The Aprilia Cup
First Jorge Martin, second Marco Bezzecchi and third Ai Ogura: the MotoGP class French Grand Prix at Le Mans turned into a family affair among the Aprilias. Martin came out on top after a beautiful comeback that allowed him to get to just 1 point behind Bezzecchi in the world championship standings. Fourth Di Giannantonio on Ducati, fifth Pedro Acosta on KTM. Disappointment for Bagnaia, who crashed on the 16th lap when he was in second place.
Martin, the victory killer
The superiority of Aprilia was clearly shown in T2 and T3 of Le Mans, sectors that respectively favor cornering and braking and entry. The central and guided part therefore rewarded the Noale factory, with a Jorge Martin good at keeping calm and gradually recovering positions until the decisive overtake on Bezzecchi on the 24th lap.
For half the race the Aprilia rider basically relied on consistency and pace control, without overheating the tires. Once free of Acosta, Martin was able to push and took and passed Bezzecchi, with a surgical overtake at the most technical point of the first sector.
The coldness and race tactics rewarded Martin, who had this Aprilia more under control than Bezzecchi.
Bezzecchi tries to resist, but does his best
Marco Bezzecchi was the only one to consistently go under 1’35 in the first ten laps, exploiting the peak performance of the rear tire to ride above the problems. Gradually the rider from Rimini began to lose ground, especially in T3 – a sector characterized by heavy braking. Unlike Martin, Bezzecchi’s times in that part of the track began to fluctuate, pushing the Italian to force the corner entry to recover what he was losing in acceleration, ending up overheating the front tire. A sign of an imperfect setup. Between the 17th and 19th lap he tried to respond to Martin’s times to keep him behind, in vain. Having lost the fight with his teammate, in the last two laps Bezzecchi had to defend himself from Ai Ogura, half a second faster, managing to just hold on: with one more lap even second place would have been in danger.
Pecco falls at the best moment
Crash instead for Pecco Bagnaia, while he was trying to close the gap to Bezzecchi and had to defend himself from Acosta. On the fifth lap the Italian set the fastest lap of the race (1’31.164), then showing a very consistent pace between the 9th and 14th lap – in which the times stabilized within just over a tenth –, a sign of marked race pace management. Particularly good was T4, where Bagnaia’s Ducati exploited the power exiting the last chicane.
The crash on the 16th lap however wrecked Pecco’s hopes of victory and a podium and probably shelved his world championship ambitions (now he is 86 points behind Bezzecchi).
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