Catalan MotoGP: Fairytales do come true

“I used to come here to watch in the 1990s to cheer the 500 heroes and here I am now, on top of the world,” said the 34-year-old veteran after winning Sunday’s grand prix, which ended with a truly ‘awwwww’ moment when his twin children Max and Mia presented him with the winner’s trophy atop the podium.

The dedicated family man’s current speed disproves several racing maxims: you get slower when you’re older, you get slower when you have children and you get slower when you’re in love. For this last reason it’s not unknown for MotoGP rider managers to ban their young wealth generators from having girlfriends, “because being in love makes you lose seconds”.

Espargaró’s Aprilia team was similarly overwhelmed after making its own little bit of history on Sunday. Catalunya was the Noale factory’s first double victory of MotoGP’s new age – Espargaró winning both Saturday and Sunday races – and also its first-ever premier-class one-two (Espargaró ahead of team-mate Maverick Viñales), after almost three decades of trying.

Of course, Aprilia used to be the kings of the smaller classes, when two-strokes were still ringa-dinga-dinging around GP circuits. The factory won 294 125cc and 250cc GPs between 1987 and 2011, helped by Dutch chief engineer Jan Witteveen and a clever young local called Gigi Dall’Igna. But a one-two in the premier class is next level.

Espargaró has been with Aprilia since 2017, riding the RS-GP when it was little more than a sick frog, incapable of even getting within a sniff of the podium prosecco party.

And luckily he stayed with the factory when the bike was transformed into a fine princess in 2020, thanks to a crucial change of engine configuration. The RS-GP got better still in 2021 with superb new aerodynamics and since then the Noale engineers have working on all the details to get better and better.

“Changing the angle of the vee completely changed the bike – it was easier to ride, the throttle connection was clean and there was no vibration,” explained Espargaró. “Also, with the old bike we worked a lot with the chassis, but all the problems came from the engine.

“There was always a lot of vibration, which gave a lot of chatter and made the bike super-nervous on the brakes. You had to be super-precise, so in the wet it was a nightmare. From 2017 to 2019 we made no f**king progress at all.”

Now the RS-GP is as good as Ducati’s dominant Desmosedici at some tracks and better than the big red Duke at others, like Catalunya, where Espargaró and Viñales were in control from Friday morning.

Catalunya is fast and flowing, like Silverstone, where Espargaró won last month and Termas de Rio Honda, where he and the RS-GP won for the first time last year.

Somehow the RS-GP isn’t like MotoGP’s other V4s, the Ducati, Honda and KTM, which are point-and-squirt bikes. Somehow the RS-GP has some inline-four character to it, so it flows through corners and can use more corner speed than its current rivals, the Ducati and KTM.

Of course, Aprilia engineers aren’t going to tell us how they make this happen but one of them told me the secret is hidden somewhere in the steering head area and is something they learned from their RS250 GP bike, which won twenty riders’ and constructors’ world titles between 1994 and 2009.

Perhaps it’s a flex thing, so the frame twists laterally through the corners to give the chassis some self-steering “banana effect”, as Moto2 dominators Kalex like to call it.

Whatever the secret the RS-GP worked superbly at Catalunya, where the bike’s superior corner speed also helped to look after its rear tyre, at a track which murders tyres.

The concept is simple and is one of the tricks that helped inline-fours like Yamaha’s YZR-M1 win so many races and titles, until they were overpowered by the V4s that now utterly dominate MotoGP.

If you can carry more speed through the middle of the corner you will carry more speed out of the corner, so you don’t need to open the throttle so aggressively and so early to get decent exit speed onto the next straight. This gives the side of the tyres an easier time, which saves grip for the all-important last few laps.

This is more important than ever now, because with MotoGP’s limited spec-ECU traction control and Michelin tyres it’s crucial not to let the tyre start spinning on its side, because once it starts spinning it’s difficult to stop it spinning, which loses you lots of drive and time. And if you turn up the traction control to try and help, the TC will make you slower, because it reduces torque delivery to the rear tyre.

“Actually we create the advantage before the exit,” said Espargaró at Catalunya. “The Aprilia is the best bike on the grid when you release the front brake and rush to the apex, so the consequence of this is that we accelerate better because we are fix, six, seven, eight kph (up to 5mph) faster at the apex. This also helps us with the traction.

“When you don’t have to stop the bike to zero, like in Austria [at Red Bull Ring], you can release the front bike and it’s amazing how fast you can throw this bike into the corner when you’re at 65 degrees. This is the strongest part of our bike.”

There are other reasons the RS-GP finds so much grip, which is ultimately what motor sport is all about. The bike’s downforce aerodynamics are so good that Ducati – which started this whole game – now copies Aprilia in some of its own aero details.

The subtle RS-GP fairing upgrade introduced at Silverstone seemed to give the bike a perfect centre of pressure, which is now as important as the centre of mass, which improves corner-exit traction, which allowed Espargaró to beat Pecco Bagnaia on the last lap of the British GP.

“I said in a meeting with my engineers, ‘Thank you very much, because it’s a pleasure to ride this bike’,” he added on Friday. “It’s my dream bike and at this type of track I enjoy it a lot.”

Team-mate Viñales also enjoyed the RS-GP, but he couldn’t match Espargaró’s speed and aggression. The former Moto3 world champ led 19 of Sunday’s 23 laps, while Espargaró fought his way past third-placed Jorge Martin to creep up on Viñales, finally taking the lead with a hard move on his team-mate at Turn 1.

“Should be a penalty… only joking!” laughed Viñales, who became the first rider to fall foul of MotoGP’s new tyre-pressure regulations on Sunday, with his front tyre under pressure. However, because this is a new rule, riders only get a warning for a first offence. The sanction will be increased to three, six and 12-second penalties for subsequent breaches.

Never mind tyre pressures, Viñales had his best-ever weekend on the RS-GP, second in the GP and third in the sprint race, because however hard he tried he didn’t have what it took to pass Ducati’s championship leader Pecco Bagnaia in the sprint race.

The important thing is that Viñales made two great starts (Aprilia now has an engineering group dedicated solely to the RS-GP’s clutch, because a good start in MotoGP is now 100% vital) and he didn’t get duffed up in the early laps, finally banishing the weaknesses that have spoiled his last few seasons. Maybe Viñales is a new man? We will find out this weekend at Misano.

Pecco Bagnaia’s crash

Bagnaia looks likely to race at Misano despite his horrific highside crash exiting the second corner at the start of the GP. (MotoGP’s traction-control system includes anti-spin but not anti-slip.)

The 26-year-old had warned of the dangers of the track surface on Friday. “This track has been over the limit for two or three years – it’s very slippery, bit dangerous,” he said.

Bagnaia’s crash was bad enough, but the factory Ducati man fell when he was leading, so he had the entire pack bearing down upon him. It was a miracle he got away with Brad Binder only running over his lower legs and it was a miracle that neither leg was broken.

And it was lucky that the reigning champ had already built a 62-point championship lead, only reduced by 12 points at Catalunya, by Pramac Ducati’s Martin. Double-winner Espargaró now stands fifth overall, 154 points adrift of Bagnaia, after some DNFs, ill-luck and poor results earlier in the season.

By the way, Espargaró had no doubt that he could’ve beaten Bagnaia on Sunday. After all, he had beaten him on Saturday, after out-braking a rider/bike combination that is almost impossible to out-brake.

Martin may be 50 points behind Bagnaia but there are still 333 points up for grabs at the last nine rounds. If the 25-year-old Pramac man can add some consistency to his speed he may just give Bagnaia a few sleepless nights before the end of November.