In MotoGP and most other racing championships, the good part about having a bad season opener is that you get to move on to another track for the second race and have a mini-reset. Or, at least, in MotoGP that’s usually the case – but it wasn’t in 2020 and it won’t be this year.
After five-ish days of pre-season testing and an opening race weekend, the MotoGP field will take to the (by this point) nauseatingly familiar Losail International Circuit again this Friday and Saturday and Sunday.
And even though it’d be strange to expect major changes to the status quo, given the sheer amount of mileage MotoGP’s 2021 crop have logged here, there are some riders who need, and will be expected to deliver, a better Doha Grand Prix than last weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix.
Valentino Rossi
Rossi’s seven latest MotoGP results read as follows: DNF, DNF, DNF, DNF, 12th, 12th, 12th. It is an unenviable under-par streak and it really should’ve snapped last time out in the season opener, given Rossi qualified fourth on the grid.
“We have to try to be stronger and faster compared to the first race, because in the first race I was not fast like I wanted,” Rossi said this Thursday. “We have some data, we will try to change something with the setting of the bike, to improve the life and the grip of the rear tyre.
“Everything is difficult because there’s a lot of riders who are very strong, but I think this is not our potential, we can be stronger and this is the target.”
It seems implicitly acknowledged that there’s a performance clause in Rossi’s Petronas deal, and it’s a safe bet another 12th place or retirement in the Doha GP wouldn’t get him much closer to hitting it.
Franco Morbidelli
It’s not really Franco Morbidelli who needs to improve this weekend at Losail; rather, the satellite Yamaha rider needs to demonstrate the pace we all know he had last weekend until a mechanical problem on the grid hampered his entire race and left him rolling around more than a second off the pace.
Fighting a sticking rear holeshot device all race long, it’s actually impressive that he was able to finish the race – but the championship isn’t won on effort alone.
He has zero points to show for last weekend, and he has to improve on that should he wish to repeat his 2020 feat of fighting for the title.
Thankfully for him, it shouldn’t be an impossible task. The Petronas SRT team believes that it’s found the problem and addressed it, and Morbidelli clearly had the speed he needed last weekend, so the path to some delayed success is clear.
Luca Marini
Marini’s MotoGP debut was certainly not “alarm bells” territory. He made it to the finish, he had pretty consistent pace, he’d even popped up at the sharp end in one of the practices.
We’ve certainly seen much worse debuts. But we also saw a better one on the other side of Marini’s current garage, as his former title rival and current Esponsorama team-mate Enea Bastianini dazzled en route to 10th.
“I look a lot as his data, his result was very impressive, he did a very good race,” Marini said when asked by The Race whether Bastianini was a benchmark. “Looks like with his riding style he felt comfortable from the beginning with the Ducati, and also in the race he could ride similar to last year in Moto2.
“I saw so many similar things, he used very well the bike in the entry, his strong point is the entry – like last year. In the area where I’m struggling he’s strong.
“So also we can compare with him in this case, we try to change something on the bike, change something on my riding style to improve this. Checking his data is a good opportunity for us to improve faster.”
Given he doesn’t have the reputation for being the fastest learner of this rookie class, Marini won’t be under pressure to deliver explosive results, but he has targeted points and being closer to the race winner for the Doha GP – and rightly so.
Jack Miller
“The objective is the same every weekend. Last weekend we were unfortunate, but we know the issues, we know what happened and we can improve on that and do better this weekend.
“There’s no ‘must-wins’, it’s still very early in the championship – but for sure we’ll try our maximum to arrive as close to the top if not at the top.”
Miller’s right – there can be no must-wins this early on into a 19-round championship. And in fact, the odds that whatever points he scores in the Doha GP will decide whether or not he’s 2021 champion are somewhere between ‘small’ and ‘infinitesimal’.
But it’s also inescapable that, should Miller have another middling race, the mood and narrative coming out of Qatar won’t be great. This is a good track for Ducati, and he’s supposed to lead the Bologna manufacturer now. Ninth place, with two other Ducatis in second and third, was not a team-leading performance in the opener.
Perhaps Yamaha will prove too strong again on Sunday, but this is a major opportunity to scoop up early points regardless – especially with Marc Marquez on the brink of a return.
The whole LCR line-up
Last weekend was an unmitigated disaster for both Taka Nakagami and Alex Marquez, with the pair failing to finish Sunday’s race.
It’s an important weekend for LCR Honda as Lucio Cecchinello’s team celebrates its 25th birthday, and the pressure will be on now to ensure that it ends better than last week.
Marquez, thankfully, is confident that that won’t be too difficult a job if he gets the right place on track. Comfortably running top 10 pace last weekend until he fell, he was a victim of Honda’s old issue of overheating the front tyre while trying to overtake slower riders. He’s hopefully learned from that error, and needs to not make the same mistake.
Nakagami similarly believes that he’s set to make progress this weekend, insisting coming into the weekend that careful analysis of the data has shown him where he went wrong.
Trying out a new approach to the weekend with his team to try to avoid a repeat performance, 2020’s Mr Consistency just needs to get some solid points on the board.
Alex Rins
Sixth in the opening round isn’t necessarily a disappointment for Suzuki rider Alex Rins, as it’s a much better start to his season than the broken shoulder that caused him to miss the opening round last year.
But with team-mate Joan Mir demonstrating what the GSX-RR was capable of by only just losing out on second in the run to the line, Rins will be looking to up his game this weekend.
And as always for Suzuki, that needs to happen in qualifying. Starting last weekend from ninth (one place ahead of Mir) meant that Rins was forced to charge though the pack, neutralising the bike’s advantage on used tyres at the end of the race.
If he can start higher up, then he can easily be in with a chance of winning.
Suzuki thinks it’s found something for qualifying too, hinting all weekend at a significant change it found too late to be useful for qualifying that time.
It’ll be a worrying sign for its rivals should Rins and Mir start from further forward on the grid.
Danilo Petrucci
Losail was always going to be a hard track for the KTM riders, and particularly difficult for newcomer Danilo Petrucci as he continues to adapt to the RC16 after so many years spent on a Ducati.
It’s no secret that the KTM doesn’t go well in Qatar, as evidenced by disappointing performances outside the top 10 for the factory duo Miguel Oliveira and Brad Binder – but Petrucci’s first corner crash added a whole new layer of pain.
The good news is that all he has to do to improve this week is complete the first lap – but the target will be a more solid race finish and hopefully a point or two to tide them over ahead of the return to Europe.
Should he be within a few seconds of the factory KTMs (like Tech3 team-mate Iker Lecuona was last Sunday), then it’ll be enough to partially make up for last week’s disappointment.
Lorenzo Savadori
Savadori has had a rough start to the year and his Qatar GP result does not make for pretty reading, as he surrendered more than two seconds per lap to the race winner.
But there’s a big asterisk next to all of that – Savadori has, of course, been riding hurt, having sustained a right shoulder injury in training.
“Of course the shoulder slowed me down, in the winter test almost to 70% – when you can’t make more than two laps, it’s impossible to improve the feeling with the bike and understand the tyre,” he rightly pointed out.
But Savadori likewise admits it is not all down to the shoulder – beyond that, “the biggest thing” is that he’s struggling to get into the right line on corner entry.
The big test will be round three at Portimao, which is where Savadori is certain he’ll be “at 100%” and where he’d had a reasonably encouraging weekend last year. That race also takes place just after Andrea Dovizioso has his first Aprilia test…
Yet he won’t get a free “no-pressure” pass in the Doha GP either. Simply put, even if the stamina for the full race still isn’t there, there need to be some peaks of pace that have been absent in the pre-season so far.
