Part of the experience of writing about a sport is a requirement to occasionally admit to being wrong. It happens any time you attempt to predict the outcome of a competition: while you can stab in the dark with whatever accuracy you’ve acquired over your time watching and learning about the sport in question, you’ll inevitably get some things incorrect. No-one writing about your favourite event is a psychic, and all of us are flawed beings at the end of the day.
I’ll admit that over the course of the French grand prix, I got a number of things wrong. It was the 1000th grand prix, so it’s possible I should have known better than to attempt to predict the events that would transpire. Sport is fickle in that way, after all, and the monumental occasion should have tipped me off that there would be some surprises thrown up.
Still, I don’t like to turn a blind eye to my own mistakes, so consider this something of an apology video (that’s a reference for the Zoomers among my readers). Let’s take a look back together at the things I messed up regarding the Le Mans round, the championship at large, and what actually transpired over the course of a historic French grand prix.
I was wrong about the weather
Let’s start off with an obvious one: it didn’t rain in France this weekend. There was a slight bit of drizzle during Friday’s practice, particularly during the MotoE qualifying at the end of the day, but the forecast of rain across all three days turned out to be a lie. It reminds me of a joke I was once told about meteorologists: they’re the only profession that can get their job right a meagre 30% of the time and still be considered wonderful and successful. In this case, they were almost entirely wrong about what would go down in Le Mans.
The result was that none of the rain masters I expected to shine this weekend were particularly dominant. Instead, the racing was more focused on who could survive the famously treacherous French circuit. In the MotoGP feature race alone we saw 8 DNFs out of 21 starters; Moto2 was also red-flagged after a particularly nasty collision featuring one of several early title contenders.
The lesson here is simple: don’t bet on the rain setting in at any point in a MotoGP weekend, and instead trust in the individual talents of the riders. Also, if you are going to predict rain, assume there will be plenty of crashes and play it safe with what you expect the outcome to be. After all, if I had simply assumed plenty of riders would crash out thanks to the tricky conditions, I probably would have gotten closer to the correct race result.
I was wrong about the contenders
This point is tangentially related to the first one, but it bears pointing out: the list of riders I conjured up as candidates to win did not perform as expected. This is partly due to the weather not playing along with my fantasy weekend, but it’s also thanks to some riders who have been sitting under the radar having incredible performances over the weekend. There was also plenty to unpack here in relation to the bikes themselves.
Firstly, the ones who let me down. Pecco Bagnaia and Alex Marquez were the Ducati duo I expected to do best this weekend, and while Bagnaia did nab pole position and a podium on Saturday afternoon neither rider saw the chequered flag on Sunday. Both got tangled up in crashes involving other riders in the feature race: Bagnaia and Maverick Vinales collided while the Aprilia rider attempted to mount a comeback mid-race, and Alex and fellow satellite rider Luca Marini collided coming out of the chicane at turn 4 in one of the scariest incidents of the weekend.
Jack Miller also managed to do a complete flip on his form in Jerez, turning a solid qualifying result into zero points accrued with crashes in both the sprint and the race. The Aussie was very hard on himself in his debriefs on both days, and for good reason: he knows full well that he blew several major points-scoring opportunities this weekend. The KTM is finally delivering as an all-round package, but Miller needs to get to the finish line in order to reap the rewards. His current inconsistency may well be the final nail in the coffin of his championship aspirations.
Then there’s the riders who outdid my expectations. After talking him up all season and being disappointed with his lack of form in the feature races, Jorge Martin completely outdid himself in Le Mans with a win in the sprint and second place in the grand prix. The Spaniard continued on the lessons learned in Jerez to cement himself as a genuine title contender, and broke his winless streak that has been active since Austria back in 2021. Among question marks surrounding his future with Ducati and/or Yamaha, he silenced his critics in emphatic fashion.
And of course, there’s the winner of Sunday’s race.
I was wrong about Marco Bezzechi
It’s possible I was slightly too hasty in ruling Bezz out as a contender for this season after his crash last time out. The Italian took his second win and third podium for the season on Sunday to bring himself up to just one point behind championship leader Bagnaia, and made it look easy while doing it. His eventual winning margin sat at around 5 seconds despite finding himself in the mid-pack skirmish early on, something that is rather difficult to accomplish in modern-day MotoGP on board a satellite bike.
