The first day at the Sachsenring always tends to be a bit messy. A lot of crashes, as riders struggle to remember that if they don’t warm the their front tires properly, Turn 11 or Turn 1 will bite them, and badly. And when the weather fails to cooperate, like on Friday, that makes it doubly difficult.
The cold track temperatures and the aftermath of the rain left the riders caught between two suboptimal choices: use the soft front in the certain knowledge it won’t last the 30 laps of the race on Sunday; or use the medium front and try to strike a balance between pushing the tire to get heat into it, and being cautious into right handers because if you aren’t, things will end badly for you.
It ended badly for a lot of riders on Friday. There were 23 crashes at the Sachsenring on the first day of practice, compared with 15 last year and 18 the year before. 15 of those crashes were at either Turn 1, Turn 3, or Turn 11, which just happen to be the three right-hand corners at the Sachsenring. And in the MotoGP class, pretty much all of those crashes happened on the medium tire.
Broken in half
There were some pretty massive crashes throughout the day, including Takaaki Nakagami destroying his LCR Honda in Turn 11 in the afternoon. Unfortunately for Nakagami, it was the bike fitted with the Kalex frame, which he had finally gotten a chance to test with Joan Mir absent due to injury. Nakagami was relatively OK – badly shaken up, but nothing broken – but how much damage was done to the Kalex chassis is another question.
Turn 11 has an appetite for destroying bikes. As a rule, the riders tend to lose the front at the top of the hill, bike and rider sliding down the steep asphalt and into the gravel. But the combination of speed and the angle of the gravel has the unfortunate tendency to allow the bike to catch in the gravel and start tumbling. In the worst case, it starts turning end over end, putting maximum force into the wheels and tail, ripping off fairings, front wheels, and even rear wheels. Fortunately for the riders, they tend not to tumble, but just slide. Unfortunately for the riders, the slide a long, long way.
Franco Morbidelli had just crashed as I arrived to watch from the back of the paddock, and as he rode by on the back of a scooter, heading back toward the garage, I could see just how much damage the asphalt and gravel had done to his leathers. There is nothing wrong with the gravel at the Sachsenring. It’s just that the riders slide a long way.
Wrong place, wrong time
The other big crash at the Sachsenring was by far the most controversial, in no small part due to the parties involved. Johann Zarco left pit lane just as Marc Marquez headed into Turn 1 on a hot lap. Marquez lost the front on the brakes – that medium front again – and his bike slid toward the entry of Turn 1. Ill fortune meant that his prone Honda was sliding directly toward Zarco, on a course intersecting pit lane exit at the spot where Zarco found himself.
Zarco was just able to pick up the bike a little before the front of Marquez’ Honda RC213V slammed into the rear of the front wheel of Zarco’s Pramac Ducati. That action probably saved him from a very serious leg injury, but it also meant that Marquez’ bike hit Zarco’s at the point of maximum leverage on the front wheel, slamming into the front wheel and levering the front end of the frame away from the rest, splitting his bike in two.
That brought out the red flags, and while Zarco was in obvious pain, he clearly wasn’t seriously injured, as he was moving. Marquez sprinted back to the garage in the hope of getting out on his second bike and setting a time good enough to get through to Q2. He did not manage that, crossing the line to start a last flying lap just seconds after the session had ended, putting the Repsol Honda rider into Q1.
The blame game
Among the fans, the recriminations started immediately. Blame was apportioned, whether justified or not, because fans feel that someone always have to be blamed for incidents like this. As a rider with a reputation for mayhem, Marc Marquez bore the brunt of the blame. But in this case, that seemed entirely unjustified: pretty much everyone we spoke to said it was a racing incident.
Marc Marquez felt it was a racing incident, but he also believed that the crash was a result of a mistake by Johann Zarco. The Frenchman had not exited pit lane carefully enough, Marquez said. He should have looked behind and slowed down to enter the track safely.
