The Suzuki star had an excellent chance of adding to his memorable 2019 Silverstone win as he continued at the head of the field up to and past the midway stage of the 20 laps.
But despite running the hardest rear tire compound, Rins began to suffer unexpected grip issues and couldn’t hide his disappointment after slipping all the way back to seventh place (albeit just +3.021s) at the finish.
“I was destroyed,” admitted to downbeat Rins. “Not because of the [physical effort] on my body, but because I gave it my maximum today.
“When I was in P1, I was riding so smooth, controlling the throttle and the rear slide, but at a certain point in the race I was struggling a lot to keep the rear traction.
“I don’t know why, we need to check with Michelin, because it was not normal. I was suffering a lot to keep a 2’00 lap time. In the last 5 or 6 laps, I was riding in 2’01.”
“It was frustrating, because I did a really good start,” the Spaniard added. “When I was up there in third, then second, I said to myself, ‘wow Alex, you’re riding so smooth!’ Then I overtook Pecco for first… but after the tire [performance] went down so fast, and I was a little bit in a panic, because I was struggling to hold the position.
“Usually, we are the ones that take care of the tire a lot and in the race we have a good margin. But I don’t know what happened.
“When Miller overtook me [for second], I was already struggling to follow him. And then lap by lap, it was even worse until the end.”
Team manager Livio Suppo also thought Rins was on course for Suzuki’s first win since 2020, until the grip issue struck.
“When he was leading, we really thought he’d be able to win, because he looked very comfortable and smooth,” Suppo said. “Unfortunately, he then started to lose grip on the rear tire.
“This is something we have to analyze with Michelin – we have seen the data but we need to understand why this happened. “
Rins’ team-mate Joan Mir didn’t even reach the checkered flag, crashing out of seventh place in the closing stages after losing the front.
“The temperatures were higher than the previous days and maybe being behind the group for a lot of laps meant I overheated the front more than I wanted,” he said. “I think the crash was due to this problem.
“I was trying to manage and take a bit of fresh air, but it was difficult. Especially because I was there in the group.
“I think that we could have gone forward a bit in the next laps, because I was feeling fine, but we’ll never know.”
Mir, yet to confirm his future but expected to join Repsol Honda, has now dropped to twelfth in the world championship, with future LCR Honda rider Rins in eighth.
With a Long Lap penalty from Assen for world champion and title leader Fabio Quartararo, the British MotoGP was always going to be unpredictable – and didn’t disappoint.
Four different riders took turns in the lead, with a continuous stream of overtakes throughout the field and the podium places ultimately covered by just 0.6s at the checkered flag.
But the thrilling race was witnessed by just 41,002 trackside fans, down from 67,000 last year and a fraction of the sell-out 142,000 spectators for last month’s Silverstone F1 race.
So why the drop?
“I know Silverstone, they’ve got great road infrastructure and it’s really well organised. But to drive straight in at 8am on a Sunday seemed odd to start with,” said former British champion and Grand Prix rider Huewen.
“41,000 is half of what it should have been, considering the package that was being put forward. We had three fantastic races. OK, we’re not to know that in advance, but we also had the best weather consistently through the week I’ve seen for a British Grand Prix. Everybody knew it was going to be beautiful weather.
“Now there are some things that you could argue… £90.00 for a ticket on Sunday. 30 odd quid for a car park on top of that. It is expensive. But you’re talking about seeing the world’s best in Britain for MotoGP.
“It was free on television, the first time ITV had got it as free to air. Obviously, BT were airing it as well, so their figures will have been down. Maybe trackside figures are down again because of ITV.
“But most people that follow bikes – and there are more than 41,000 of them – know that being trackside is the best atmosphere. To see a motorcycle on a track. You can’t replicate that on TV.
“You can have as many bounding presenters and well-known people walking through the camera as you like. But you’re never going to better, in my case, making the short walk to the end of the paddock and just standing on the inside of Copse corner to watch every class.
“It was just fantastic. I’m sitting here and the hair on my arms is going up thinking about it.
