Indian MotoGP: ‘When Bezzecchi is so comfortable with the bike he can ride like hell!’

From there, no one even saw which way he went. He was in a different race from everyone else: eight seconds in front at the chequered flag. That should hardly be possible in what is now MotoGP’s physically toughest event.

Delhi’s furnace-like weather — 33 degrees Celsius plus 65% humidity feels like 42 degrees Celsius — had riders suffering in hell aboard their burning-hot motorcycles: burnt throats, burnt arms and burnt legs.

Except Bezzecchi, who was his usual ebullient self in parc fermé, while Martin collapsed in pitlane, after winning a vicious last-lap fight for second with Fabio Quartararo.

“When Marco came in I was sweating more than him!” beamed Bezzecchi’s crew chief Matteo Flamigni, who used to be Valentino Rossi’s data engineer, working with Jeremy Burgess, so he’s inherited much of JB’s pragmatic, phlegmatic approach to the job.

“We saw already something similar in Argentina and Le Mans [where Bezzecchi won his first MotoGP races, also in runaway style], so it looks like when he’s so comfortable with the bike he can ride like hell! It’s unbelievable, even for me.”

No doubt, Bezzecchi felt at one with his GP22 at Buddh, so he was in the zone, riding via his subconscious. And when you’re there, in the flow, riding feels effortless, almost like a greater force is doing the work for you.

“I didn’t expect to win by eight seconds, I don’t know what happened,” said the 24-year-old. “To win is always beautiful, even by one-thousandth, but by eight seconds is even better, so I can’t complain.” Typical Rossi-style understatement.

Bezzecchi, whether he likes it or not, has been adopted by MotoGP fans as the new Rossi. It’s almost like his mentor has made his prodigy in his own image: super-laid back, a bit of a hippy and firing off jokes here, there, everywhere. And he rides with an artful grace. Just like Rossi, he’s a poet of the racing line.

When a local journalist asked Bezzecchi what he thinks when people compare him to the nine time world champion, he grinned and replied, “That I wish I was him!”.

Bezzecchi’s third win of 2023 brings him within fighting distance of the world championship lead, after VR46 team-mate Bagnaia tripped up again and crashed out of second place. It was the third time this year the reigning world champ has crashed out of a grand prix.

The 26-year-old DNF’d five races last season and still won the title, but he wasn’t battling with two fellow Ducati riders, Bezzecchi and Martin, who now have huge momentum behind them.

Bagnaia had the strangest weekend. His factory Desmosedici seemed like a different motorcycle, throwing shapes whenever he had the hammer down. During Friday its rear end hopped around like crazy every time he nailed the brakes.

No worries, everyone thought, the factory will get that sorted double quick. No one has more data than Ducati and no one else has special software than can run hundreds and thousands of highly accurate computer simulations to try out different set-up solutions.

And yet Bagnaia’s rear-end hop persisted into Saturday and Sunday. When he finally fell, soon after passing Martin for second, his bike’s rear end chattered horrendously into Turn 5, which threw too much load onto the front tyre and down he went. The rear hopping was contributing to so much front-tyre locking that the champion was one of only two riders to run the hard front, which may have contributed to his demise.

Like pretty much everyone in MotoGP, Bagnaia now brakes a bit sideways, kicking out his Michelin rear slick, to better use its massive grip to help stop the bike as quickly as possible.

“I was sliding [the rear] and normally I’m able to manage that, but this weekend as soon the rear came back [inline] it overloaded the front,” he explained.

This problem is a real worry for Bagnaia, because it started at Misano two weeks earlier. He noticed it there, but because he was struggling with his Catalan GP leg injury, he thought the issue might be him, not the bike.

Also, braking has always been Bagnaia’s killer talent: smashing the brakes and stopping the bike in a shorter distance than anyone means you can out-brake rivals and still make the apex. It also makes you almost impossible to overtake. That’s basically how he won last year’s title.

“Braking always used to be my strongest point, but right now it’s my weak point, because I can’t stop the bike,” he added yesterday. “The rear is shaking a lot and we don’t understand why.”

Last month Bagnaia left the Red Bull Ring with a 62-point advantage over Martin. In the space of three weekends that gap has shrunk to 13 points, with Bezzecchi another 31 back, with 266 points still to play for.

While Bagnaia did the walk of shame back to pitlane — helmet on, shoulders bowed — Bezzecchi was already in a world of his own, five seconds ahead of the pack.

After Martin won Saturday’s sprint race, from Bagnaia and Marc Marquez, he proclaimed, “I am the best Jorge Martin I’ve been. At Misano I think I made a big step with my riding style — in braking — so hopefully I can keep improving”.

Bagnaia, sat nearby in the media centre, overheard this comment and said, “I hope not!”.

Perhaps Martin’s comments regarding his improved braking also explain Bagnaia’s braking issues: the ante has been raised and maybe the champ needs to catch up?