“I’m a guy that if I do mistake, I say this is my mistake,” Marquez said on Friday afternoon. “But this time I’m angry because if somebody can avoid the situation it was Johann.” Zarco should have seen the riders coming and let them pass before entering the track, the Repsol Honda rider told us. “The guy that is coming out of the pit lane is the guy that needs to watch behind and if somebody is coming, especially in the last minute, you need to stop in the pit exit. It’s no meaning to stay out of the line because as we see in that corner in the past and this morning even, with Aleix Espargaro, with Quartararo, it’s so easy to crash. It’s so easy to lock the front and more when you are pushing in the end of the practice.”
“So yeah, I lose the front,” Marquez explained. “We were super lucky that we escaped, both of us, from that crash. But yeah, I already heard that somebody said ‘Marc is dangerous’. I mean, if somebody can avoid that situation it was Johann, not me. I was pushing for a whole lap. Yeah, sorry guys, I crashed. But I don’t want to crash, like many riders today. Nobody wants to crash.”
Zarco, too, was angry, in part because Marquez had blamed him for the incident, but also because Marquez had left him lying on the tarmac while he ran off to get his second bike. “First thing, when I was on the floor, is that he could at least come,” Zarco told us. “I can understand that he wants to run to his other bike to make another lap time, but because of the red flag he could just see if all was OK.”
Shifting blame
Zarco was similarly unimpressed by Marquez pinning the blame on him. “I like Marc and the way he is riding and pushing. He is this champion, but he is losing a bit of control now when he speaks, because he should think twice before speaking,” Zarco insisted. “Just to have the idea that this is my fault is not acceptable. I’m a nice guy, so he cannot put the fault on my just because I am a nice guy and everyone can show me the finger.”
This felt similar to the crash with Morbidelli in Austria, Zarco said. “The same thing happened with another big accident three years ago. I got hit in the back three years ago and everybody was telling that it was my fault. Today, OK, it would have been better to not have this, but at least say sorry and it is all OK.” Zarco and Marquez met shortly after practice, and Zarco was irritated by Marquez trying to blame him. “I could see him pretty quick, just 15 minutes, after the practice. He came to say quick ‘I was scared’ but, OK, don’t say it is the fault of someone because: no. We have to accept this and just losing a bit of control when he speaking now and this is sad.”
At the root of the problem lies the place where pit lane joins the track. The riders exit the pits, and pit lane rejoins the track on the outside of the beginning of Turn 1. On the one hand, it is away from the racing line, so in most cases, riders can join safely without interfering with riders already on track. But on the other, as we have just seen, if a rider crashes, it can be very bad news.
Packaging problem
The trouble facing the Sachsenring circuit is there is not really anywhere else they can put the pit exit. Have it earlier in the main straight and you risk releasing riders into the track right at the point where the bikes are traveling fastest. Any later, and you have to enter around the back of the corner, and you still end up running the risk if a rider crashes.
It was a known problem, Luca Marini explained. “Sincerely, yeah, but it was since a lot of years that it’s like this,” the Mooney VR46 rider said. “So we know that in this track it’s like this. We know also in Aragon is dangerous because can happen that a rider can crash and hit another rider.”
Several people referenced the collision between Pol Espargaro, then on the Tech3 Yamaha, and Danilo Petrucci during free practice at Aragon back in 2016, as another place where pit lane exits right at a spot where riders can crash. “The pit exit is OK,” Marquez insisted, before pointing to the incident between Espargaro and Petrucci. “Like we saw in the past in Aragon with Pol Espargaro and Petrucci. The only thing is that you have enough space to watch behind and you have enough visibility, if the riders are coming.”
Extra attention was needed at the end of a session, Marquez insisted. “As you know in the last minutes, everybody’s pushing on the limit. And it’s a corner where it’s easy to crash. So yeah, the pit exit is OK. The only problem is that the guy that is going out needs to pay more attention.”
There are no easy fixes to this. Especially given the space constraints at the Sachsenring circuit, with no room to reroute either Turn 1 or pit lane exit. Aleix Espargaro summed up the general consensus. “I think it was bad luck,” the factory Aprilia rider told us. “I think Johann looked behind, Marc has a crash, difficult really. Maybe you do a tunnel to really join the track! But really it’s difficult.”
Rough and ready
For Marquez to crash in Turn 1 was not surprising, given the layout of the track. And also because the Honda RC213V is a particularly difficult beast to wrestle at the moment. Marquez had had at least three big moments on camera, and god knows how many when the cameras were trained elsewhere. What the cameras did catch was Marquez giving his own bike the finger out of sheer frustration and anger.
