Sometimes you expect one result from a weekend and are totally blown away by the final outcome. This was true in a lot of ways at the German GP. There were a tonne of calls made last week by myself and others in the leadup to the Sachsenring race, and plenty of them ended up being wrong. It was frustrating in some senses, but it also led to a surprising and entertaining race weekend.
First up, there was Marc Marquez. The King of the Ring had an abysmal weekend by any standards, but especially given his history at the circuit. The Spaniard has previously won here eleven times across three classes, on strong and weak motorbikes, but this was a struggle he had never had to deal with before. He crashed five times between Friday and Saturday, failed to go through directly into Q2, took his worst qualifying result ever at the circuit, and dropped back to finish outside the points in the sprint.
If you ever needed confirmation that the current Honda isn’t good enough for MotoGP, this was it. Marc should have dominated this weekend, but instead it felt as though every time he tried to push on the bike it spat him off. One more crash in morning warmup was enough to rule him out for the feature race itself, and left him sounding miserable after his worst weekend to date at the German track. Marc is out for the count in this championship, that much is certain.
Honda’s project is in real danger here. Their top rider couldn’t make it work at his best track, three of their four riders were too injured to contest Sunday’s race (don’t forget Mir and Rins both missed the German round thanks to injuries), and their bike appears to spit its riders off any time they attempt to push on it. While three of their riders are contracted to ride with them until the end of 2024, those same three riders are also looking like the most disenfranchised riders on the current grid. This silly season is not over yet, mark my words.
Moving on from Marc – we did have an actual race without him. Jorge Martin did the double this weekend, winning the sprint in fairly dominant fashion and taking his first grand prix win since 2021. The Pramac rider is on a tear right now, taking podiums in both races for the last three rounds to catapult himself back into championship contention, and he looks to be in the best vein of form he’s ever seen in his MotoGP career. Holding off a late charge from championship leader Pecco Bagnaia was one of the best showings of strength we’ve seen from any rider all season.
You have to feel like 2023 is something of a revenge arc for Martin. Left to struggle with a difficult engine spec for the entirety of 2022 and finding himself in an unexpected battle for the factory seat he was groomed for, Martin suffered middling results all year and ended up being denied a promotion to the top Ducati team. His ego would have taken a huge hit as a result of this, but Ducati extended an olive branch by promising he would have equal machinery and opportunities as his factory counterparts. Clearly, he’s making excellent use of this opportunity.
Will Martin become a genuine championship threat? I am inclined to say yes given his history in the class and his general capabilities. Martin is young and quick, and motivated to fight the factory riders for the title to prove Ducati were wrong in turning him aside for that 23/24 ride. He’s a former Moto3 champion who clearly knows how to win consistently, and a bout of covid in the midst of the 2020 season was the only thing that really stood in the way of him following up in Moto2. If he can continue taking huge chunks of points in the sprints and fight it out for podiums on Sundays, a title tilt is very much on the cards.
While Martin and Bagnaia fought for the top two places, the rest of their Ducati cohort were staging something of a revolution behind them. At a track that many predicted would be a headache for the Bologna bikes, the Italian brand put eight riders in the top nine, with only KTM’s Jack Miller standing in the way of a clean sweep. This is a level of domination not seen in quite some time, and it speaks volumes about just how good the Ducati is at present.
This has to be a terrifying moment for the rest of the grid. If Ducati can dominate like this at the Sachsenring, then there can no longer be an argument for good and bad circuits for their bike. Mugello was already a brilliant result for them, but this was a winning margin that will sting for the other manufacturers for quite some time, and it threatens to repeat itself at plenty more tracks for the rest of this season. This might be the beginning of a really devastating run of form from the Ducatis.
Speaking of KTM, it was another weekend of the Austrian manufacturer appearing as the only real challenger to Ducati’s dominance. Miller took a solid podium finish in the sprint but suffered to a sixth place in the feature race, while teammate Brad Binder crashed out of a potential podium finish in the grand prix. Their bike is clearly both fast and consistent, but their championship challenge still hasn’t properly materialised.
There’s two different reasons for this. In Miller’s case, he’s still adapting to a new bike and new team, and likely still needs a few more rounds before he can find some proper consistency at the front of the races. For Binder, his race pace is clearly phenomenal, but his poor qualifying is forcing him to make risky moves in the early stages of races and potentially crash out or ruin his tires in the process.
The rest of the grid didn’t fare much better. Aprilia and Yamaha are both in some serious ruts of form, their riders chasing tails in an attempt to catch up to the leading bikes. I genuinely expected the Noale boys to have a rebound here at a track that has previously treated them well, but things ended up falling apart pretty handily for all four Aprilia riders. As for Yamaha, the only real difference between their situation and Honda’s is that the Yamaha isn’t actively trying to kill its riders at all times.
And with that, the championship rolls on to Assen for the final chapter of this European triple-header. The Dutch TT is a famous circuit in grand prix history and we can expect big things to happen here, but it would certainly seem as though the big things are all coming the way of Ducati at present. If the other manufacturers want to stay in the fight for the 2023 title, this is the place to make a stand. Arrest their momentum before the start of the Summer break, or risk losing all hope before we’ve even hit the halfway point.
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