“I think Silverstone did a fantastic job. I really do and they really seem to care. In the past I was screaming from the rooftops that they don’t care. It’s all about Formula One. Nobody in the BRDC gives a flying wotsit about motorbikes.
“It was genuinely that way but it isn’t anymore. The BRDC suite is full of famous car race names and bike people from the past and they really care about what’s going on…
“[The attendance was] very disappointing. Especially off the back of a fantastic Formula One Grand Prix. And off the back of the pandemic. This is the first time [since then] that it’s really been a fully open do-what-you-like MotoGP in Britain.
“I can’t imagine why people didn’t go, but I’ve got a few ideas about how we can make it better.”
Before giving those ideas, Podcast host Harry Benjamin, also working on site at Silverstone this weekend, asked crash.net MotoGP editor Pete McLaren if factors such as the absence of Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, the cost-of-living crisis and being so close to the F1 event could have been to blame.
“It could be all of those things Harry and also, did people go to Donington Park for the World Superbike round instead? Costs are lower, there’s great racing between the top three in WorldSBK and a lot of British riders at the front, so did fans make a call on WorldSBK over MotoGP this year?
“We’ve had this same discussion about attendance at some other rounds, especially Mugello, and ticket prices – plus in this case parking prices – always seem to be a major factor.
“But it was still a surprise when the official figure came out on Sunday. It was 33,000 on Saturday so to rise by only 8,000 for race day was unusual. Last year it went up from 44,000 to 67,000.”
‘Formula One is propping us up’
Returning to Huewen, Benjamin asked: “So how do we solve this problem? What’s the plan?
“You can’t just solve it overnight,” Huewen replied. “If I’d have been Silverstone, I think one of the things that they missed – and I don’t recall seeing anything like this – would have been an exit survey of the people on site.
“The entertainment package after the races, including the Stereo MC’s and Ella Eyre, was pretty spectacular. But when did the fans first hear about the entertainment package? And does that kind of entertainment actually bring in more people?
“I’d want to know whether pricing in Ella Eyre and one or two others was actually good value for money, or whether you’d prefer a fiver off a ticket or whatever?
“Then it comes down to things like the parking costs, but I don’t think you can get over that issue.
“Bear in mind this is a 500-acre motorsport venue that has no government or local authority subsidy at all, whereas many other tracks around the world get some input from other places.
“Silverstone is a stand-alone operation. They have made mistakes in the past that have cost them dear and they are only really recovering from that… If it hadn’t been a good Formula One this year, I would suggest they’d be in trouble again.
“Formula One is propping us up [at Silverstone]! And I hate to say that, but that’s a fact at the moment.”
‘MotoGP needs to be cool again’
“I think we’re missing a fairly major part of the demographic,” Huewen added. “MotoGP needs to be cool again. We need to be that cool sport that everybody wants to be seen at and be part of.
“A bit like Formula One has become since they’ve opened up to social media and so on and so forth, since Liberty took it over.
“We all rail against the idea of having those ‘influencers’ in pitlane. Martin Brundle [F1 driver turned TV pundit] is one of my favorites and whenever he bumps into someone who says they are an influencer, he’s a bit dismissive as I would be in his position as well. Coming across someone you’ve never heard of, got no interest in and are never likely to bump into again.
“But that bloke that you don’t recognize has probably got two million followers, and he’s probably considered to be absolutely cool.
“I met the Gas Monkey guy Richard Rawlings when I was over at the TT. I had no clue who Richard Rollins was, this rather loud American guy, slapping hands with everyone around the TT paddock. But he had a bigger following out there than Peter Hickman.
“We’re missing a trick when we’ve not got people like that trackside.
“But what we really need to be doing is catering just a little bit more to bring in those 14-15-16 year old kids, who force their parents to come to a racetrack – maybe not to watch the racing initially, it’s more to see Ella Eyre or whoever it might be that’s performing on stage.
“But then all of a sudden, the side product becomes the main product, which is motorbike racing.
“Which is cool, which is brilliant and we have got some great young men like Quartararo and Dixon, that all the kids are going to think ‘wow look at those two up on stage, what great personalities they are’.”
