This is part three of a four-part series where I look back on the 2020 season with the power of hindsight, catching people up on the big events of each weekend. Parts 1 and 2 covered the races between Qatar and the Misano double header. Today’s article will cover Catalunya, Le Mans and the Aragon double header, while next week’s article will cover the final three races in Valencia and Portimao. Enjoy!
When we left off at the conclusion of the Emilia-Romagna race, the championship was as tight as it had been all season. Four riders, split by just four points. The official MotoGP page picked perhaps the best tagline for the leadup to the Catalunya race: how close do you like it?
A long-awaited return to form
The Catalunya round refused to show a change in pace, either. An ever-tightening field saw the top twenty riders – from Quartararo in first all the way down to Rabat in twentieth – split by a single second by the end of FP3. The good news? Quartararo, Vinales and Mir all made it safely into Q2, looking set to continue their respective challenges for the throne. The bad news? Dovizioso continued to struggle for form, missing out on the direct cutoff and being forced into the potentially perilous Q1. He would face stiff competition while there, with the likes of Miller, Rins, Bagnaia and Nakagami all joining him for what promised to be a frantic qualifying session.
And frantic it was. Miller took a dominant top spot in Q1, with a number of other riders in strong contention for the other passing position, but Nakagami ended up stealing it away. Dovizioso just couldn’t get anything going and qualified all the way down in 17th. Then we entered Q2, and the Yamahas reminded everyone just what their single lap pace was capable of, locking out the front row with Morbidelli, Quartararo and Rossi. In a positive sign for Sunday’s race, most of the championship contenders were well within the front few rows – barring Dovi, of course – but there were warnings that late-race grip was going to be a big issue. We once again faced a race that where stamina would play a heavy factor in deciding the winner.
Morbidelli started best, with Miller leading a pack of riders including the Yamahas of Rossi and Quartararo and the two Suzuki riders. Dovizioso and Zarco’s races lasted just a single corner, as they checked up and were promptly wiped out while braking in the second corner. Morbidelli hung onto the lead despite pressure from behind, but was eventually outdone as Quartararo passed first Rossi then his teammate. Miller continued to hold off the attacks of the Suzuki men behind him for as long as possible, while Pol Espargaro tumbled out of what looked to be a strong finish for the KTM man. Rossi got ahead of his Academy graduate Morbidelli for second, and was looking good for his 200th podium.
But Rossi’s luck refused to change, and he crashed out with just nine laps remaining. Mir and Rins carved their way through Miller and Morbidelli to slot themselves into podium spots, with Miller also having to fend off teammate Bagnaia in the latter stages. None of them had anything for the race leader, however, as Quartararo cruised to his third win of the season, and his first podium since the double header in Jerez. Mir and Rins marked the first time Suzuki had two riders on the podium since 2007, and both Mir and Quartararo pulled out a healthy advantage in the championship thanks to a quiet race from Vinales and Dovi’s DNF. Suddenly the top four were split by 24 points, and the goal became clear for both Mir and Quartararo: maintain this championship lead, pull away from the others, and hopefully end the season on top.
Showdown in the rain
Of course, 2020 refused to let it be that simple. As the paddock headed to Le Mans for the French grand prix, we were faced with something that hadn’t played a role in the outcome of a race for quite some time: the weather. Forecasts made certain the fact that Sunday’s race would be in wet conditions, and we could expect intermittent rain over the course of the weekend. This was big news for a number of reasons, but the biggest factor was the fact that there were three rookies and four sophomores who had never ridden MotoGP bikes in the wet. How would the new kids handle the tricky conditions? Would they be able to stand up to the rain masters, such as Dovi and Petrucci?
Free practice and qualifying were a big indicator that things were askew from the regular results we’d been seeing. FP1 saw Bradley Smith take a shocking top spot as everyone adjusted to the conditions, and while the regulars like Miller and Quartararo rose to the top in later sessions, we also saw the return to form of riders like Crutchlow and Petrucci, who had been struggling with form prior to this weekend. Qualifying saw Quartararo lead the way ahead of a slew of Ducatis, and championship contender Mir all the way down in eleventh. If Quartararo could master the wet on Sunday, it would be a potentially massive blow to the title.
This was not the case, unfortunately. Miller, Petrucci and Dovi got away best, all of them more than familiar with wet weather races, while Rossi continued his bad luck streak by crashing out on the first lap. Rins made a steady progression through the pack to begin hunting down the Ducati riders up ahead; Alex Marquez surprised everyone by doing the same, slowly working his way towards the front. Smith’s weekend came to an end in the gravel, marking his first DNF of the season, but he was not the only one caught out by the difficult conditions. Rabat, Crutchlow and Morbidelli would all meet similar fates, while Miller hit engine troubles in the late stages of the race and was forced to retire. Rins would also crash out late on but rejoin, though he failed to finish thanks to accidentally snagging a track marshal’s tag.