Martin’s ride to second was unreal, although obviously not as remarkable as the winner’s. The big mystery was why he suffered so much in the heat, because he’s certainly no less fit than his rivals.

The answer is simple. Martin was the only rider to race with the medium rear slick, while everyone else ran the soft. The 25-year-old Spaniard made the choice because the tyre gave him more stability on the throttle, but it definitely wasn’t the right choice for the race. The harder tyre gave him less grip, so he had to fight with the bike to turn with the gas and all that wrestling wore him out.

No doubt it was a superhuman effort just to reach the chequered flag and Martin was certainly the rider who benefitted most from the race being shortened to 21 laps due to the vicious heat. On his return to the pitlane he collapsed outside his Pramac garage and the podium ceremony had to be delayed while he received medical attention.

And mystery upon mystery, what happened to his leathers, which became unzipped during the latter stages of the race? Martin was in such a mess afterwards that he missed his media debriefs, so we weren’t able to quiz him. We got a two-minute tape from his team, which didn’t mention the zip issue.

There were multiple theories and, of course, conspiracy theories. Alpinestars reinforced its zip system after Quartararo’s leathers came undone during the 2021 Catalan GP. So did Martin’s zip unzip itself, or did he unzip it? Because he was so dehydrated he was struggling to think straight, which isn’t ideal when you’re riding a 300-horsepower motorcycle.

Rules introduced since Quartararo’s mishap demand leathers to be fully secured at all times, so Martin risked a penalty if he continued with the zip undone. With four laps remaining he wised up and zipped up. Some say, because he saw himself undone on a trackside TV, others because his team sent him a dash message, saying “equipment”.

Whatever, doing up his zip cost Martin almost a second. One moment Quartararo — riding his Yamaha M1 way faster than it wanted to go — was 1.6 seconds behind, the next he was seven-tenths down and smelling blood.

Somehow Martin widened the gap again, until the final lap. The human brain runs hotter than the body and Martin’s must’ve been boiling as he rode down the 216mph straight for the final time. Braking into the Turn 4 hairpin he went so wide he nearly ended up in the Delhi suburbs. Quartararo immediately pounced and was past at the next corner.

Most pro-riders would’ve waved the white flag at that point. With his brain on fire and Bagnaia out, 16 points for third place would’ve been just fine, right? But the Martinator is no normal human. He came back at Quartararo with arguably the best pass of the season, mercilessly picking up the Frenchman and squeezing past into the Turn 6 right. The 2021 champ had lost speed because he had no grip exiting the preceding left.

This was a ride of a champion: someone who’s prepared to walk the line for an extra four points, even when they’re physically and mentally destroyed.

Quartararo’s and Yamaha’s best result since third at COTA was immense. He knew he had a chance at Buddh, so he laid everything on the line, which he hadn’t done at some other tracks, where he knew he had no chance.

“We have to be clever to take these opportunities,” he said. “But even at this track we lost a lot of time on acceleration, top speed and grip, so we had to work hard to fight with these guys.”

Quartararo’s speed coincided with super-fast rides from Repsol Honda duo Marquez and Joan Mir.

Marquez crashed while overriding his RC213V, trying to stay with the three leading Ducatis. Meanwhile Mir battled with Brad Binder, eventually finishing just behind the KTM man in fifth, who was being cooked, like everyone else.

“My bike was burning me everywhere – my feet are burnt, my arms are burnt and the inside of my legs were cooking,” said Binder.

Incredibly, Buddh was the first time there have been two Japanese bikes in the top five since COTA!

Why was this, especially since the Honda usually hates the stiffer, heat-resistant rear-tyre carcass used at Buddh, Buriram and Red Bull Ring?

Possibly the biggest factor was the new and very challenging circuit. The most talented riders usually unlock the secrets of new layouts quickest, so it was no great surprise that the three former MotoGP kings were on a good level at Buddh. Both Repsol riders started from the second row for the first time this year and that means everything in modern-day MotoGP.

“For sure we made a big step in the Misano tests,” said Mir, after scoring his first Sunday points since March! “I did a lot of laps, so I could understand this bike more – how to understand the good lines and how to be fast with this bike. This was crucial.

“When I was behind Fabio I had a problem in the second part of the race — a big vibration from the rear tyre and I was spinning more and more. Honestly, I think we could have been close to Jorge and Fabio otherwise.”

Marquez — who remounted after his fall and came back from 16th to ninth, with the fifth fastest lap of the race behind Bezzecchi, Bagnaia, Quartararo and Martin — had his own theory.

“This track is very similar to Austin,” said the seven-time COTA winner. “There’s a lot of stop-and-go corners and in the accelerations you need to do a quick pick-up, you don’t need to accelerate with a lot of lean angle, which is our weak point, especially at tracks like Barcelona, where we struggle most. Here our bike worked very well — similar to the best bikes.”

Motegi will be different of course. Judging by Miller’s runway 2022 victory, it will be another Ducati walkover and who knows which way the championship pendulum will swing between Bagnaia, Martin and Bezzecchi?