Where did this form come from? It’s hard to say for sure. Looking at his times over the weekend gives the impression that he was on for a fine but unimpressive result, comfortably slower and less consistent than a number of his Ducati stablemates and the factory KTMs and Aprilias. Even the sprint race didn’t do him any favours: mired outside of the top ten for most of the race, it was only a late-race charge and some mistakes from other riders that allowed him to sneak into the points. Whatever he ate for breakfast on Sunday morning, it produced a changed man on track.
While it’s far too early to call him a title contender – the man is a MotoGP sophomore with less than 30 races under his belt, and being a satellite rider comes with plenty of drawbacks – you have to admit that this early form from the VR46 graduate is spectacular, and more than deserving of the accolades he’s currently receiving. I fully expect Bezz to continue riding this solid wave of results and potentially replicate the season Enea Bastianini put together last year: marginally inconsistent, but a big headache for the championship challengers on his good days.
I was wrong about the Aprilias
Every weekend that goes by, I regret my pre-season hailing of the RS-GPs as one of the best packages on the grid. It is becoming increasingly clear that the 2023 Aprilia has some problems, primarily in the consistency department. It was easy enough to blame this on user error last year when Aleix Espargaro was thrashing Vinales on a weekly basis, but we’ve now reached the point where neither of them looks particularly happy with the package underneath them.
It’s a shame, because this was supposed to be a season that would define the Italian brand as a real MotoGP contender. With 4 bikes on the grid and at least 3 potential title challengers in their pocket, it truly seemed as though Aprilia was set to battle with the Ducatis for supremacy in the class. Instead, we find ourselves living in a time loop every weekend. The Aprilias are fast on Friday during practice, have a mediocre qualifying, scrap together some points in the sprint and then have a miserable Sunday. There have been flashes of brilliance from several of their riders, but no consistency.
It would help if they could actually go a weekend with their full rider line-up. Oliveira was absent once again thanks to injuries sustained from the Jerez collision with Quartararo, and Raul Fernandez lasted one practice session before dropping out thanks to pain from his recent arm pump surgery. When the day comes that all four Aprilia riders can last a full weekend doing testing for the Noale manufacturer without crashing out and hurting themselves, perhaps we’ll see them clawing back advantage to the other European brands.
I was wrong about Pedro Acosa, but more wrong about Sam Lowes
Finally, some notes on the Moto2 category. At the start of the season I was very vocal about how I thought this championship would go down – Pedro Acosta would wipe the floor with his opposition, and there would be an interesting battle for second place. That simply hasn’t transpired, and we instead find ourselves five races in with Tony Arbolino leading the championship, a full 25 points ahead of the Spanish talent of Acosta and the rest of the chasing pack.
The Marc VDS rider has blown a lot of people away with his abilities this year, but the real reason Arbolino is winning this championship is his consistency. The Italian has two wins and four podiums to his name, and his worst finish of the season so far is a 4th place in Jerez. Compare that to Acosta: the Spaniard has also won two races and has a podium to boot, but he also came 12th at a wet Argentina and crashed out chasing his rival in Le Mans. He may still be the bookie’s favourite, but he needs to change his form if he wants to take over from Arbolino at the top.
Additionally, I need to apologise to Sam Lowes for being a doubter at the start of this year. With Arbolino’s future unclear I was certain that the Brit was simply acting as a stop-gap for the VDS squad, keeping the seat warm until Senna Agius is old enough to be shuffled in from the European championship. That simply isn’t true, and Sam has shown some real maturity and speed over the last few weekends. He knew he had the pace at the start of the season but needed a bit more time to find himself, and now that he has found his qualifying mojo once again he represents a real force to be reckoned with. May he see out many more seasons in the intermediate class.
Now, we get a small reprieve – a couple of weeks off to think about what we’ve seen in the opening five grand prix before a European triple-header to close out the first half of the season. I said at the start of this leg of the championship that the European rounds would provide some relief and stability to 2023. Let’s hope I don’t find myself apologising for that in a month’s time as well.
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