In theory, Sunday’s opening race of the 2021 MotoGP season at the Losail International Circuit should have been one of the easiest wins of the year for Ducati.
With the Desmosedici having won at the last two Qatari Grands Prix thanks to Andrea Dovizioso and with factory riders Jack Miller and Pecco Bagnaia looking strong on race pace, it was expected they would be in the fight for the win.
Instead, it was satellite Ducati rider Johann Zarco who came home in second place behind runaway winner Maverick Vinales, with Bagnaia beaten by Zarco and forced to settle for third – while Miller had a disappointing race, falling through the pack to a mere ninth at the chequered flag.
So where did it all go wrong for the Italian marque, given that its riders’ race pace during both practice and five days of preseason testing showed them to be among the absolute favourites?
Well, for Miller the problem is clear. Struggling in the second half of the race to manage his tyres, it seems that he simply rode harder than the Michelins would allow him early on.
This meant he had nothing left for the final laps, and was consigned to falling back through the pack at a rapid speed.
“I still felt I could push as I needed to,” he said of the early stages of the race, “and with about 14 laps or so to go, whenever it was that Maverick [Vinales] came past me anyway, I thought ‘OK, now it’s time to start upping the pace’.
“Initially it was alright but after a few laps I started to lose the rear grip on mid-corner, so the managing of the tyre I did early on didn’t work.
“It was the right side of the tyre when I was off the gas, I had a big moment in turn five and I lost the rear and that was the first warning sign.
“I hung on for fourth until there were about seven laps left but I was getting dropped after that, and to be seven seconds down at the end, we have work to do.”
Miller also lamented a pair of “shit little crashes” during the weekend that he admits didn’t help his confidence.
It was overall a disappointing weekend for someone who has been appointed as Ducati’s lead man for 2021, and it’s something that he knows he can’t repeat in the upcoming do-over
“The best part of having another race at this track next week,” he said, “is that I get to study and see what happened so we can fix it.
“We are a factory team and seven points is better than zero, but we need to understand what happened today and learn from it, we can’t do that again.”
While the end result was much better for team-mate Bagnaia, just securing a podium finish in the run to the line, it still wasn’t the result he had hoped for in third.
Struggling with tyre life himself after pushing on at the front of the race, he blames the changing conditions for upsetting the Ducati riders’ plans.
“We had the bad luck of it being impossible to work for the race,” he said. “In FP2 we had a good hour, but we had to concentrate on making a time attack to enter into Q2 directly, and then in FP2 the conditions were not very similar to the race. Then the conditions changed again for the race.
“I thought that my pace was good enough to remain constant to the end of the race, but maybe because of the cold conditions or the wind I started struggling.
“I tried to remain in first but Maverick had great pace and more traction.”
Making the works team’s races seem worse, it seems that some of the other Ducati riders have managed to get a much better grasp on keeping their tyres alive. Zarco, always an expert when it comes to tyre life, was able to come on strong in the final laps to see off both Bagnaia and world champion Joan Mir for second place.
“I saw on the pit board that Johann had the same pace as me,” Bagnaia said after the race, “but when he overtook me, he had three or four laps where he had better pace than me, even if mine was better again for the final three laps.
“Maybe for next week I have to change the strategy and push less in the first part of the race and follow someone instead. But we have more data to look at and we will for sure improve in the second half of the race.”
Miller was lucky to avoid a similar fate to Bagnaia of being demoted by a satellite bike late on.
He only just finished ahead of rookie Enea Bastianini, who had capped off his strong MotoGP debut weekend – in which he outshone rookie team-mate and former Moto2 title rival Luca Marini – with an excellent top-1o finish.
This was despite Bastianini forgetting to engage his holeshot device for the start of the race and going from 13th to 19th on the opening lap before working his way through the group.
And with the rookie having displayed little tyre drop-off in the closing stages, it could well be that the Esponsorama Ducati rider’s data is due some careful analysis in the factory garage in the coming days.
“My start was very slow and the first three laps were a disaster with a new tyre. But after them, I set some good times,” he said afterwards. “I tried to push more at the end but in the last six laps my arms were so tired it was impossible to arrive in the top seven.
“We made a strategy with the team before the race and we knew that we had to be fast in the last 10 laps of the race. I paid attention in the first laps to not spin a lot, and the tyre didn’t start to spin until the tyre went down a little.
“It stayed constant from lap 15 until the final lap, and that was the key for me.”
Fellow rookie Jorge Martin, on the second Pramac Ducati, didn’t make the same mistakes off the line as Bastianini, though, launching himself forward 10 places when the lights went out.
However, going too hard too soon, he said after that while it was nice to be at the front, it didn’t do his race much good in the long run.
“It felt great because I never expected to be P4!’ he conceded. “On one side it’s OK because it was good to be there and to learn from the fast riders, but on the other hand, it wasn’t my place.
“I overheated the tyre and I paid for it at the end, but it was a learning experience. We did our target, which was to improve and to learn, so I’m happy.”
