A Yamaha in perfect Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde style. Losail’s back-to-back rounds actually featured the two faces of the tuning fork maker. victorious with the M1s factory while those of the independent Petronas team were forced to hunt.
Indeed, Vinales and Quartararo swapped baton while Rossi and Morbidelli had two weekends to deal with suffering and hardship that kept them from scrapping with the best. And thinking that their expectations were very different, instead the stopwatch relegated them to the role of the paying spectator.
The second round of Doha widened the gap between El Diablo and the Doctor, with the French winning while the nine-time world champion had to console himself with sixteenth place, more than 14 seconds from above.
With this in mind, we wanted to analyze the racing pace of Fabio and Valentino in detail, from which interesting details emerge. The first fact is that Quartararo never went over 1: 55 minutes during the race. something that Rossi, who drove two laps in 1: 56 minutes, could not manage.
Beyond that, the race of the two was the exact opposite. Fabio always stayed in the top ten group, while Rossi (also due to a disastrous qualifying) was in 20th place immediately at the bottom of the group. dealing with Petrucci and Lecuona’s KTMs who then left the scene.
The fact is that the race of the French was an intelligent one, but at the same time all attacks. Indeed, In the opening laps he was seen stable at a low pace of 1:55, while Valentino struggled to get below the 1:55 mark of one and a half. It is also interesting what happened on lap eight, when Fabio broke the 1:55 mark and drove his own record lap, in contrast to Rossi, whose fastest lap did not fall below 1: 55.383 seconds.
The interesting aspect then became the second half of the Grand Prix. It was here that the difference between El Diablo and the Doctor was amplified exponentially. From the twelfth lap, Fabio became a full-fledged war machine, so that he constantly drove in the low 1m55s. Among other things, the last five laps were impressive, in which the Frenchman seemed to start a qualifying with times of 1: 55.1 minutes. This is something Valentino didn’t do as he had to absorb a gap of nearly eight to nine tenths per lap from the winner of the GP without being able to make it up, let alone cut it in half.
The Spaniard turned to Vinales’ performance instead and was quite in tune with his teammate for the first part of the race. including accomplishing three laps under 1: 55 minutes, the best in 1: 54.832 seconds. Unfortunately the music changed in the second phase as it turned out that Top Gun was fluctuating and the performances ranged between low and high 1m55s. That weighed on his ambitions to fight for victory like boulders until he was more than two seconds behind his teammate at the checkered flag.
To end the Yamaha theme, let’s take a look at Franco Morbidelli’s race, who crossed the finish line in 12th place less than six seconds from the finish line. What is there to say about the Petronas driver’s race? In contrast to Valentino, the Italian-Brazilian was at least able to comfort himself by setting his fastest lap in 1: 54.992 minutesand manages to fall below 1: 55s.
Other than that, Franco Morbidelli’s race was a defensive race where the exact goal was to get into the top ten. The runner-up in the World Championship managed to drive with a low time of 1: 55 minutes in the first 10 laps, but then his pace began to slow down. In the second phase of the race he reached the high mark of 1: 55 minutes, after which he was only able to drive under 1: 55.5 seconds on the twelfth lap. However, this was an illusion, as his pace then tended to increase and even reached the last lap over 1: 56 minutes.
That’s what the Doha GP told us. Now we just have to wait for Portimao, confident for an answer from Petronas …
Ah … one last thing. The week before in Losail, Maverick Vinales won using the strategy that Fabio Quartararo reused the following Sunday. When Maverick triumphed seven days earlier, the track was slower due to the strong wind and the timesheets from lap to lap are proof of that. so much so that it stayed at the medium-high mark of 1:55.
Also interesting is the renegade aspect associated with the group of chasing drivers. While Quartararo drove the last six laps like a qualifying with times of 1: 55.1 minutes, Vinales was able to increase his performance so much that he reached 1: 55 seconds and then exceeded 1: 56 seconds.
With the contribution of Andrea Rossi for the graphic.