There was definitely real potential in Sunday’s race for Franco Morbidelli to have a good result, based on how good both he and his fellow Yamahas looked.īut the real damage for his chances was done on Saturday, when a crash in Q2 sent him to the back of the pack. And, in conditions on Sunday where it would have been very easy to make a mistake, he didn’t – not just seeing the chequered but doing it ahead of his team-mate Mir and in a very respectable positio.Ī second solid result in a row that he can hopefully build on as the season gets into its swing. There’s no easy way to say this: Alex Rins has a reputation as a crasher. There’s a part of Joan Mir that must be celebrating sixth at Mandalika like a win, given that 24 hours before the race he admitted that he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to finish it in dry conditions.Ībsolutely hamstrung by Michenlin’s decision to alter the dry tyre allocation to cope with the heat, the rain very much saved him – and the only negative for the 2020 world champion was that a terrible qualifying position denied him any chance of a race win. On one hand, had he been a little more aggressive in the early stages, there’s an argument to be made that a higher position or even a race win were on the cards.īut, sometimes safety is the smarter approach, and top Ducati and a return to the podium are nothing to be sniffed at, especially when it involves handily dispatching rain master Miller. There are two ways to see Johann Zarco’s performance.
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Had it been a full wet weekend with similar conditions in qualifying, it’s not hard to believe he might have been a podium threat. Sure sure, the Yamaha is an easy bike to ride, and that helps in the wet – but that takes nothing at all away from the exceptional job done by rookie Darryn Binder to fight for the top eight at Mandalika.Ĭlearly aggressive yet fully in control, it’s remarkable how quickly he managed to find the grip levels needed to absolutely carve his way through the field. Possibly the performance of the whole race. This was a textbook wet win for the Portuguese rider. He made a fantastic start, used Jack Miller as a marker early on, and then capitalised on what he’d learned to ride off into the distance – and while a longer race distance might have handed Quartararo a win, that’s irrelevant. With no real wet track time at the new Indonesian circuit, Oliveira obviously realised the secret to success on Sunday: putting full confidence in a grippy surface and Michelin’s exceptional rain tyres, and striking early. The way he calmed himself down after a tricky start, found his rhythm and started hunting down first a podium and then a win (which only a shortened race denied him) is the sort of ride which wins championships. It’s rare that the race winner doesn’t finish top ranked – but for a rider with Quartararo’s perceived dislike of the rain, to ride so well on Sunday is nothing short of remarkable – and will go a long way to silencing some critics. It isn’t just about the end result though, with pre-race expectation and form going into a race and a weekend heavily influencing their eventual score, not just the points they scored every Sunday afternoon. Our MotoGP ranking system is simple: the riders who we believe performed the best in every race are at the top, and the ones who underperformed are at the bottom and scored appropriately. With issues with tyres and with the newly-constructed surface falling apart beneath the riders, we expected an attritional dry race on Sunday – but instead got to see KTM rider Miguel Oliveira take an exceptional fourth premier class victory in torrential rain.Īs always, the result of that is plenty of winners and losers, and plenty to talk about when it comes to our rider ratings. The inaugural trip to the new Mandalika Bay circuit was certainly a memorable one for MotoGP, as the Indonesian Grand Prix returned to the calendar for the first time in 25 years with a race weekend that few are likely to forget in a hurry – for both good reasons and bad.