Why MotoGP’s top gun looks more dangerous at the Doha GP

MotoGP remains in Qatar for a second week for the inaugural Doha Grand Prix due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been shut to fans this time around due to the virus in an all too familiar turn of deja vu.

As much as we want things to be different to 2020, it’s still not the reality unfortunately. But what has definitely been strange about MotoGP’s time in Qatar is the fact that Maverick Vinales came into the opening round looking like one of the favourites, having talked up the 2021 Yamaha in pre-season, and actually delivered on all of that in emphatic fashion last Sunday.

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If last Sunday’s result seemed a little familiar, it’s because Vinales was in similarly superb form four years ago when he won on his Yamaha debut in 2017 at Losail. And now he goes forward into the Doha GP looking for his own touch of deja vu by winning back-to-back races for the first time since the start of the 2017 campaign.

Vinales’ form last Sunday may not have been a surprise relative to the race pace he displayed in practice. But what did catch everyone off-guard was how he managed the race. He got a good start (even if he dropped from second to sixth courtesy of four rapid Ducatis), he found the confidence in the front end he spent so much of 2020 searching for, and he had no grip issues riding on top of the Dunlop rubber laid down by the preceding Moto2 race.

And having focused on specific places on track to be strong, chiefly Turn 10 – where he did all of his overtaking – Vinales kept his rear tyre in check while the Ducatis around him, as well as his Yamaha stablemates, all hit trouble in the latter stages.

But with Vinales, trying to predict if lightning will strike twice has been difficult for several years. Take Misano last year. Having taken command in qualifying, he slumped to sixth in the race, his pace anonymous. A week later he was on top of the rostrum having won the Emilia Romagna GP. For someone of such immense talent, his tendency for his form to go wayward has cast him as a frustrating enigma.

Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

And if you look purely at the lap times from Friday’s practices for the Doha GP, it would be easy to think that Vinales has reverted to form. He finished FP2 0.727 seconds off of Ducati’s Jack Miller, crucially he is in the Q2 spots as improvements on the combined times for those outside of the top 10 – which most notably includes world champion Joan Mir – are unlikely in the hot daytime conditions of FP3.

“When I went to do the time attack, [it was] with two pre-heated tyres, so I didn’t have the grip I expected,” Vinales said of his lacklustre lap in FP2. “We slid a lot, so actually I think our problem was this. But luckily, we were able to go to Q2, because when I saw I didn’t have the feeling, I was slipping a lot, I say ‘oof, it will be difficult to go into Q2’. But we made it, and fantastic.”

Every rider has pre-heated tyres in their allocations from last week. These tyres are new options, but because of the heat cycle they’ve been through they don’t have the same grip as a ‘normal’ fresh slick. Vinales was affected by this, as was Honda’s Pol Espargaro – who didn’t feel comfortable on his final lap having switched away to the proper tyre – in 17th and Mir down in 13th, who was left with only one chance on his normal tyre due to a strategy gaffe by Suzuki.

But the fact Vinales was still able to get through to Q2 despite struggling with a lack of rear grip, which is a common woe of Yamaha riders, is encouraging as it proves the front feeling he had from last week’s Qatar GP remains.

“I think we have good potential to fight for the race. For sure anything can happen, maybe tomorrow something strange and nothing works. But I think we are working well. We know we need to work very hard to be on the front row" Maverick Vinales

“I felt an amazing feeling with the front tyre [last week] and still I have that, so I can turn the bike quite well, which is always nice,” he replied to Autosport when asked what was giving him his confidence on Friday.

The race option last Sunday for everyone was the soft front and rear tyre. Vinales elected to do some running on the medium rear in FP2, and this is where the rest of the grid needs to be wary. Starting FP2 with a fresh medium rear, the Yamaha rider put in a seven-lap run – five of which were between 1m54.420s and 1m54.550s. His race pace last Sunday was mostly low-mid 1m55s with a couple of 1m54s thrown in.

So, essentially, Vinales looks like he’s able to turn on the form which carried him to victory last time out at will. And what’s more, he isn’t going to race that medium option – meaning he has more in the tank.

Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

"Actually, I felt really good on track," he explained. "Honestly FP1, then in FP2 with the medium tyre I felt fantastic. We could ride quite fast in 1m54s medium, 1m54s low, which is an amazing pace. I didn’t expect to go that fast with the medium. I’m really happy because the feeling was not bad, but in another hand with the normal medium tyre I got a really good feeling on the bike and this is good because the soft is better than the medium, basically.

"I think the soft has much more potential than the medium. Much more. Plus we didn’t have the best performance today on track, also the track I feel with a good feeling, good grip. Not low grip honestly, quite good."

A lot of riders – including team-mate Fabio Quartararo – felt the grip on Friday was the worst it’s been since the paddock rocked up to Qatar earlier this month for testing. Low grip scenarios in recent years has been where the Yamaha has faltered, but Vinales currently he doesn’t have the same issues as the rest.

“Hopefully tomorrow we will have better conditions and we can be a bit faster because today I was not feeling so great,” Quartararo, who was fourth on Friday, said. “In general the condition was not good but we are struggling so much to stop the bike, I had a lot of chatter, totally different conditions and hopefully tomorrow we will have better grip to reach great lap times. My bike is exactly the same as Sunday so it is just the conditions that change.”

Quartararo also tried the medium rear in FP2 but “didn’t like it” and his pace reflected that, the Frenchman only managing three high 1m54s. As is typical on Friday’s in Qatar, we weren’t left with too many long runs to pore over. But Suzuki’s Alex Rins in eighth put in a series of solid 1m55.0s in a seven-lap run with a soft rear already bedded in by four tours. A 1m54.702s from team-mate Mir on a nine-lap old soft is an encouraging sign his pace from last Sunday hasn’t deserted him, even if the GSX-RR remains for him a bike lacking in qualifying trim.

The wind is set to pick up again from tomorrow, with the desert gusts proving something of an issue for Ducati during the race as a headwind meant it couldn’t unleash the full fury of its Desmosedicis. But what will be key for Ducati is tyre durability after all of its protagonists hit trouble with grip in the closing stages of the Qatar GP, despite the pace in the race not being terribly dramatic.

Saturday’s FP4 session will be an extremely telling 30 minutes of track action as the field puts in some proper race preparation. But already it looks like they’ll have to dig deeper into their bag of tricks to produce something that can throw Vinales off his game.

Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The Yamaha rider is keeping his feet on the ground despite his excellent Friday showing in slightly tricky conditions, noting: “I think we have good potential to fight for the race. For sure anything can happen, maybe tomorrow something strange and nothing works. But I think we are working well. We know we need to work very hard to be on the front row, this is the most important thing for tomorrow. And after that we’re going to concentrate on racing. So, basically we’re going to be smart to work better for the race, try to improve the start.”

In the pre-season Yamaha boss Massimo Meregalli said sometimes it felt like he believed Vinales more than himself. Yamaha has worked hard to cultivate a surrounding for Vinales to flourish, while its engineers back in Japan look to have given him a solid package – which he has used to devastating effect so far courtesy of his own change in approach, giving the bike what it needs to be quick and not constantly looking for what he needs to be fast.

The Vinales that heads into the Doha GP looks like the ace who swept the memory of Jorge Lorenzo under Yamaha’s rug at the start of 2017. But in reality, he appears to be even stronger.

Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images