‘41,000 people trackside is making a statement’
“There are so many things that I think we can do, but we need to do it in advance. I know how hard all of the guys at Silverstone work, but it seems like the biggest two-wheel event went under the radar this year and I don’t understand that.
“It also really falls at the feet of Dorna. They’ve done a fantastic job of getting the rules right. They’ve made our sport the best it can be. It really is something special. But maybe the emphasis has been so much on the sport that it’s not been on the wider situation.”
“I’ve always said that paddocks should be designed to have big glass areas or fencing or whatever, so fans can see what’s going on inside without physically putting them in the paddock.
“And get rid of those advertising boardings that were blocking some of the views from trackside. That’ll be down to the commercial departments, but with so much CGI now you don’t need to physically put advertising everywhere to have it appear on TV, which is where it really matters.
“41,000 people at trackside is making a statement. It should have been 80,000 minimum. People stayed away for more than one reason and we need to work it out.”
Benjamin concludes by inviting listeners to leave their feedback in the YouTube comments sectiondescribing their experiences this weekend or why they didn’t go to Silverstone.
The trio then move on to the track action itself, which saw Francesco Bagnaia claim his second victory in a row from a charging Maverick Vinales to recover a massive 42-points from Fabio Quartararo’s title lead in just two rounds.
Jack Miller completed the podium on a day when Ducati riders filled four of the top five places, the kind of form that could soon see Bagnaia breathing down the neck of Quartararo and Espargaro.
The Frenchman lost less than 1.5s during his Long Lap penalty but was unable to fight his way forwards and even came under a late attack from Espargaro, bravely riding with foot injuries from a massive Saturday highside.
Moto2 saw victory for Augusto Fernandez, with rookie Alonso Lopez on the podium for Boscoscuro, while Jake Dixon delighted the home fans with third and Rory Skinner made his grand prix debut.
Both of Aspar’s title leaders crashed out of a dramatic Moto3 race, with Dennis Foggia keeping his championship hopes alive by returning to the top spot from Jaume Masia and Deniz Oncu, while John McPhee and Scott Ogden scored solid points.
While there has been plenty of debate over whether MotoGP champion Fabio Quartararo should even have received a Long Lap for the Assen incident with Aleix Espargaro, it is the Silverstone Long Lap layout itself that has now come under fire.
Usually, riders lose around 2.5-3 seconds when they run ‘wide’ to serve the Long Lap. But Quartararo looked to lose far less during his many practice runs through the Silverstone penalty area on Friday.
This weekend’s Long Lap lane is located on the outside of Turn 14, a tight hairpin corner.
Quartararo wouldn’t put a number on exactly how much time he was losing, but the slow nature of the turn, combined with the relatively short length of the loop, meant Espargaro estimated it is only 0.8s.
While the Aprilia star has made clear he does not agree with Quartararo receiving the penalty, given other incidents have gone unpunished this year, he felt it was also inexcusable for MotoGP not to be able to create a consistent Long Lap zone of 2.5-3s at each racetrack.
“It’s a joke. It is not for me to complain about the Long Lap because it looks like I am saying it because my rival has to do the penalty, but it’s a joke. You lose eight tenths! He was trying it today and it was eight tenths,” Espargaro said. “We have to be more professional about this.
“If it’s 3 seconds then it should be 3 seconds everywhere. 2.5s is OK, but eight tenths?! It’s ridiculous.
“But anyway it doesn’t matter. Even if it was 2 seconds Jack [Miller] proved this year you can do the Long Lap penalty and fight for the podium, so imagine Fabio.”
Espargaro added that he fully supports the Long Lap as a way of penalizing riders.
“In the past, if you did a jump start then you had to do a ride-through [the pits] and this was a disaster. Now if you do a Long Lap penalty it is better for the show. It is a good invention, but now we have to be serious with it.
“I don’t think it is that difficult [to get the same time Long Lap time at each track]. Someone can come with a Superbike and try it, if it’s too fast then you tighten it. You can have half a second up or down, but not from 3.1-3.2 like it was in Barcelona to 0.8 here. That’s a huge difference.