“It was about the situation,” Marquez said. “I mean, the adrenaline was super high. I saved a crash in a very fast corner. And then as you can imagine the adrenaline was very, very high and the reaction of the body was that because I had many, many warnings already this weekend. So yeah, we need to understand how to ride smoother or just a bit slower and we will not have the moments.”
It was additionally frustrating for Marquez because this is one of the circuits where he has the potential for a very good result. “Of course we need to work this afternoon to change something, to change something big and try to improve,” the Repsol Honda rider said. “I mean, as you see this morning is a circuit that I like and straight away when I go out, I was on the limit. And because it’s easy [for me] to ride here, but then you reach the limit and you stay there. Because the limit is there, so you cannot do anything.”
It is looking very much like it will be a Ducati that finishes ahead of him. Perhaps even a couple. Marco Bezzecchi set the fastest time, after getting a tow off friend and rival Pecco Bagnaia. This time, however, Bagnaia was relatively calm about losing the top time to a tow. “This is it, so you have to adapt, you have to go,” the Italian told us. He was trying not to think about it. “Sincerely, I don’t want to be too focused on who is behind, I want to just push myself on the limit, and if someone will beat me then I know I did my best and it’s OK. I’m inside the top ten, so it’s not a big problem, for sure.”
At the moment, Bagnaia looks stronger than Bezzecchi, even though Bagnaia doesn’t believe he is doing as well as he did last year. Despite crashing out at the Sachsenring in 2022, up until that point, it had been a near perfect weekend. Aleix Espargaro was overjoyed to take third on the first day of practice, despite suffering with his right heel. And the KTM of Jack Miller looked very strong and capable of handling whatever fate throws at him.
What everyone will be hoping for is hotter weather. Saturday should at least be sunnier, while Sunday should be both sunny and warm. That should rid the riders of the hated K tire, the medium front which is neither one thing or another, and allow them to switch to the full hard front tire.
“We have a big problem,” Aleix Espargaro told us. “In the Safety Commission, we keep insisting that the K [medium] is not working at all, the last year and a half it’s not working at all. They brought the G [a different medium front which has better grip], and it’s a tire that we like a lot more, but we don’t know why they didn’t bring it.”
The K was a big problem, Espargaro said. “Today I did my fast lap with 10 laps on the front soft tire. I never used the soft tire for a time attack, and this is the first time in my career that I did with 10 laps in the front,” he told us. “But the medium was not an option. I crashed this morning and all the guys that put the medium crashed, the two Yamahas, Marc, Maverick, Nakagami. It’s not working. When you don’t stress the tire, when there is not enough load, there is no grip at all, it’s like soap, the K compound. It’s not an option any more.”
The weather really wasn’t helping, Espargaro said. “It’s really cold to use the H tire, it’s the winning tire from the last GPs, but unfortunately it’s quite cold today.” If the temperature rises, the Aprilia rider told us, he would go with the hard front. “100%. Even if I haven’t tried it, I will put it on the grid.”
Alex Marquez believes there is something odd going on with the K spec medium front. It had worked in the past, but had suddenly stopped working without explanation. “The front tire, the medium, the K is a little bit strange,” the Gresini Ducati rider explained. “It was a tire that we always used in the past, but from Misano more or less, nobody can use it. So Michelin say that nothing changed, but it’s like strange, no feeling, so rigid the tire, and it’s so easy to make a mistake.”
Alex Marquez was insistent that this tire behavior was not down to changes on the bikes. “If this happened from season to another, I can understand, but not in the middle of one season,” he said. “So it already happened last year. They are trying to investigate and all this, but already have here like that and nothing has changed. So strange, so the ideal point for tomorrow will be that it will be really hot so we can all put the H. This will be the perfect thing. Not just for us, for everybody.”
The weather looks much more favorable for Saturday. But the mystery of the change in behavior for the K medium front remains unanswered. The riders will be hoping that Michelin bring the new, more favored G compound to other tracks. But at the Sachsenring, they will have to play the hand they have been dealt.
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