The Spanish GP threw a bit of a curveball: Alex Marquez took his first-ever premier class MotoGP win, Maverick Viñales finished just behind Francesco Bagnaia, and Fabio Quartararo got pole position before finishing second in Sunday's main race. It's the last anomaly on that list we're concerned with because it involved a slightly sneaky tactic.
Although, for the record, I'm totally for it and think it's fair game.
When all the rest of the MotoGP riders were in their grid positions after the warm-up lap, Quartararo was still making his way up the main straight. When you consider the fact that he started from the first grid spot, it could seem strange that he was so far behind the pack after just one lap, until you realize that it was a purposeful move by the Frenchman.
While all the other riders were sitting and waiting, Quartararo was accelerating rapidly before hitting the front brakes heavily along the straight at the Jerez circuit. In other words, he was generating heat in his tires until the last moment of the warm-up lap, while the other riders' tires were getting colder. This isn't a new strategy, but it's one we haven't seen on display so blatantly in a while because no other rider in pole position has needed to do it as badly.
The reality is, if Quartararo didn't come out of the first corner in first position, he was never going to get it back, but not for lack of skill.
The inline-4 engine in Quartararo's Yamaha M1 enables him to hold high corner speed, but requires wide sweeping lines. If the track ahead is clear and he's not defending dive bombs from the rear, Quartararo can lay down some of the fastest, if not the fastest, laps of any MotoGP rider—hence him sitting in pole position.
But if he didn't get out ahead of the pack on the first corner and do his best to maintain clear space in front of and behind him, he was going to get chewed up by the pack of V4-powered bikes behind him.
The V4 engines that power the rest of the manufacturer's bikes are better able to point and shoot out of corners, meaning they spend less time at lean and don't take the same lines as Quartararo on his inline-4. So, if a rider can get close enough to dive on the inside of Quartararo, they can disrupt his line, and before long, he's constantly riding defensively and losing positions.
The first corner on the first lap was do or die for the French rider, and he did everything to ensure that he had as much grip as possible while his closest rival, Marc Marquez, had as little as possible. How much his tactics on the warm-up lap affected the outcome is debatable, but we saw him outbrake Marc from behind during the sprint race and blast away from the pack during the main race.
It's always interesting to see tactics like this come into play, and thankfully, it seemed to work out pretty well for Quartararo during the main race and helped end his 580-day podium dry spell.