“You can see here that it is one meter out of the track and with the same layout. It’s easy!”
For Espargaro, it comes down to consistency once again.
“I have nothing against Fabio. It looks like I’m saying all this because he has to do the Long Lap, but again, what we want is that things are the same: the Long Lap penalty, the penalties in general and how we treat everything.
“Once again, we get to another track and it is different; this is what we need to improve.”
Joan Mir jokes: Maybe you gain time on this Long Lap!
Espargaro wasn’t the only one to highlight the lack of time lost on the Long Lap at Silverstone.
“This Long Lap penalty, maybe you gain a bit of time rather than lose!” joked Suzuki’s Joan Mir. “Okay, for sure you don’t gain time. But it’s not 3 seconds, not at all. Maybe just 1 second.
“It’s a really tight corner, and also it’s really close [to the racing] line. In a slow corner you always lose less time than in a fast corner.
“I think that this can be improved a little bit more, to have more or less than 3 seconds average [at every track].”
A ‘delayed’ Long Lap would also help Quartararo
Aside from the time lost in the Long Lap, the timing of when Quartararo serves the penalty will also determine how many places he loses.
The earlier in the race the ‘Long Lap’ board is shown, after which Quartararo will have two further laps in which serve the penalty, the more positions the Frenchman is likely to concede.
“I will not say a number, but we lose quite a lot [of time],” Quartararo said of his Long Lap practice.
“I also need to make it in the beginning of the race, but I hope I will not make it so much in the beginning because I think it’s quite a dangerous place to get back on the track.
“Of course, it’s also a small advantage for me [to take later]but for the safety, I hope they will not put it straight away from the first lap, but maybe from the second or third lap.”
Other riders serving Long Laps in the early stages of a race have lost around 3-4 positions this year.
Quartararo, last year’s Silverstone winner, was fastest during Friday practice with Espargaro, currently 21 points behind the Yamaha rider, in a close fifth (+0.207s).
The factory Ducati rider lost the front of his machine on entry to Stowe, at the end of the back straight, the scene of several Friday accidents.
“A bit stiff now – from five weeks off, to riding into a wall ain’t great, but the rest is all good!” smiled Miller on Friday evening.
The several scares on the hard rear tire, the Australian had switched back to the medium.
“The medium felt fantastic, but I just got a little trigger happy at the end of the back straight,” Miller explained.
“There was a big cross wind, right as the track sort of goes up and drops off. Where everybody’s crashed. I came in there too fast and was trying to stop it, it wasn’t happening and I fired at the wall. I’m not ideal. I’m feeling pretty tender now!
“But I was able to come back in, swap leathers, get back out on the soft tire and post a decent time so I can’t complain too much. We’re inside the top 10. It’s job one done for the weekend. So now we just got to keep it going into tomorrow.”
Miller confirmed that he will raise the issue of the tire wall during Friday night’s Safety Commission meeting.
“It’s close. I’ll be bringing it up in the Safety Commission,” he said.
“I went into the gravel sliding backwards and I lost all sort of sense of direction of where I was. Then I just sort of went head first into the ground. Sort of bent my wrists back. And then as I flipped over, I hit the wall and then bounced back off the wall.
“So I made it to the wall and the bike was [lying] right next to me.
“I crashed kinda earlyish on the brakes, I saw for example [Darryn] Binder went down and he didn’t quite make it to the wall. But then Zarco did, some of the other guys did.
“So especially if there’s contact or whatever, it’s something that needs to be looked at, I think, in the future. Because yeah, it’s pretty scary.
“I also had a bit of a moment in there this morning and just trying to stop the bike before going in the gravel, even though you’ve got that runoff area, it’s pretty tight.
“Folger had his big moment there and sort of slammed the wall some years ago. I remember that.
“I was lucky…But if the bike’s followed me in it’s going to be a different story. There’s no air bag on it where I hit, so whether or not airbags need to be put around [the tyre wall] a bit further.
“We’ll discuss it this afternoon and try to come up with a solution.
It’s just one of those things. The sport’s getting faster and faster, the tires are getting better and better. That’s how it goes.
