To be honest, the start of the 2022 season is not plagued by races to remember in MotoGP. It could be said that the most entertaining was Austin’s, for the comeback that led him to Marc Márquez from last position to sixth, gaining 18 positions, and also with a great comeback from Alex Rins and passed to Jack Miller in the penultimate corner of the last lap to make second. Marc himself has already been against on occasion the technological advances that hinder the possibilities of overtaking, especially the dynamic rear holeshot, according to Repsol Honda, and his teammate Pol Espargaró makes a statement at Mugello against excessive technology, the one that cannot be applied to street bikes and the one that worsens the show on the track.
“It’s hard to say which is the component that creates the most spectacle and to stop trying to make the bikes faster and faster and make them more fun, which is the interesting thing and not that the factories say they are one second faster than last year. The good thing is that people at home say that they liked the race more than the previous year, not that it was 20 seconds faster”, begins by saying Pol before expanding:
“We would have to look more for the spectacle than for the evolution. It is clear that the factories use many of the components that we use here to make the fastest and safest bikes on the market, but there are many of the components that are never going to be used on the street, because they do not make much sense, like all the aerodynamic package. That on the street makes no sense. We are trying to reduce the number of deaths on the road, putting in more safety systems, with traction controls that we developed here or the airbags, but then we develop aerodynamic systems that allow us to accelerate earlier and reach the end of the straight with more power. It doesn’t make much sense and that also affects the show, because it’s getting harder and harder for us to overtake. In the last two races, I have been behind the KTMs and it has been impossible for me to overtake them, even though I was faster. It would be nice to start with biofuel, which makes motorcycles a little slower and this helps climate change and the sustainability of the planet. Or have some system to make it easier to overtake the driver in front. I don’t know, thinking about things that could lower the performance of the bikes a bit. That would make things even. Now Ducati is way above the other factories when it comes to aerodynamics and accessories that help the bikes to be fast. The more time passes, I have the feeling that the Japanese brands are lagging further behind and the European ones are advancing, especially in these accessories and in the gray areas, where the Europeans are better than the Japanese at interpreting them. Everything has been too complicated and complex in recent years. If a factory wants to enter the championship right now, with all the accessories there are, front, rear, stems, electronics, aerodynamic packages… You have to be very brave to do it”.
Granollers has his speech argued and, when AS asks him if he would say the same if his bike was the reference on the grid, he says: “I’m not saying that the Ducati guys are faster than us because they use that, no. He’s going for another side. What I am saying is that what we are developing here, whether it is Ducati or Honda, because Honda is also constantly developing, what does it translate to in the market. It is good to be much faster than last year and that the Ducati is faster . They are smarter than the others and that leads them to win races. That is how it is and it is the competition, and I am not complaining about that, far from it, but about how we approach what is developed and what is later taken to the street. I think it is interesting and that it can favor the show more, because we are seeing that F1, with the DRS, can be overtaken more and the races are more fun. Maybe we have to look for similar systems to be able to make MotoGP a slightly more fun championship”.
What this newspaper replied to him was that F1 DRS overtaking is not about driving and that they are almost always lacking in emotion, because it is a technological issue that makes it very difficult to defend the driver who is going to be overtaken. About that, the #41 believes the following: “We agree, but there are more overtaking than before. It’s an advance. We have to try to make the races a little more fun and the only way is for there to be more overtaking. okay, right? F1 wants to make the races more fun and puts the DRS so that there are more overtaking, because it is a step. For me that is not enough, it is obvious, and I find motorcycle racing much more fun, much more, but we are seeing the F1 circuits bursting, with what so boring their careers are not. There is more show than there was. We have to turn this around.”
And one last note about the rise in interest in F1 was to tell Pol that last year’s rivalry between Hamilton and Verstappen helped a lot there, to which he finished: “And the Netflix series also helped.”