MotoGP Practice Summary: Espargaro on Top as Dovizioso Bounces Back

With rain due in the afternoon, Friday morning’s FP1 session would be the most important of the day for the MotoGP riders on day one of the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix. 

Setting a time fast enough to be inside the top ten overnight – with rain due also for Saturday morning’s FP3 – would be potentially pivotal for the prospects of many riders. 

Of those that made it, Pol Espargaro and Andrea Dovizioso were a step above the rest. It was not a surprise to see Espargaro so fast. The Spaniard tested in the Red Bull Ring with Dani Pedrosa before the season kicked off in Jerez, and so topping the session was almost expected after the performance of Brad Binder last weekend in Brno. 

Binder, on the other hand, struggled for speed. Lockdown rules meant that the South African was unable to attend the test with Espargaro and Pedrosa, so Friday saw the Brno winner’s first laps around the Red Bull Ring on a MotoGP bike. 

For Dovizioso, there is some confirmation in his speed. All season, the Ducati rider has put his struggles down to the grippier 2020 Michelin rear tyre. In Austria, that construction is not there, Michelin instead favouring the stronger construction rear used at Thailand and Austria last year, and Thailand in 2018, that better dissipates heat than the regular tyre. 

The tyre is used exclusively at those two circuits because of the long straights and the time spent at almost top speed with a small amount of lean angle. 

Critically for Dovizioso and Ducati, the tyre is closer to the regular 2019 tyre than the 2020 tyre, meaning the Italian is able to use his rear sliding technique on corner entry to get the bike turned faster, so he can get back to the throttle sooner. Despite some doubts coming into this weekend, it looks like Dovizioso is prepared to defend Ducati’s Red Bull ring crown. 

Behind Espargaro and Dovizioso was Takaaki Nakagami, once again the top Honda rider. It has been an  impressive start to the season for the Japanese rider, and his speed on Friday morning indicates that he could be in the mix for the podium on Sunday, at least if it is dry. 

Alex Rins was also up there on the Suzuki, and was the top inline-four ahead of Franco Morbidelli’s Yamaha in fifth, the Italian the fastest rider of his brand. Johann Zarco proved that the GP19 still works around Austria, taking sixth place, whilst Miguel Oliveira ensured that two KTMs are provisionally inside the top 10 overnight with seventh. Jack Miller took eighth place, and topped the half-wet-half-dry FP2 in the afternoon, whilst the top 10 was rounded out by two inline-fours, the Suzuki of Joan Mir and the top factory-spec Yamaha of Fabio Quartararo. 

Missing out on the top 10, crucially, were Maverick Vinales in 11th, who seems to be having similar rear grip issues to those suffered one week ago in Brno, Danilo Petrucci and Valentino Rossi who were all within two tenths of Quartararo. In truth, the times are very close for that final top 10 spot: back to Alex Marquez in 19th from 10th placed Quartararo is covered by less than half a second. 

There is not much to say about race pace due to the unrepresentative conditions of FP2, but Espargaro, Dovizioso and Rins look the fastest. Espargaro can run inside the 1’24s quite consistently, whilst Dovizioso and Rins seem comfortable in the low 1’25s, the Italian completing a run of several in succession in the middle of the morning session and Rins even dipping into the high 1’24s with the medium rear, like Espargaro. 

Also worth noting are the likes of Joan Mir, Johann Zarco and Franco Morbidelli, who all seem capable of running in the low-1’25s, although slightly less so than the trio in the previous paragraph. 

For the three factory-spec Yamaha riders, mid-1’25s seem to be the order of the day, with Quartararo having a slight edge on Rossi and Vinales and extremely consistent to go with it. Of course, for the Yamaha riders, top speed will be a particularly limiting factor this weekend. The fastest Yamaha in the speed trap was Quartararo, but even he was over 7km/h down on Dovizioso who topped the speed charts. Rossi, on the other hand, was joint slowest in the speed traps, over 11 klicks down on Dovizioso’s Ducati and 3.5 kilometres down on teammate, Vinales. Around a track like this, with that kind of disadvantage and with a field as competitive as this year’s MotoGP grid, it will be hard for the M1s to compete.