The first race of every season is traditionally a nervy affair. Riders have been working towards this point for four months, training and working on their setups alongside their teams in order to bring the most competitive package possible to the start of the championship. Get it all right, and you can begin the title race with others chasing you up; fail, and you’ll be playing catch-up for some time.
This is doubly true in 2023. With the introduction of sprint races, there are even more points to play for every weekend, and the opportunity to get ahead at the first weekend is greater than ever before. A full 37 points awaited riders this weekend, and all one would need to do is nail the first-ever sprint race in totally unknown conditions and then follow it up with a more stamina-inducing victory on the Sunday. Easy.
Speak of the devil – let’s talk about the sprint. With no data to inform what was to come, the consensus was that the race would be a blazingly fast, more aggressive version of a standard MotoGP race. With half the distance and a little over half the fuel to think about, there wasn’t nearly as much room for strategy. Riders were expecting to hit the track with their elbows out and jockey for positions throughout, with the quickest and savviest surviving to the finish line.
That ended up being a shockingly good assessment. From the first lap of the Portimao sprint, riders were diving up the inside of one another at every presented opportunity. The pack started off rather tightly bunched, but several early mistakes and crashes spread the riders out – an inevitability when all your opponents are riding to their absolute limit, I suppose. The battle for the lead was fierce, and even in the lower positions there was plenty of action occurring.
Bagnaia and Martin looked the class of the field from the start, but they found themselves with issues in the form of several wily Aprilias, a veteran on a Honda and a miracle-worker on a KTM. Credit where credit is due – I did not have Jack Miller on my radar for this weekend, and he absolutely blew me away with his speed and consistency. Top of practice on Friday and contender for pole position and the race victory on Saturday, the Aussie has proven that he is more than just the bike underneath him.
In the end, though, the Ducatis were simply too much for the chasing pack, and a late mistake from Martin handed Bagnaia his first win of the season. I’ll admit that it was nice to see other bikes in the mix throughout the race, but this was the fear many had coming into this season – the sprint race format seems to benefit the raw speed and power of the Ducati in a rather menacing fashion. If things stay the way they are, then I could easily see a host of riders on Italian bikes taking sprint victory after sprint victory, providing a solid championship base to any of them that can do so with consistency.
Marc Marquez rounded out the podium to wrap up a generally brilliant Saturday for the returning Spaniard, having taken pole position earlier in the day. The gap between Marc and the remainder of the Hondas was already speaking volumes – despite their brand-new lineup brimming with talent, only Marc was able to seriously deliver when points were on the table. As often is the case, pre-season testing times were proving to have been something of a red herring in certain areas, and the idea that the Honda riders were all fairly balanced ended up being a mirage.
But all of this was only for loose change compared to the big ticket on Sunday. Only nine riders scored points on Saturday – something that a couple of people admitted to forgetting, including Fabio Quartararo, who pushed insanely hard to finish tenth in the sprint. Sunday would provide a real showcase of what riders and teams were actually capable of, with actual strategy coming to the fore rather than bareknuckle fighting on track.
Bagnaia got another fairly perfect start but found himself with more than a few riders to contend with in the early laps. Home hero Oliveira was here to improve from a disappointing finish in the sprint, while Martin and Marc were both itching to prove they were more than just their sprint results. Vinales and Miller gave chase, with a couple of independent Ducati riders tagging along behind. Was this about to become another dogfight for the lead?
Unfortunately, that concept was cut short rather abruptly. Marc came in way too hot at turn two, squeezing desperately on the brakes of his Honda, and clipped the side of Martin’s bike. Now totally out of control, the Spaniard and his bike careened straight into Oliveira, wiping both of them out and sending Martin all the way into the run-off in the process. It was a difficult crash to watch, least of all because the broadcast team insisted on replaying it from every imaginable angle, and Oliveira lay prone on the side of the track for almost a full lap while the race continued off into the distance.
As unfortunate as an incident like this is – and fret not, I have plenty more to say on this topic in a future article – it did a marvellous job of dividing up the pack. With fresh air behind him, Pecco Bagnaia began his charge to victory out front, while the remnants of the front pack began to shuffle themselves out and give chase. Maverick Vinales somehow came out best and started to close the gap to the runaway leader; Marco Bezzechi battled his way into third and followed suit, about a second behind the Aprilia rider.
The bad news was, this was effectively the last we would see of these three riders as they disappeared off into the sunset. The good news? The dogfight for fourth made up for it handily, as the factory KTM duo of Miller and Binder sunk their teeth into Alex Marquez while Zarco and Aleix Espargaro worked to chase them down. Miller and Binder both showed great pace, but the younger Marquez could simply out-muscle them every time the pack reached the start/finish straight. It looked certain that he would grab an impressive fourth place on his Ducati debut.
Unfortunately for Alex, there was one other rider in the group that could still go toe-to-toe with him – the one on equal machinery. Zarco had a completely unbelievable final lap, first passing Miller on the straight, then getting his teeth sunk into Binder shortly after. Next he set his sights on Alex and nabbed the inside line in the final sector to complete a breathtaking 7th-to-4th comeback. You’ve got to hand it to the wily Frenchman – that was some statement of intent for the season to come.
So, what are the takeaways from the weekend? Ducati put four riders into the top five on Sunday, marking them as exactly the dominant force we expected, but it was the heroes of the other manufacturers that grabbed the headlines. Miller was incredible, showcasing just how talented he is on a bike no-one thought could be competitive this year. Vinales stunned with his podium on Sunday, and Binder proved once again that he is the Sunday Man of the current generation. Even Marc Marquez deserves credit for his performances in qualifying and the sprint, though he may have made enemies of the entire Portugese fanbase on the final day.
Two more shoutouts from me before we close. Firstly, Pedro Acosta came into the weekend as the favourite to win the Moto2 title this year and looked faultless throughout practice and qualifying. When it came time to battle on Sunday, he refused to buckle under the pressure, laying down insanely fast lap times the full race distance to clinch his fourth win in the class and start his season off right. The Shark is a danger man and an unbelievable talent, and there will be plenty of MotoGP teams eyeing him off as a future candidate right now.
Lastly, I wanted to make note of the spectacular efforts of Denis Oncu in the Moto3 race. After his bike stalled on the grid and he was forced to start the race from pitlane, I wrote him off entirely from having an impact in the race – so it was with great surprise that I spent the following 19 laps watching him climb through the ranks at an insane rate. The Turk finished the race in tenth, just 1.4 seconds off the race win, and set multiple fastest laps on his way through to the leading pack. Not the result he would have wanted and not the one he deserved, but with terrifying rhythm like that he will have sent a message to the rest of the Moto3 grid.
Caught your breath yet? Good, because the whole circus kicks off again in Argentina later this week for the second round. Time waits for no-one, and this year the MotoGP grid will have to steel their nerves and battle through 20 more rounds of action. We’re already a few men down after just the first race – let’s hope there’s still a grid left by the time we reach Jerez.
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