Petrucci had no such struggles. After facing nearly twelve months of criticism for his lack of form on the Ducati, and after losing his factory contract for 2021, he bounced back in superb form to take his first win of the season. Alex Marquez took an unbelievable second place, the first podium of his premier class career, while Pol Espargaro snatched third from Dovi. And as for the title contenders? They found themselves duelling for much lower points hauls, with Quartararo, Vinales and Mir battling for ninth to eleventh. Top honours must go to Marquez the younger, though, as his performance was unbelievable to watch, and he stamped his name on the rookie of the year race with only five rounds to go.
The best bike of 2020
The first of two weekends at Aragon began with some rather heavy falls in practice sessions. The biggest fall came at the expense of Quartararo, who found himself bruised and battered after being caught out by the cold temperatures on track. Times were nowhere near where they would usually be at this circuit; riders were struggling to get heat into their tires, and were being punished for pushing their machines to the limits. Quartararo still managed to snag pole position, but he had a strong mix of riders directly behind him, including championship rival Mir in sixth and a resurgent Alex Marquez in eleventh. Could the Honda rookie repeat his success from the previous race?
Rins got the best start of all, making up six positions before he even hit the first corner. Morbidelli got the hole shot, while Quartararo began moving backwards. Rins and Mir continued their advances, eventually taking the two lead positions and allowing Rins to begin pulling a lead. Marquez started forcing his way through the pack, while the Ducatis of Dovi and Zarco tried everything they could to score precious points after a disastrous weekend for the factory. Bagnaia retired; Quartararo sunk further through the pack, missing out on points entirely.
Rins and Mir looked comfortable out front, but Alex Marquez continued his unbelievable form and caught the leading Suzukis, with Vinales not far behind. Marquez muscled his way past Mir, the superior horsepower of the Honda helping him with drive, and began hunting down Rins, but he left it marginally too late. The last few laps would be a tense affair, with Marquez chasing Rins and Vinales taking chunks of time out of Mir, but in the end they would all remain in order. Rins took his first win of the season, the eighth unique winner of the season, with Marquez taking his first dry podium and Mir taking the championship lead.
The talking point of the paddock for the weekend, though? The Suzuki machine, and its unbelievable pace at each and every circuit. Riders and journalists are always on the lookout for the ‘best bike’ of any given season, and this year it appeared to be the Japanese factory, with Rins and Mir putting on another brilliant display of consistency. Could they keep this form up, and bring success to a factory that hadn’t taken a title in 20 years?
Aragon 2: Same track, different outcome
And thus we found ourselves in the second week of yet another double header. The championship was still tight, with Mir leading Quartararo by only six points and fourth-placed Dovi only fifteen adrift. With eight different winners, fifteen different podium finishers, and only one rider to have won multiple races (Quartararo), it seemed reasonable that any one rider could put together a solid weekend and bag a win if they desired.
This week, that rider appeared to be Nakagami. The Japanese rider was proving to be one of the big surprise packages of the season, taking over from where Marc Marquez left off as the most consistent Honda rider, and had been finishing most races somewhere in the top eight places to keep a steady stream of points coming in. This weekend, however, he dominated free practice and took his first ever pole position ahead of Morbidelli and Rins. Beating those two would be a challenge, but Nakagami seemed ready for it.
He wasn’t, in the end. After a frenetic start that saw Binder and Miller down at just the second corner, Nakagami took the lead back from Morbidelli and promplty crashed out, never even finishing his first lap. Morbidelli needed no second invitation and disappeared into the distance, leaving the rest of the field to battle for the remaining podium places. The Suzukis looked strong, and set about trying to break up the pack and take another double podium. Alex Marquez made his first mistake in weeks and crashed out, ending his podium streak at two, while Quartararo again found himself struggling to maintain position against a strong field of riders.
The KTMs were back, after a quiet weekend in Aragon 1, and Pol and Oliveira battled their way towards the front, but the leaders had just enough pace to hang onto their positions, and Morbidelli cruised to his second win of the season. Rins and Mir survived long enough to make it four podiums in two weeks for Suzuki, an unbelievable achievement, and Mir extended his lead in the championship even further over Quartararo and Vinales. With these results, Morbidelli and Rins were also realistically back in contention for the title. Mir had the lead, but there were now five riders with a reasonable shot at the championship – could he hold on for just three more rounds, and claim Suzuki’s first title since 2000?
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