The second MotoGP race held at the infamous Aragon circuit in 2020 was destined to be a thriller. The setup was all there: Nakagami showing blistering pace all weekend and smashing his way to a first pole; championship contenders Mir and Dovizioso starting from way down on the grid, forcing them to make up a ridiculous amount of ground; the previous race winner, Rins, getting his best qualifying of the year to start from the front row. The bookies primarily tipped Nakagami, assuming his pace would transfer into an easy win for the Japanese rider. Personally, in the tipping league I organise with my friends and family, I put my cards on Rins, assuming he would get away well and control the race like he did just seven days before in Aragon 1.
Both myself and the bookies proved to be wrong, but for very different reasons. Nakagami’s race lasted exactly five corners, before he crashed out of the lead on just the first lap. It was a heartbreaking moment, reminiscent of Moto2 rider Jake Dixon’s crash in Le Mans, as we watched Taka return to his pit box with his head in his hands and his visor down to cover his face. The real shame is that he truly did have the best pace of the weekend, and would surely have bagged his first ever podium; he admitted later on that the pressure of his first ever pole position weighed heavily on him and caused the small errors that lead to the crash.
Impressively, Nakagami’s race wasn’t even the shortest of the weekend. KTM rookie Brad Binder went careering into the back of Jack Miller on the leadup to turn two, instantly eliminating them both from contention after about eight seconds of racing. This sort of incident happens every now and again in motorcycle racing, as the riders struggle to find grip in the early corners while slotting themselves into the pack. Aragon’s chicane-like turn sequence at the start of the lap is arguably one of the trickiest in the calendar to get through cleanly and unharmed, and we saw many riders across many classes go down in the opening seconds of their races. Binder will be penalised for the next race, and while Miller made it clear he forgives the South African, his championship is most certainly over at this point.
No such issues were had for the remaining two members of the front row of the grid. Franco Morbidelli got off to an incredible start, and after Nakagami’s crash allowed him to inherit the lead, he tore away and never looked back. Rins accompanied him early on in the race, and given the Suzuki’s history with late race pace it seemed certain that he would begin to reel in the Italian, but a poor choice of tires on the day meant that Rins never had the pace to keep up. This is what Morbidelli threatened to do last weekend, and this week he pulled it off in a truly dominant (and rather stylish) manner.
Championship leader Mir made up a lot of ground in the early stages of the race, making his usual charge through the field after another dreadful qualifying session, and after passing into third position looked set to do two things: shake loose the hard-charging Alex Marquez, who had been chasing him through the field the whole race, and catch up to the leading duo and challenge for the win. Only one of these came to fruition, as Marquez crashed out at the second corner and threw away a chance for three podiums on the trot, but Mir was totally unable to match the pace of the two men out front.
This is the unfortunate truth of Mir’s position right now: he clearly has the drive and motivation to start winning races, and the bike he’s on is unparalleled at the moment, but his poor qualifying means that every week he is forced to spend the first five to ten laps manhandling his way through the pack to get to the front. If you need more evidence of this, look at the one race this season that Mir actually qualified on the front row of the grid, the second Grand Prix in Austria: he took an early lead, started gapping the field, and would have gone on to win the race if Vinales hadn’t sent his bike head-first into the air fence and caused a halt to the proceedings. If Mir could only find more consistency on Saturdays, and get his starts going well, he might finally take that first win he’s clearly knocking on the door of, and fully take control of the championship.
So with the front three riders all disappearing into the sunset, the cameras turned their attention to the battles taking place for the lower positions. Quartararo and Vinales both qualified well and showed promise of race pace that could challenge for a podium, but both suffered with a lack of grip all race and were properly outclassed by a number of late charging riders. KTM’s Pol Espargaro and Miguel Oliveira both impressed, with Espargaro fighting his way all the way to fourth position, and Oliveira missing out on fifth place on the line in a last-ditch duel with Ducati’s Johann Zarco. The Yamaha riders, who are still technically in the fight for the championship despite a recent slump in form, will need to do better than seventh and eighth place when we return in a few weeks for Valencia, or Mr Consistency (Mir) may just bury them with his podium form.
Zarco in particular is worthy of a shout-out, as the Frenchman was the only Ducati rider to make any headway all weekend. Dovi, Petrucci, Miller and Bagnaia all failed to make any real impression in either the practice sessions or the race itself, the Bologna bike still struggling to adjust to the new Michelin tires. Dovizioso can more or less kiss goodbye his championship aspirations, too, as he now falls to fifth in the standings and continues his barren run of form recently. Dovi has failed to take a podium since Austria, and though he has managed to keep himself alive with a series of mid-pack finishes, he clearly has no answer for Mir’s constant top-three results, and will have to settle for whatever points he pulls together in November in what could be his last season in MotoGP.
It does strike me as rather ironic that the two Aragon races proved to be almost mirror-images of themselves. Aragon 1 was supposed to be a Yamaha domination, but was won in crushing form by a Suzuki and contested hotly by the Hondas. Aragon 2 had Honda throw down the gauntlet, only to have both their young talents crash out and gift the win to a Yamaha rider, and not even the Yamaha rider we were expecting. That being said, some things stayed the same, giving us a small glimmer of consistency in the unpredictable mess that is 2020 MotoGP. The Suzukis managed another double podium, most of the championship favourites were nowhere to be seen, and the Ducatis had another nightmare weekend to compound their difficulties of late.
There are only three races left in 2020: a double-header in Valencia, and the season finale in Portimao, Portugal. Three races means 75 points still on the table, and that means there are, incredibly, still fourteen riders still with a mathematical shot at taking the title. While that does sound rather incredible, the truth is that Joan Mir is the man to beat, and has been for some time now. He has put together six podiums in the last eight races, and assuming he can maintain this form, it may be almost impossible for any one rider to catch him as he runs away with the 2020 title. People will complain that he has yet to win a race, but in all honesty he doesn’t need one – if this year has taught us anything it is that consistency is what wins world titles, and no-one is more consistent than Mir as it stands. We can only hope that we get some more dramatic podium battles when the lights next go out.
Solomon Talks Bikes 