“These things can’t be changed immediately. It’s a massive facility and it’s not one of those points that is super dangerous yet. But of course the bikes are going to continue to get faster and the corners are going to continue to get faster.
“So it’s something that we need to look at. A lot of tracks are like that, Barcelona we’ve had discussions. It’s just one of those things.”
Miller finished 0.418s from Friday leader Fabio Quartararo, with Pramac’s Johann Zarco the top Ducati in fourth.
“The bike itself is working pretty decent,” Miller said. “Here you’ve got a lot of hard accelerating points with lean angle and, especially when I threw the soft in, I was having a big issue with the bike sort of pumping and shaking just with the amount of grip you’ve got.
“It cost me quite a bit of time on my best lap. And like I said, I was a bit rough and a bit rusty going back out on the bike, so I didn’t feel that great and then it was bucking and weaving like it was.
“That’s probably the main issue, we were chasing grip this morning and then we were able to find it and now we’ve just gotta understand how we can get it smoother. That’s it.”
Asked about the new Ducati seat aero trialled by Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini on Friday, Miller joked that he’d have to be careful not to kick them off when getting on the bike.
“I had a look at it in the box yesterday. I mean it’s pretty out there, but they’ve got it on my list of things to try,” he said. “I’m flat out [trying] not to kick the camera off the back when I get on the bike, so I reckon I could probably do some damage to those wings! But we’ll see.”
Bastianini revealed the main benefit is in braking: “My first [impression] was good, especially on the brakes. It’s more stable. And also for the [top] speed, it’s not bad. And I think for tomorrow it’s good for the qualifying.”
Miller’s team-mate Francesco Bagnaia, who fell through the Maggots/Becketts section this morning, was eleventh fastest on day one.
It was at that same event last season that the Italian made his return to MotoGP, initially on a year-old Petronas Yamaha before switching to the latest factory-spec M1 for the revamped RNF team.
Dovizioso had fond memories of the Yamaha from a brilliant 2012 campaign at Tech3, while the current M1 leads the standings with reigning champion Fabio Quartararo.
But from his first laps, Dovizioso felt the current Yamaha possessed an unusually narrow window of grip, which only a Quartararo-type riding style could master.
The end result is that, while Quartararo leads the standings with three race wins and 172 points, the next best Yamaha of team-mate Franco Morbidelli is just 19th on 25 points.
Dovizioso has just ten points, putting him equal with rookie Darryn Binder on the A-spec bike. Dovizioso’s friend, former team-mate and Yamaha test rider Cal Crutchlow will take over Dovi’s seat for the final six rounds, following Misano.
“First of all, I would like to thank Yamaha and the team and WithU because they give me a big support and they understood me,” Dovizioso said. “That has been very important to me.
“At the end, after 20 years, it’s always tough to make this kind of decision. But it’s OK, I’m relaxed and it’s the right moment to make this decision.
“As a rider, when you are not able to be where you want, your mind starts thinking about these things [stopping].
“And with that I started thinking that Misano would be the right final race. To do my last home race and finish there with a party and a big smile from my friends and all the fans.”
Dovizioso: ‘Straight away I was a bit surprised about the grip’
“From the beginning when I jumped on the bike, and felt the base of the bike, straight away I was a bit surprised about the grip. I always said that and that I think was the biggest characteristic I really fought.
“My way to ride the Yamaha has not been the best way to use the potential of the bike, because Fabio has shown every race there is a possibility to be competitive and win the title with this bike.
“I worked a lot with the team. I worked a lot with Ramon [Forcada], with Yamaha and tried a lot of things, maybe even too much. But when we changed also big things it didn’t affect a lot.
“So that was just a confirmation that the match between my riding style, my way to approach the track and the characteristic of Yamaha didn’t match in the best way.”
On paper, Dovizioso’s results suffered after the introduction of a revised Michelin rear tire construction in 2020.
“The [tyre] change when I was in Ducati affected me in a negative way for sure. But at the end I was fighting that year and I finished fourth, as the first Ducati. So also without a good feeling at the end of the result was acceptable,” Dovizioso said.
