in the midst of a crisis, and settled into fifth position. War over.
We can just picture Gigi stroking his beard. What did the numbers tell him?
Well, in our opinion , there is a problem, but it’s solvable—though it shouldn’t be underestimated. Without a doubt, Aprilia has become a real threat, but Marquez has wasted a lot in these first three races and now finds himself 36 points behind the leader. Practically a Grand Prix. Bad, but not terrible.
I’ll leave the conclusions to the readers; otherwise, the usual suspects will hide behind clichés. Considering everything that happened over the weekend, Marquez had a great race. He wouldn’t have won the Texas GP, and this means that, for sure, the RS-GP and Bezzecchi make a formidable and fearsome pairing, but the reality is less bad—or good?—than it appears at a superficial glance.
Márquez’s fastest lap was just 0.096 seconds slower than the Grand Prix’s best time, but it took him until the 12th lap out of 20 to achieve it. Bezzecchi’s best time was set on the 6th lap, while that of the runner-up, Jorge Martín, on the 4th. Shall we talk about riding fast without burning out the tyres?
As I said at the beginning, I watch races with my heart, and what matters is that they excite me. I liked everyone in the U.S. Grand Prix: from the winners to the supporting cast like Toprak Razgatlioglu, the best Yamaha rider on the track.
The Turkish rider also rode with his heart, and it doesn’t surprise me because, unlike his teammates, disillusionment hasn’t yet shown its claws.
Paolo Pavesio was upset about the title of one of our videos, a declaration by Borsoi: ‘Yamaha? For now, it’s just filling up the grid.’ But Gino added: ‘But we want to get back to the top.’ And that’s important. A little bit of anger is needed. Yamaha has plenty of it, and that’s fine. It would be a problem if they didn’t! I think a little bit of it will do Ducati good, too.