“It’s difficult to know exactly how much that [tyre construction] affected me, but I think it’s a mix of a lot of things.
“MotoGP is changing, but it’s normal when we are speaking about the best class about motorcycle and the development is big. The effort from the manufacturer is big, the effort from the rider is big.
“So it’s normal the development is really fast and a lot of things changed. Now in the way you have to race and ride the bike is quite different compared to five years ago for example.
“I don’t speak about this in a negative way, just it’s different.
“Now you win the race by [pure] speed,” Dovizioso added. “It’s difficult to see a lot of overtaking because now everybody is fast and you play more about the lap time than the strategy for the consumption of the tyre.
“If you are fast in practice and you already found the speed, more or less you can also keep this speed in the race. But this is just a consequence of developing the tyre. The tires change. You can push a bit more than the past so you can be consistent and keep a similar pace until the end.
“That’s why now in MotoGP there are less battles, there is also a lot of aerodynamics and that doesn’t help for the overtaking. So this is the change of the MotoGP, but I don’t want to speak in a negative way, it’s just change and it’s not the best for the battle. But it’s the way to race in MotoGP now.”
The future? ‘I don’t have anything on the table’
After two decades in the world championship, 103 podiums and 24 race wins, what comes next for Dovizioso?
“Now I don’t have anything big on the table, because I didn’t try to find anything,” he said. “I think it’s normal after 20 years in one place that you need a bit of time to do some other things and live in a different way.
“I’m not anymore that young, but I still feel young enough to live and use my body at this moment. To race, for example, motocross and enjoy the last I don’t know – some years! – in a good shape and enjoy that situation.
“I also have in my mind for a long time, more than 10 years, a dream to create something at home and still it’s not done, but I’m close and I’m really happy,” he revealed.
“But I’m not done about that so I don’t want to speak about it yet, because it’s a bit too early, but I’m really focused on one project and I think that it would be really nice if I would be able to work on that and race with Motocross.
“I will keep for sure the door open about everything because I think I have a lot of experience in this [MotoGP] world. I already had some requests in the past already to do something here, but in this moment I feel I need a bit of time to do what I want at home and let’s see.”
Dovizioso also didn’t exclude taking on some kind of rider representation role in MotoGP.
“I already hear something about that and I want to keep the door open… So let’s see. Can be 50-50.”
The Ducati star failed a breathalyser test after crashing a road car while on his way home from a party in Ibiza, early last month.
Thursday at Silverstone was the first time the Italian had been back in the MotoGP paddock since the incident, for which Spanish media predicted he could face a driving ban of between one and four years.
“I already said on my social [media] channels what I think. Three-four weeks have now passed [and so] it’s not something that can compromise my mindset for a race [weekend],” Bagnaia said.
“It was a mistake, an error that I made. Unfortunately, it’s something that can happen. I really made a mistake. I understand [that],” I added.
When Bagnaia was then pressed on whether he would have accepted receiving a penalty from MotoGP or Ducati for the incident, team-mate Jack Miller – also present in the press conference – stepped in to close down the questioning.
“For what?” Miller said. “It’s just bringing up negativity and we don’t need to bring it up.
“He said what he had to say and that’s it.”
Bagnaia’s only previous words on the matter, delivered via social media the morning after the incident, were: “Last night I was in Ibiza with my friends for a party during this break from MotoGP.
“We celebrated and toasted together for my victory at the Dutch GP.
“As I was leaving the disco at 3am I was facing a roundabout when I ended up with the front wheels in a ditch, without involving other vehicles or people.
“However, the alcohol test carried out by the police found that the blood alcohol level was higher than what is allowed by Spanish law.
“I am sorry for what happened; I am practically a non-drinker, and it was a serious carelessness which should not have happened.
“I apologize to everyone, and I can assure you that I have learned my lesson.
“Never get behind the wheel after drinking alcohol. Thank you.”
Bagnaia, who has three wins and three DNFs in the last six races, starts this weekend’s race sitting fourth in the world championship, 66 points behind Fabio Quartararo.
